mojoPortal 2.2.6.7 Released

mojoPortal 2.2.6.7 is now available on the download page.

This is primarily a bug fix release. There was a change in the search engine architecture in recent versions that did not work in Medium Trust hosting environments that has now been fixed.

It seems like a constant battle to avoid medium trust issues, so I started a small document here with some notes for developers about things to avoid that can cause problems under medium trust.

http://www.mojoportal.com/developing-for-medium-trust.aspx

Its not comprehensive so if anyone else has any suggestions for things to list on this page let me know. Sometimes its surprising when seemingly innocuous things don't work under medium trust. The problem we encountered was when we changed the search engine to use a queue for writing/updating the search index to ensure things happen in correct sequence. We were serializing our task object into a row in the database then our little task service would deserialize it and run it on a new thread in the background. As it turned out the SoapFormatter we were using to do the serialization throws a security exception under medium trust so you can't use it. I had to re-work the code to use the XmlSerializer.

Since a lot of people are hosted in medium trust I thought it important to get this fix out quickly.

This release also fixes a few other minor bugs as mentioned in the forums. I was surprised how many people are experimenting with our WebStore feature. Several bug fixes and improvements have been made in WebStore. Most of the bugs were only affecting the MS SQL version, whereas the store on this site is runningunder MySql

UPDATE: I've just uploaded a new set of files versioned 2-2-6-7-b because a significant bug was found today in the task framework. The changes I made to the way we serialize tasks to fix the medium trust issue introduced a bug that allowed multiple instances of the same task to run at the same time and this would use up additional threads from the threadpool, potentially causing hangs and performance problems. I also upgraded to FCKeditor 2.6.3.

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

mojoPortal 2.2.6.6 Released

I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.6.6

This is a minor upgrade and bug fix release. There is a new option to show or hide any content instance based on whether the user is signed into the site or not. There is a new Traditional Chinese translation, thanks to Alex Ho!

There are a couple of bug fixes for the MS SQL version of WebStore and a few mnior improvements to a few admin pages in the WebStore.

There is a bug fix for a forums error that would occur if anonymous posting is enabled, though I still don't recommend allowing anonymous posting.

As usual, be sure and backup your site and database before upgrading, and post in the forums if you run into any troubles.

UPDATE: I've released a new set of files versioned 2-2-6-6-b, there was a packaging bug in the first set of files and it was missing some .htm files used by TinyMCE editor. I also fixed a few more bugs in the WebStore that were discovered today.

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

mojoPortal is Catching on at Universities!

Universites need a lot of web sites. They have many departments, divisions, research projects, events, etc., and they need web sites for all these things to disseminate information and to enable collaboration and communication between members of these various communities. With so many sites to manage, Webmasters at Universities need a good web infrastructure that allows them to easily deploy new sites and extend them as needed. Its only natural that Universites need content management systems and several Universites have selected mojoPortal for their content management needs.

Shaun Geisert, Webmaster, Division of Student Affairs, Colorado State University, recently let me know about a number of their sites already using mojoPortal as well as plans to use mojoPortal in another 20+ sites going forward.

Quoting Shaun: "Before discovering Mojo (I used CMS Matrix, btw), I had researched and/or used a number of other open source .NET CMSs in order to find one whose core framework best meets the needs of our numerous departments.  Since then, I’ve found it to be above and beyond anything else I’ve seen in the open source .NET realm."

When I look at all these sites I'm very impressed with the design work Shaun and his team did with all the different skins, they all look really great and it makes me proud to point them out as mojoPortal sites. They also produced a nice user guide document for their users that looks very professional and helpful and they've offered this document back to us as a contribution to the project. I probably need to de-brand it before sharing it so I'm not making it available right away, but will use it as a basis for producing a more generic user guide. To me, willingness to share is a clear sign that these guys "get" open source, and I'm really glad to have them in the mojoPortal community.

Another example of mojoPortal in use at Universities is the School of Health and Social Care at University of West England, Bristol.
http://hsc.uwe.ac.uk/school/
They supported our efforts last year to implement multiple sites on a single installation using folder names, so anyone using that feature today can thank them for their good participation in the community. Quoting Matt Cownie: "we've had a tremendous amount of utility from mojo and its saved us an awful lot of donkey work." Matt is a great guy, I really enjoyed working with him on the multi sites feature last year.

A third example is the site for the Glasgow Clinical Trials Unit.
http://www.glasgowctu.org/

Its really great to see mojoPortal catching on in Universities and other large organizations. We've got a lot of plans for continued improvements in mojoPortal and we hope to see more and more adoption.

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

mojoPortal 2.2.6.5 Released and the Semi-Grand Opening of the mojoPortal Store

I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.6.5! Its been 2 months since our last release and a lot of good progress has been made.

What's New?

Upgrade to the newest version of MySql Connector
Upgrade to FCKeditor 2.6.2
Upgrade to the latest version of NeatHtml
Usability Improvements for google map enabled features and improvements to the search architecture as mentioned in this previous blog post.
A number of bug fixes as reported in the forums since the last release.
WebStore Improvements - the web store now supports selling download products using Authorize.NET, PaPal, and Google Checkout
A new plugin system for handling PageCreated events so developers can write their own handlers that execute after a page is created - not yet documented
A new plugin system for handling UserCreated events so developers can write their own handlers that execute after a nw user is created - not yet documented.

As always, be sure and backup your database and site before upgrading, and if you run into any problems post in the forums and we will try to help.

The Semi Grand Opening of the mojoPortal Store

I call it semi grand because no real products are available yet, all you can do in the store is buy me a beer at the moment. I expect to have my first product, Event Calendar Pro available by the end of July. You can see what I have so far for the Event Calendar Pro feature on the demo site http://demo.mojoportal.com/events. I decided to go ahead and open the store now because I thought it might interest others who want to use the mojoPortal WebStore to sell download products. The WebStore feature is very rudimentary now but it will be getting more love as I improve it to meet my own ecommerce needs. I will try to update some documentation on the WebStore soon. The one tip I will mention is you configure "Products" then you configure "Offers". Products are not sold directly, but by Offers. An Offer can have 1 or more products and price is set at the Offer level, not at the product level. The Product Catalog is very bare bones, we don't have categories yet so its really only good for a short list of products.

I've also opened up a store on CafePress to sell mojoPortal merchandise: http://www.cafepress.com/mojoportal.

t-shirtladies t-shirtcoffee mug

A great way to support mojoPortal, each item purchased contributes $5 to the project.

I'll announce the real Grand Opening of the mojoPortal Store as soon as our first product is available.

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

Please Nominate mojoPortal for the 2008 CMS Awards

Hey friends and supporters of mojoPortal, its that time of year again. The nominations are open for this year's CMS Awards. Last year we did very well and won the Non-PHP category. This year I think its an even bigger challenge and the competition will be very tough. The first step to getting into this year's competition is to get nominated so please nominate mojoPortal. You can nominate us for Overall Winner, Most Promising, and Best Other (Non-PHP). This year they also have an MVP award for "an individual that deserves recognition for the contribution to the development and running of an Open Source Content Management System". If you like the way I'm running the project and the work I'm doing or I have helped you in the forums please consider nominating me (Joe Audette).

We really need as many nominations as we can get so please nominate us today and help spread the word!

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.