I'm very happy to report that mojoPortal is included on the new mono-live cd! This new bootable cd should make it easy for more people to take mono out for a test drive. It has the MonoDevelop IDE, mono documentation, tutorials, and a number of good applications that run on mono including mojoPortal.  There's also Beagle, the cool new desktop search tool, F-Spot an awesome photo management tool, and a neat little note taking app called TomBoy. Pretty sweet! I'm downloading my copy now.

Another cool thing to notice is that the www.mono-live.com web site is also running on mojoPortal!

I'm working on the new role and permission structure to facilitate a content workflow and approval process. See here for my plan on how it will work.

Also implementing some of the things I left hanging in previous releases. For example the Show Child Page menu feature. There was a page setting created for this in the last release but setting it didn't do any thing. This will be usefull for pages where you are using the page as a top level menu and the content is in sub menu pages like the  Documentation meu item in this site.  Right now that page has an Html module where I have manually created links to its child pages but with this new feature all I have to do is check the box in page settings for "Show Child Page Menu" and this menu is automatically created.

Also adding a "Show Child Page Breadcrumbs" setting at the page level to show a breadrumb style menu accross the top if the page has actual content but also has child pages.

Adding a feature to the blog so that you can exclude posts from the outbound feed if you want to.  I will use this in my blog at JoeAudette.com because it is aggregated on monologue and somehow I feel a little more cautious about what I put on there.  I might want to blog some drivel or go on a rant without it going onto monologue.

Adding settings to configure the width and height of the editor in the Blog and Html Content modules.

A skin preview feature and the option to let users choose a skin. This is another setting that exists in Site Settings "Allow Users to choose Skins" but doesn't currently do anything. I will make it so if you check this box in Site Settings the user profile page allows the user to choose a skin that will be used whenever they login to the site.

This will probably be a bit of a bumpy upgrade for existing sites with not only new columns being added but a few columns changing the data type from varchar 255 to text.  I will do my best to make good upgrade scripts for all 3 data layers but it will be essential that you backup everything before doing the upgrade and ideal if you can do the upgrade on a copy of your site and db and then point to your site to  the copy.

I guesstimate about 2 weeks from now for the next release.

As you may have noticed, the mojoPortal bundled skins are rather plain. This is because I am a developer not a designer.  When I say design, I'm talking about color scheme, graphics, fonts, layout, etc.  I do know usability but I'm just not that creative visually. Creating a skin in mojoPortal is very easy but you need a good design before you can make a skin.

So I had an idea that maybe I could have a contest and some of you good designers out there might be willing contribute some help for me.  The contest is to design a new skin to be used on mojoPortal.com. Anyone who sends a skin will be given credit on a new page I will create to show the skins. I will make it so that there is a link that will open the site in a new window using your skin. Anyone who sends a skin that I think is particularly cool I'll buy you a pint of Guiness or send you $5 whichever you prefer. I will include all the skins in the mojoPortal download listing you in the credits and source files for the skin.

I know thats not much of a bounty but maybe some of you creative types will take up the challenge.  What do you think? Anyone interested? Any other ideas for a good bounty?

mojoPortal.com is now running on a new server hosted by GrokThis.net. I highly recommend them.  The level of customer support in getting my sites setup was outstanding.

It seems like a small operation but sometimes its better to shop at a boutique than at Walmart.  They specialize in customized configuration to meet your needs and my impression is that they know what they are doing and are very responsive on support.  I've been very pleased with the service.

For $14.95/month I get :

• ssh access
• my own instance of apache that I can start and stop as needed which is nice when you are updating a site running on mono.
• mono 1.1.7
• ssl
• smtp
• awstats
• 2 databases (I got 1 each of MySQL and PostgreSQL)
• 5 domains
• unlimited hosts within a domain
• 384 MB disk space
• 15 Gigs of monthly transfer

You really should check their site for more packages and features, I'm only listing the ones I'm using.

Right now I'm only using the MySQL db, using mojoPortal, I am running both mojoportal.com and joeaudette.com from the same web folder and using the same db.

I'm going to setup some other sites and my demo site using the PostgreSQL db. At the moment the demo sites are still running on the old server.

I have to also mention another hosting company that provides Windows hosting.

SeekDotNet hosting company is also the provider of a free open source ASP.NET file manager that is used in mojoportal.  Since all the page says is "Free and Open Source", I emailed them just to make sure it was ok to distribute the file manager with mojoportal.  They were very gracious, they gave me permission and also offered me sponsored hosting for mojoportal. Sponsored hosting is very generous offer that I appreciated wholeheartedly but nevertheless declined, hope it didn't offend them, but I feel it is very important for mojoPortal.com to be running on mono.  That is after all one of the most important features that mojoPortal has to offer. Of couse mojoPortal can run on Windows and for those who would like Windows hosting, I do recommend you checkout SeekDotNet, they do have some of the best package prices I've seen anywhere and they seem like very nice folk.

The latest release is now available on the download page. It has a few bug fixes and includes the new Event Calendar module. Be aware that there is a bug in some versions of mono that affect the new Event Calendar. It may not work for you unless you are using a recent build of mono from svn. It should work for everyone once the next release of mono is available.

PostgreSQL users may see some errors running the script to create the tables. I ignored them and it worked for me. I am trying to figure out how to get rid of the errors but I'm not quite a PostgreSQL guru yet. Once I do figure it out I'll update the scripts.