I just completed the first of ten new skins I plan to create for mojoPortal. This one is called graformix-company, you can see it now on demo.mojoportal.com, of course since this is a public demo site someone may come along and change it to a different skin, but you can always change it back by going into (key icon) Administration > Site Settings on the demo site.

This design took me 3 full days to fiinish, it was more challenging than some I've done. It required me to implement a few things to provide options in the rendering to make it possible, so it only works with the very latest svn code of mojoPortal. Specifically the tabs in the menu required 3 span elements inside the menu links to provide the hooks for hanging the background images that make up the tabs so I had to implement a custom menu rendering option to provide this. There are several different ways of implementing tab designs using marklup and css so this just adds one more method to our options which may prove helpful for other skins. This will be in svn trunk by tonight for eager developers and will be in the next release of mojoPortal for everyone else.

I am starting on the next skin now, its another one from Graformix, named graformix-orange.

In other news, a new custom News Feature by Asad Samarian is also available on the community download page. I have not tested it myself yet and it only supports MS SQL, but for any developers who would like to try it out and give Asad some feedback in the forums, please do. The .zip appears to contain the source code, so its not really packaged for non-developers.

Had another great day in Silicon Valley today. I attended the REMIX event and actually got to meet and shake hands with Scott Guthrie, an icon and hero for most of us ASP.NET developers. I didn't get to go the MIX event in Las Vegas so the REMIX event was very exciting for me. I was lucky this was going on while I was in town for the MySql Conference. I had seen Scott Guthrie's Silverlight demos online before but seeing the live demos with Scott on stage was much more compelling. I'm completely jazzed about Silverlight now and can't wait for beta 2 of Silverlight 2 which should be out soon. I also really enjoyed the Open Source Panel discussion which featured Sam Ramji and Anand Iyer of Microsoft, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror, Anil Dash of Six Apart, and Joseph Hill of Novell/Mono.

I had to skip part of the event because Joseph Hill and I gave our presentation at 2pm at the MySql conference, but we went back after that and caught the final panel session on the future of Social Networking and got to mingle in the closing happy hour event. I got to meet some really cool people like Dalton Caldwell, Founder and CEO of imeem, and Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo, and quite a few other people doing very interesting things.

Our presentation at the MySql Conference went very well. I didn't see anyone video taping so unfortunately I don't think that session will be online but it was a lot of fun and was well received by the people who attended. During the MySql conference I was interviewed for a Podcast which will hopefully be up on the WebDevRadio.com site sometime soon. I didn't know about that site before but I'm adding it to the roster of podcasts I listen to and looking forward to listening to previous episodes while I work. The site and podcasts are put on by Michael Kimsal. Though I met him in Silicon Valley, it turns out he lives in Raleigh North Carolina, which is not too far from Charlotte, where I live.

Its been a great week of meeting people, experiencing Silicon Valley and getting lots of ideas for mojoPortal. Tomorrow I fly home and return to my ordinary daily life of software development but with fresh excitement for what I'm doing and new ideas I can't wait to get started on. Its really been a successful trip and a great opportunity. Seeing the mojoPortal logo on the same signs with all the big names and getting to meet so many well known and successful people was heady stuff for a not very well known open source entrepreneur like myself.

Huge Thanks to MySql for inviting us out here and giving us this great opportunity!

Just a quick post to say I'm having a great time at the MySql Conference!

I've been really just amazed at all the big names I see on the buildings here in Silicon Valley. I'm so glad we were invited to this event. I've been meeting a lot of great people and having fun spreading the word about mojoPortal. If you're here at the event, please come by our booth for a visit and a demo!

Here are some of the designs suggested by the community from my previous post where I requested suggestions for designs to implement as mojoPortal skins along with my analysis of them.

Thanks for all the great suggestions!

I'm still deciding which will be the 10 that I implement as skins in the coming weeks. I have some favorites among the current suggestions already but there is still time to suggest more. Even if you have no new suggestions I'm interested in your comments on these and which are your favorites. There seems to be a lot of fixed width tab menu designs. I wish I could find more diversity in the menu designs, though tabs are very cool and popular. Only the Earthy skin below has a flyout dynamic sub menu so it is likely to be one of my picks just because of this difference.

Earthy is a fixed width design with horizotal menu with flyout sub menu and earthy color scheme.

Stylevantage is a fixed width layout with horizontal menu from the same designer as the techmania skin.

Citrus Island is a fixed width design with tabbed menu also from the same designer as the techmania skin.

Rambling Soul 2 is a fixed width design with tabbed menu.

Rambling Soul 3 is a full width fluid layout design with horizontal menu.

The Daily Read is a fixed width design in the style of a newspaper. It has an interesting single level submenu that blends with the main tab menu.

Business 3 is a full width fluid layout design with horizontal menu.

Level 2 is a full width fluid layout design with an interesting horizontal menu and curved corners.

Light and Living is a fixed width design with tabbed menu.

Orange is a full width fluid layout design with horizontal menu and interesting header iimages and rounded corners.

Graformix Company is a full width fluid layout design with tabbed menu and interesting vertical sub menu.

Maeioska is a fixed width design with tab style menu.

Underground is a fixed width design with tab style menu.

Internet Broadcast is a fixed width design with tabbed menu.

Outdoor is a fixed width (rather narrow design) with horizontal menu and an interesting background image.

http://andreasviklund.com/templates/ has several nice designs. Unfortunately there aren't demos I can link to.

Cosmopolitan a narrow fixed width design, with interesting curves and tabbed menu.

Bright Side of Life a narrow fixed width design with tabbed menu.

New Horizon fixed width with expanding background and horizontal menu. Rather large top image area.

Terra Firma narrow fixed width horizontal menu.

Nautica 2.2 Liquid has fixed width borders, a fluid center section, and tabbed menu.

Small Studio is a fixed width rather plain design with vertical menu.

Cool Water is a fixed width design with horizontal menu and curved edges.

08 Gulona is a narrow fixed width design the color of split pea soup with horizontal menu.

The Hobbit is a narrow fixed width design with horizontal menu and interesting corner graphics. Not sure how well this lends itself to a CMS as there is nothning included for styling sub menus so it really is just designed for small sites with shallow menu.

Mother Earth is a fixed width design with horizontal main menu.

Refresh is a fixed width design with horizontal tabbed menu and curved corners.

Nature is a dark colored fixed with design with vertical menu.

Cold Day is a fixed width design with tabbed menu.

Dark Olive is a very narrow fixed width design with a large horse image at the top and tabbed menu with somewhat interesting sub menu.

Autumn is a very narrow fixed with design.

Pink Winter is a fixed with design.

Apple Core is a fluid layout with tabbed menu and rather small fonts.

Seasons Greetings is a fluid layout with translucent tabbed menu and a Christmas theme.

Red City is fixed width with expanding background and tabbed menu.

Aircraft Company is a fixed width design with horizontal menu using orange gradient.

Wordpress Premium is a fixed width design with a lot of rounded corner detail.

I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.5.3.

This is a relatively minor upgrade. There are a few bug fixes for little things reported in the forums.

Upgrade to FCKeditor 2.6

Upgrade to ExtJs 2.0.2

The package for Mono has been tested and works on Mono 1.9

As always, be sure and backup your site and database before upgrading and post in the forums if you have any trouble.

I've also created some new documentation to help with installation and upgrades.

Web.config Guide describes how to make upgrading easier by using a user.config file in conjunction with Web.config

Uploading Files to a Hosted Server gives a few tips for uploading files to your server.

Getting the most from your blog with Odiogo and Feedburner.

There is still time to help pick designs for new mojoPortal skins. I will be starting on the new skins after I get back from the MySql Conference and will probably blog again about some of the suggestions next week during the conference.

If you're going to the MySql Conference I hope to see you there. I'll be in Santa Clara all week. My first ever trip to Silicon Valley.

We've got a booth in the DotOrg Pavillion, so come by and see us. I'm also co-presenting with Joseph Hill of Novell for the session "Cross Platform .NET Development with Mono and MySQL". Its very exciting for me because support for Mono and MySql were my very first goals and milestones for mojoPortal when I began the project. The other interesting thing is that mojoPortal has projects and solutions for MonoDevelop in addition to those for Visual Studio, so its one of the few .NET projects with developers collaborating across Windows and *nix platforms.