data universal inc. - News

Marketplace 2-year Anniversary Special Pricing

Leonard Tarteata — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:30:00 GMT

"Sitefinity Marketplace 2-year Anniversary" special pricing available for a limited time:

Save $30.00 when you buy Recurring Events Components.
Limited time offer, order by January 31, 2012.
Bundle and Save!
20% off when you buy a two-module bundle. Up to $54.00 in savings.

Recurring Events support available for Sitefinity 3.7, 3.6

Leonard Tarteata — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:59:00 GMT

We're happy to announce the availability of Recurring Events components that enhance the standard Sitefinity Events Module with support for recurring events creation and maintenance.

A dedicated evaluation website is available: please sign-up to assess the new functionality against your needs.

Functional highlights:

• Recurrence interval: day, week, month, year.
• Multiple weekday support for weekly events.
• Relative date support for monthly, yearly events (e.g. 2nd Tuesday of the month every 2 months; 1st Monday of September every year).
• Easy maintenance: update / delete all events in a series, update only the current instance, reset a recurring instance to single event.
• Existent and future custom meta-fields are automatically included in the recurring event creation / updates.
• Events List View includes additional fields: "Event Start", "Event End" dates with sorting enabled; "Recurrence" field displays the type of recurring event (parent, instance, or blank for standard events); links are available for each recurring item that allow for recurrence pattern display, and series filtering.
• Events Calendar View displays the recurring events with a different colour vs. the standard events, and a "recurring event icon" in the top-left corner. Date-picker is enabled to easily navigate to any date. Also, the response time of the calendar view is improved with about 70%

To learn more, please follow these links:

Tabbed Content control updated to support News, Blogs, Events

Leonard Tarteata — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:49:35 GMT

Version 3.0 introduces dedicated tabs for News, Blog Posts, Events, that can be displayed in addition to the tabs generated dynamically based on tagged content.

Each dedicated tab can be individually controlled through a set of specific properties, such as:

> Tab text / title
> Visibility
> Position: before or after the dynamically generated tabs
> Relative sequence: 1st, 2nd, or 3rd

The update also includes external “item list” templates for News, Blog Posts, and Events that are tabbed-view friendly and help enable the new functionality right away, without additional effort.

To view the new version in action using your desktop browser, please visit:

Just Released: Mapped Content module

Leonard Tarteata — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:12:00 GMT

The Mapped Content module can be used to maintain location-specific attributes for generic content and display eligible items on an interactive Google map, with a synchronized sidebar.

The location-enabled items can be related to each other, resulting in drill-down, multiple-level navigation. The map markers can use custom or Google standard icons. Labeled icons are supported as well.

The location specific item information - such as location name, address, description, thumbnail image, directions link - is displayed on both the sidebar and marker info-window. The full item content is displayed in a maximized map info-window.

Sitefinity compatibility: versions 3.6, 3.7 with support for both Standard and Community editions
.NET Framework: 2.0, 3.5
Browser compatibility: Firefox, IE (6.x and up), Chrome, Safari, Opera.

Google Static Map control - simple, fast, efficient

Leonard Tarteata — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:26:53 GMT

We've just released a new control for Sitefinity CMS - Google Static Map.

The control generates a map image using the latest Google Static Maps API. The map is centered on the address provided, with or without a marker. A "click map for directions" link can be enabled as appropriate.

Use this control on all cases when an interactive map is not needed or supported, such as multiple single-address maps on the same page, and maps on pages designed for mobile browsers. No Google API key required.

Map properties: size (up to 640 x 640 px.), type (road map, satellite, terrain), zoom level, map center as an address or geo-coordinates, image type (png, gif, jpeg), flag for mobile optimization, "click map for directions" flag, CSS class.
Marker properties: visibility, color (black, brown, blue, gray, green, orange, purple, red, yellow, white), size (regular, medium, small, tiny), label (A-Z, 1-9)

To view multiple control instances on a page please click here. To preview the control on a mobile page in Opera Mini please click here, or navigate with your mobile browser to the mobile page.

Sitefinity compatibility: all versions.

The control doesn't have any CMS dependencies and can be used on any ASP.NET (version 2.0 and up) page.

Tabbed Content View version 2.0 released

Leonard Tarteata — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:39:03 GMT

New functionality available in the newly released version 2.0: "Slide-show mode".

When slideshow mode is enabled, the selected tab changes automatically to the next one, with a configurable frequency. Slide-show featured content with no additional effort, and without using Flash or Silverlight!

Just released: Tabbed Content View control

Leonard Tarteata — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:24:25 GMT

Tabbed Content View is a Sitefinity CMS user control that can be used to display Generic Content items in a tabbed view. The items selected for display in the tabbed view are filtered using a tag name - allowing for selection across your existent content categories, and item reuse by tagging it as appropriate. In short, a content item can be displayed in as many different tabbed views as tags assigned.

The tab name and sequence are maintained using custom meta-fields available on the item creation / update forms, allowing for consistent, user-friendly tab name reuse.

The control was implemented using standard Telerik RadTabstrip and RadMultipage controls. As a result there's full support for all built-in properties and resources (such as skins, tabstrip orientations).

Sitefinity version compatibility: 3.6, 3.7

How to build a Sitefinity mobile website

Leonard Tarteata — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:28:00 GMT

Use our Sitefinity Mobile Starter Theme, Response-Redirect Control, and the recently published Quick Start Guide to establish your mobile web presence in about 1 hour.

The Quick Start Guide - available on the theme download page - provides step-by-step instructions on how to build your Sitefinity mobile website side-by-side with your existent, desktop browser-oriented site.

To download the theme, read the deployment instructions and the Quick Start Guide - please navigate with your desktop browser to the Mobile Starter Theme Download Page.

Mobile Starter Theme now available

Leonard Tarteata — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:52:36 GMT

The "Mobile Starter" theme is a Sitefinity theme designed for browsers running on mobile devices such as BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile smartphones.

The starter theme complements the standard theme(s) already in use, and allows a Sitefinity-based website to have a mobile-friendly version as well. The automatic redirection to the mobile website can be performed using our "Response-Redirect Control".

Response-Redirect Control

Leonard Tarteata — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:42:06 GMT

We've just submitted this control to Sitefinity Marketplace. It allows a page to redirect the response to a request based on user-agent filtering.

The primary use case for this control is when multiple versions of the same page exist and they are browser specific, such as a mobile browser.

Cached, up-to-date stylesheets on the client-side

Leonard Tarteata — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:20:00 GMT

In this post we describe a step-by-step procedure that enables client-side caching for static content files, with the ability to force a refresh of the client cache before its expiry, as needed.

We'll apply the procedure to the ~/App_Themes folder as all Sitefinity installations make use of themes, and the majority of requests are for stylesheets, and related images located in the theme folder(s).

Caching static content files on the client-side is a sure way to improve the load time of a webpage, as experienced by the end-user, however often overlooked. More than 80% of the time it takes the client browser to render a webpage is spent requesting and eventually downloading external resources: stylesheets, images, javascript.

Below are the statistics for this page, as reported by YSlow, before and after enabling the functionality described in this article:

Before: 15 HTTP requests with a primed cache

After: 3 HTTP requests with a primed cache

By default, the request for a static file is handled by IIS in the following manner:

Content expiration is not enabled: IIS writes to the response header a "last-modified" value that corresponds to the date-time the resource was last written to, and no cache-control headers. As a result, the client browser will always issue a request for this resource even though it's already available in the browser cache, and, if the resource hasn't changed, receive from IIS a response status 304 (Not Modified) that tells the browser it's okay to use the cached version. If the resource has changed it will be included in the response from IIS with an updated "last-modified" header value. This ensures the client browser uses the latest version of the resource file. However, for static content files that are part of the website design and rarely change - such as theme files - the overhead of all this HTTP request/response chatter for static content is not justified. All browsers limit the number of parallel requests (8 - 12 total, and fewer for the same hostname) so it's important to minimize the number of requests needed to load a page.

Content expiration is enabled, with a future expiration date: in this case IIS maintains the response cache-control headers such as "max-age" that tells the client browser to use the cached version of the resource and not issue a new request until the cached version expires. As a result, no subsequent HTTP requests will be issued by the browser for all repeat visits (until the cached resource expires), resulting in a dramatic decrease in the number of HTTP requests needed to load a page that uses resources cached on the client-side. The major disadvantage in this case is the client browser will use the cached version of the resource until it expires event though an updated version might be available on the server. Also, there's no way to "notify" the client browser a cached resource should be refreshed before its expiry. This is the reason why many website admins will either avoid using client-side caching, or use a small expiration interval (hours). Others would modify the build / production promotion process to use different file names for different versions - not feasible for a standard implementation using Sitefinity CMS.

What's Needed:

Access to the IIS server hosting your website;
Access to the DNS record of your domain name.

Procedure Summary:

DNS record: create a new A record for the subdomain used to access the static content files and point it to the same IP address as your domain, e.g. "themes", so that the hostname used to access the theme files is "themes.yourdomain.com";
IIS server: create a new website, set host header values to the newly created subdomain (themes.yourdomain.com), and enable content expiration (use a far-future expiration date);
IIS Server: create one or more virtual directories under the newly created website and point them to the same physical location: App_Themes folder. The virtual folder names should have a numeric part that can be easily increased as soon as a new version of the theme files needs to be pushed to the client, e.g "v001", "v002", etc.;
Sitefinity CMS: add the "CSS Link Update" user control (created as described below) to all page templates and set its configuration values in your website configuration file. The user control, when enabled, updates the source URL for all links in the page header that point to a stylesheet located in ~/App_Themes directory by replacing the ~/App_Themes/ with the control configuration value maintained in "web.config" file, e.g "http://themes.yourdomain.com/v001".

"CSS Link Update" user control

Create a new user control named "CssLinkUpdate.ascx" in your user controls folder, e.g. "~/UserControls/Data_Universal/":

CssLinkUpdate.ascx file:

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="CssLinkUpdate.ascx.cs" Inherits="UserControls_Data_Universal_CssLinkUpdate" %>

CssLinkUpdate.ascx.cs file:

using System;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Configuration;

using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

public partial class UserControls_Data_Universal_CssLinkUpdate : System.Web.UI.UserControl

{

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

try

{

if (Convert.ToBoolean(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["CssLinkUpdate_Enabled"]))

{

string updateFrom = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["CssLinkUpdate_From"];

if(!updateFrom.EndsWith("/"))

updateFrom += "/";

if(!updateFrom.StartsWith("/"))

updateFrom = "/" + updateFrom;

string updateTo = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["CssLinkUpdate_To"];

if(!updateTo.EndsWith("/"))

updateTo += "/";

foreach (Control headerControl in Page.Header.Controls)

{

if (headerControl.GetType() == typeof(HtmlLink))

{

HtmlLink headerLink = (HtmlLink)headerControl;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(headerLink.Attributes["rel"]) && headerLink.Attributes["rel"].ToLower() == "stylesheet"

&& !String.IsNullOrEmpty(headerLink.Attributes["href"]))

{

string origHref = "/" + headerLink.Attributes["href"];

int origIndex = origHref.IndexOf(updateFrom);

if(origIndex >= 0)

headerLink.Attributes["href"] = updateTo + origHref.Substring(origIndex + updateFrom.Length);

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

Response.Write(ex.Message);

}

Add configuration values in "web.config", section "appSettings":

<add key="CssLinkUpdate_Enabled" value="false" />

<add key="CssLinkUpdate_From" value="App_Themes/" />

<add key="CssLinkUpdate_To" value="http://themes.yourdomain.com/v001" />

where "CssLinkUpdate_Enabled" enables / disables the functionality described in this article by setting a value of true / false. Update the value of the "CssLinkUpdate_To" key to your theme-dedicated subdomain name.

Add the "CSS Link Update" user control to the toolbox by adding the following element to "web.config", section "toolboxControls":

<add name="CSS Link Update" section="Data Universal" url="~/UserControls/Data_Universal/CssLinkUpdate.ascx" />

The user control is now available for use from the control toolbox (displayed when a page / template is in edit mode), section "Data Universal". Add the control to all page templates, no configuration needed, just drag-and-drop it in a content placeholder.

How to initiate an update

Here's how an updated version of a stylesheet located in App_Themes folder (or related images) can be pushed to all clients, including those that already have a cached version locally:

Promote your updates to the ~/App_Themes folder as you'd normally do it;
Update the virtual content URL in "web.config" file so that it points to a new virtual folder (e.g. from "http://themes.yourdomain.com/v001" to "http://themes.yourdomain.com/v002") and make sure the new virtual folder exists (if not, create one and point it to the same physical App_Themes directory);
Save the "web.config" file (this will cause an application restart and clear any pages cached in the application memory; they will be replaced with a new version that uses the most recent stylesheet links, as configured).

One Blog, Multiple Authors - Part 2

Leonard & Co. — Sat, 22 May 2010 13:06:00 GMT

This is the second part of a 2-part set of blog posts where we describe a possible implementation for "single blog - multiple authors" functionality:

Part 1 - Admin view: enable author maintenance on the blog post level;
Part 2 - Public view: new controls that allow filtering by author of the blog post.

Part 2 - Public View: Controls that Allow Filtering by Post-level Author

All files and source code discussed in this post are available for download.

We'll create two controls that allow post filtering by the author of the blog post maintained as described in Part 1:

Blog Posts with Author Filter: custom control that enhances the built-in Blog Posts control by implementing an extra filter for the post author;
Blog Authors: user control that lists contributors for selected blogs, and allows for post filtering by author.

2.1 Custom Control: Blog Posts with Author Filter

Functional description:

Preserves all functionality implemented by the built-in BlogPosts control;
Implements a new filter based on the blog post author. The author name is passed as a Query String parameter (named PostAuthor) when the user clicks on the Author link;
When the new filter by author is applied, "Go Back" link is visible

Here are the steps required to implement the functional needs described above:

Create a custom class "BlogPostsAuthorFilter.cs" that inherits from BlogPosts. We chose to create it in ~/App_Code folder rather than as an external library in order to avoid compile time dependencies and ensure compatibility with all Sitefinity versions 3.6, 3.7 (including future Service Packs for 3.7).

If your website is running in medium-trust - which is the case with most shared hosting plans (offered by DiscountASP, GoDaddy, etc.) - the custom control should be compiled as an external class library and deployed in the ~/bin folder in order to avoid security-related exceptions when the control is added to the toolbox:

namespace DataUniversal.Blogs

{

public class BlogPostsAuthorFilter : BlogPosts

{

public BlogPostsAuthorFilter()

{

}

Override the following properties and methods

Properties: ItemListTemplatePath, SingleItemTemplatePath - needed to provide the default templates. The external templates are available from Sitefinity, and have been included in the archive attached to this post (ContentViewItemList.ascx, ContentViewSingleItem.ascx)

public override string ItemListTemplatePath

{

get

{

object oPath = this.ViewState["ItemListTemplatePath"];

if (oPath != null)

return oPath.ToString();

return "~/Sitefinity/ControlTemplates/Blogs/ContentViewItemList.ascx";

}

set

{

this.ViewState["ItemListTemplatePath"] = value;

}

public override string SingleItemTemplatePath

{

get

{

object oPath = this.ViewState["SingleItemTemplatePath"];

if (oPath != null)

return oPath.ToString();

return "~/Sitefinity/ControlTemplates/Blogs/ContentViewSingleItem.ascx";

}

set

{

this.ViewState["SingleItemTemplatePath"] = value;

}

Methods: CreateChildControls, SelectContentCount, SetItemMetadata - needed to apply the additional filter before creating the child controls, synchronize the content count used by the pager, and set the proper URL for the author link

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

bool applyAuthorFilter = false;

if (Page != null && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(Page.Request.QueryString["PostAuthor"]))

{

string postAuthor = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(Page.Request.QueryString["PostAuthor"]);

ContentFilterBuilder filterBuilder = new ContentFilterBuilder(this);

filterBuilder.AddFilter(new MetaSearchInfo(MetaValueTypes.ShortText, "Author", postAuthor, SearchCondition.Equal, JoinType.And));

applyAuthorFilter = true;

}

base.CreateChildControls();

if (applyAuthorFilter)

{

ListContainer.BackLink.NavigateUrl = Page.Request.Url.AbsolutePath.ToLower();

ListContainer.BackLink.Visible = true;

}

protected override int SelectContentCount()

{

if (Page != null && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(Page.Request.QueryString["PostAuthor"]))

{

string postAuthor = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(this.Page.Request.QueryString["PostAuthor"]);

ContentFilterBuilder filterBuilder = this.GetFilterBuilder();

filterBuilder.AddFilter(new MetaSearchInfo(MetaValueTypes.ShortText, "Author", postAuthor, SearchCondition.Equal, JoinType.And));

int contentCount = Manager.GetContent(0, 0, SortExpression, filterBuilder.ParseTagFilter(), ContentStatus.Published, null, filterBuilder.ParseParentsFilter(), filterBuilder.ParseMetaFieldsFilter()).Count;

if (LimitListCount && contentCount > MaximumListCount)

contentCount = MaximumListCount;

return contentCount;

}

return base.SelectContentCount();

}

protected override void SetItemMetadata(Control itemContainer, IContent contentItem)

{

base.SetItemMetadata(itemContainer, contentItem);

HyperLink linkPostedBy = (HyperLink)FindContentViewControl("postedBy", itemContainer);

if (linkPostedBy != null)

{

object oMetaAuthor = contentItem.GetMetaData("Author");

string sMetaAuthor = String.Empty;

if (oMetaAuthor != null)

sMetaAuthor = oMetaAuthor.ToString();

string baseURL = String.Empty;

if (SingleContainer.BackLinks.Length > 0)

baseURL = SingleContainer.BackLinks[0].NavigateUrl;

if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(baseURL) && Page != null)

baseURL = Page.Request.Url.AbsolutePath.ToLower();

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(sMetaAuthor) && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(baseURL))

{

linkPostedBy.NavigateUrl = baseURL + "?PostAuthor=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(sMetaAuthor);

linkPostedBy.Text = sMetaAuthor;

}

<toolboxControls>

<clear />

...

<add name="Blog Posts with Author Filter" section="Data Universal" type="DataUniversal.Blogs.BlogPostsAuthorFilter,App_Code" />

...

The control can be seen in action on all blog pages on this website.

2.2 User Control: Blog Authors

Functional description:

Displays a list of distinct post-level Author names, for each of the selected blogs; an author name is displayed as a link pointing to its parent blog page, and implements the query string parameter required for post filtering by author.
One or more blogs can be selected from the list of available blogs; out of the selected blogs, only those with at least 1 post published in the past (compared to the current server date-time) will be included.
The blog name visibility can be controlled, and whether to display it as a hyperlink pointing to the blog page.
Visibility of the number of posts created by each author can be controlled. When visible, the number of posts is displayed after the author name, enclosed in parenthesis.
The list of authors is sorted by (blog name, author name), in ascending order.

The user control is available (see ZIP archive attached to this post) in the following location: \UserControls\Data_Universal

BlogAuthors.ascx
BlogAuthors.ascx.cs

Upload the user control "BlogAuthors.ascx" using the built-in functionality available while in page edit mode; when prompted whether a code-behind file will be uploaded - choose 'yes' and point to the "BlogAuthors.ascx.cs" file.

Here's a screenshot of the control properties:

The control can be seen in action on all blog pages, right-hand sidebar.

All files and source code discussed in this post are available for download.

One Blog, Multiple Authors

Leonard Tarteata — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:57:00 GMT

The standard behaviour of the Blogs module that ships with Sitefinity (versions 3.6, 3.7) when it comes to blog authors is 1-to-1, the author being an optional attribute of the blog definition. While this is fine for a personal blog, where one expects to have a single author for all blog posts, there are cases when a blog is topic-oriented, with multiple authors. In such cases, the author cannot be specified on a blog post level, and the only way to persist the name of the author is to create a dedicated blog for that author with its own "blog page". As a result, if there are 20 contributors / authors we'll end up creating 20 blogs in the administration area, and 20 blog pages for the public side that act as presentation layer for all blog posts by the related author.

Of course there's the option to have a single blog page for all blogs (each having its own author) in order to avoid changing the site structure / map for every new author. In this case, however, the author link will point to the same blog page URL for all authors and there's no filtering based on the author name.

This is the first part of a 2-part set of blog posts where we'll describe a possible implementation for "single blog - multiple authors" functionality:

Part 1 - Admin view: enable author maintenance on the blog post level;
Part 2 - Public view: new controls for Blog Posts, and Bloggers List that allow filtering by author.

Part 1 - Admin View: Enable Author Maintenance on the Post Level

All files and source code discussed in this post are available for download.

The author name will be persisted as a mandatory meta-field with a "ShortText" type. The Blogs module already has an Author meta-field defined in the configuration file (web.config), however it's not maintained through the built-in add / edit post templates:

<metaFields>

...

<add key="Blogs.Author" valueType="ShortText" visible="True" searchable="True" sortable="True" defaultValue=""/>

...

</metaFields>

In order to allow for the Author meta-field maintenance we'll enable the external templates for blog post creation / update, and modify these templates by adding a new section for Author maintenance.

1.1 Enable Add / Edit External Templates for Blog Post

The external templates for blog post creation and update are available in a separate download (that contains all external templates and controls configuration file) from your client area downloads on sitefinity.com. We'll need the following external templates, and their resource files:

/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostNew.ascx
/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostEdit.ascx
/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/App_LocalResources/PostNew.ascx.resx
/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/App_LocalResources/PostEdit.ascx.resx

Copy these files in the corresponding location on your website, e.g.:

~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/
~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/App_LocalResources/

The external templates are enabled through the controls configuration file (full template also available in the external templates download):

~/App_Data/Configuration/Telerik.Sitefinity.Configuration.ControlsConfig.xml

The following view settings are needed in the controls configuration file:

<viewSettings hostType="Telerik.Blogs.WebControls.Admin.PostNewView" layoutTemplatePath="~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostNew.ascx" />

<viewSettings hostType="Telerik.Blogs.WebControls.Admin.PostEditView" layoutTemplatePath="~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostEdit.ascx" />

Save the configuration file and restart the website. The external templates for blog post creation / update are now in use.

1.2 Modify the External Templates to Allow for Author Maintenance

We'll edit the external templates using Visual Studio. If you don't have a licensed version of Visual Studio, a free version of Visual Web Developer (Express) is available from Microsoft.

Apply the following changes to both external templates we enabled at step (1.1):

~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostNew.ascx
~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostEdit.ascx

Locate:

<sf:ContentMetaFields ID="MetaFields" runat="server">

and just below the <ItemTemplate> node add the following:

<h3>

<asp:Literal ID="LiteralAuthorSet" runat="server" Text="<%$Resources:AuthorSet %>"></asp:Literal> *

</h3>

<fieldset class="set">

<ol class="setIn clearfix">

<li class="catSel">

<asp:Label ID="Label_Author" AssociatedControlID="Author" runat="server">

<asp:Literal ID="Literal_Author" runat="server" Text="<%$Resources:Author %>"></asp:Literal>

</asp:Label>

<asp:TextBox ID="Author" runat="server" MaxLength="250"></asp:TextBox>

<asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="validator_Author" runat="server" ControlToValidate="Author" Display="Dynamic" EnableViewState="False" CssClass="validMessage" SetFocusOnError="True">

<strong><asp:Literal ID="Literal_AuthorEmpty" runat="server" Text="<%$Resources:AuthorEmpty %>" /></strong>

</asp:RequiredFieldValidator>

</li>

</ol>

</fieldset>

<div class="bottom"><div></div></div>

Save and close the external templates. Add the following (name, value) pairs to each of the resource files (PostNew.ascx.resx, PostEdit.ascx.resx):

Author, Author Name
AuthorSet, Post Author
AuthorEmpty, Author Name cannot be empty!

Save and close the resource files.

The external templates are ready to be used. We can now maintain the Author on the blog post level:

The post author name can be seen on the right-hand sidebar of the blog post preview:

1.3 Populate the Author Name Using the Current User Profile

To ensure Author Name consistency and, at the same time, improve the user experience we can set a default value for the Author Name in case there isn't a value already set, and disable the text box if the user is not part of the "administrators" role. We'll implement the following functionality:

Create New Post: set default value for Author Name to First Name / Last Name as set in the profile of the current user. These profile properties are not mandatory, as a result we'll only disable the field if the profile First Name / Last Name are non-empty. The author name will always be available for editing (enabled) if the current user is part of the "administrators" role.
Edit Existing Post: if a value is already set for Author Name, we'll just disable / enable the field if the user is not / is part of the "administrators" role. If the Author Name is not set (this would be the case with blog posts created before implementing the functionality described in this article), the behaviour will be identical with new post creation described above.

1.3.1 Enable Author Default Value for New Post Creation

Open the "~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostNew.ascx" file using you're favourite editor, and replace:

<%@ Control Language="C#" %>

with:

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="PostNew.ascx.cs" Inherits="Sitefinity_Admin_ControlTemplates_Blogs_PostNew" %>

Create a file named "PostNew.ascx.cs" in the same directory as the user control template "~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/". Copy the following code in the newly created file, save it and close it:

using System;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.Profile;

using Telerik.Security;

public partial class Sitefinity_Admin_ControlTemplates_Blogs_PostNew : UserControl

{

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (!Page.IsPostBack)

{

TextBox textboxAuthor = MetaFields.Controls[0].FindControl("Author") as TextBox;

if (textboxAuthor != null)

{

ProfileBase userProfile = new ProfileBase();

userProfile.Initialize(UserManager.GetCurrentUserName(), true);

textboxAuthor.Text = (userProfile.GetPropertyValue("FirstName").ToString().Trim() + " " + userProfile.GetPropertyValue("LastName").ToString().Trim()).Trim();

if(!String.IsNullOrEmpty(textboxAuthor.Text))

textboxAuthor.Enabled = UserManager.IsCurrentUserInRole("administrators");

}

1.3.2 Enable Author Default Value for Existing Blog Post

Open the "~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/PostEdit.ascx" file using you're favourite editor, and replace:

<%@ Control Language="C#" %>

with:

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="PostEdit.ascx.cs" Inherits="Sitefinity_Admin_ControlTemplates_Blogs_PostEdit" %>

Create a file named "PostEdit.ascx.cs" in the same directory as the user control template "~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/Blogs/". Copy the following code in the newly created file, save it and close it:

using System;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.Profile;

using Telerik.Cms.Engine;

using Telerik.Blogs;

using Telerik.Security;

public partial class Sitefinity_Admin_ControlTemplates_Blogs_PostEdit : UserControl

{

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (!Page.IsPostBack)

{

TextBox textboxAuthor = MetaFields.Controls[0].FindControl("Author") as TextBox;

if (textboxAuthor != null)

{

object oMetaAuthor;

Guid blogId = new Guid(Request.QueryString["ParentId"]);

Guid postId = new Guid(Request.QueryString["Param"]);

BlogManager blogManager = new BlogManager();

IBlog theBlog = blogManager.GetBlog(blogId);

foreach (IContent blogPost in theBlog.Posts)

{

if (blogPost.ID == postId)

{

oMetaAuthor = blogPost.GetMetaData("Author");

if (oMetaAuthor == null || String.IsNullOrEmpty(oMetaAuthor.ToString()))

{

ProfileBase userProfile = new ProfileBase();

userProfile.Initialize(UserManager.GetCurrentUserName(), true);

textboxAuthor.Text = (userProfile.GetPropertyValue("FirstName").ToString().Trim() + " " + userProfile.GetPropertyValue("LastName").ToString().Trim()).Trim();

}

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(textboxAuthor.Text))

textboxAuthor.Enabled = UserManager.IsCurrentUserInRole("administrators");

break;

}

All done. Please review all user profiles and maintain First Name / Last Name as appropriate to ensure the correct default value for a blog post author.

All files and source code discussed in this post are available for download.

Event View: Custom Date-Time Formats

Leonard Tarteata — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:36:00 GMT

A common issue when using the built-in view templates for Events is the inability to apply a custom display format for the event start and end date-times.

There are a few predefined formats available on the "Settings" page of the control designer, however, the time of the event is "lost" when using one of these formats as reported by several users, more recently in this forum thread. The suggested solution was to add additional formats to the list of built-in formats by modifying the external template that drives the "Settings" page of the control designer.

Here's another possible solution for implementing custom date-time formats:

Use external templates for "Single Item View" (ContentViewSingleItemView.ascx) and "List View" (ContentViewItemView.ascx);
Replace in those external templates the ASP Literal controls for "Event_Start" and "Event_End" with Telerik's DateTimeLiteral controls, and use the same ID values for the new controls as the corresponding literals they replace (e.g. "Event_Start", "Event_End");
Specify the desired date-time format using the "DateFormatString" property.

Example

We'll format the event start date so that a date of "2010-04-19 02:00:00 PM" will be displayed as "April 19, 2010 at 2:00 PM"

Replace:

<asp:Literal ID="Event_Start" runat="server" />

With:

<telerik:DateTimeLiteral ID="Event_Start" runat="server" DateFormatString="MMMM dd, yyyy 'at' h:mm tt" />

Replace the format used above with your own, as needed.

Please note this workaround will not work if any custom settings were specified in the "Basic -> Settings" view of the "Events View" control; these settings can be reverted to the default values by switching to the "Advanced" view and removing the values for MasterSettings and DetailSettings:

To use the external templates customized as described above, set the following properties found on the "Advanced" tab, "Appearance" section - ItemListTemplatePath, SingleItemTemplatePath: