Recently I’ve developed a rather large website for a customer. To make the structure as simple as possible to understand I like to use different Icons for each document type. I was very happy with the FamFamFam Icons project from The Farm. After Installing this I got another challenge and that was to pick the right Icon.

Today I started working on a new project, installed the FamFamFam Icons package again and thought that it would be better to assign document types to the Image instead of assigning the image to a document type. I’ve created a small Usercontrol that lists all the icons (except for the default Umbraco sprites). Next to the Icon you find  a dropdown with the possible documenttypes which you can select.

I did not create a package out of this. It’s working for me, but it needs some improvements before I can add it to our.umbraco.org.  Maybe that  will never happen, so attached you find a zip file. Add the IconPickerDashboard.dll file to your bin folder, the IconPickerDashboard.ascx to your usercontrol folder.

Add the following section to your  the Dashboard.config file.

          <
          section
          >
          <
          areas
          >
          <
          area
          >settings</area></areas><tabcaption="IconPicker"><control>/usercontrols/IconPickerDashboard.ascx</control></tab></section>

Now browse to the settings section and select the icons you like.

Download the zip (Requires .net 3.5).

Or download the source:

I’m very pleased to announce that CMSImport 1.0.3 is released. Now I can hear you think CMSImport? Must be a fork of the great UmbImport package. No this isn’t the case. A few weeks back Niels (AKA @Umbraco) asked me to change the name since Umbraco HQ got a lot of requests about this package. So now the name is CMSImport and that’s not going to change anymore.

CMSImport PRO

Finally we’ve finished our commercial edition of CMSImport.  CMSImport PRO gives you all the options of the default package and the following extra features:

• Update Content
• Save Import Steps
• Schedule imports for a certain time and day

Pricing

You can buy a single domain license of CMSImport. With a single domain license you are allowed to use  CMSImport PRO for a single domain and all subdomains, such as www.example.com, accept.example.com, and local.example.com.

We also have a Enterprise license available. With an Enterprise license you are allowed to install the CMSImport PRO on unlimited production web servers, and use it for unlimited Umbraco instances within the Enterprise. 

A single domain license will be available for  99 Euro, an enterpise license for 389 euro.

When you buy a license you’ll get free updates within 90 days of purchase and  free updates for all minor releases within a major release.  For example, if you purchased a  1.0 version of CMSImport, you get free updates of all 1.x versions through our client area.

Special 1.0 offer.When you buy the 1.0 release you’ll get a free update to 2.x. This is a 1.0 offer only!

What’s more in this release?

Several issues are solved in this release(both in the free and Pro release):

• "item with the same key already added" error when using duplicate column names
• Automapping column names
• The imported document creator is not always the administrator anymore. It's using the logged in user now. When you schedule an import you can select the user that should be used as the creator of the document
• Special characters in CSV are now supported, we’ve changed the reader from ANSI text to Unicode
• Sometimes CSV replaced spaces with empty strings, this is solved now
• With member import you can now merge any member property into the template. Simply surround the member property with [#(property here)]
• Using a renamed Umbraco folder. This is possible now, although it will be better to change it after install, otherwise you have to install manually.
• We’ve removed the limitation to allow only one DataAdapter. We are thinking to build a DataAdapter pack which contains adapters to import from wordpress, Rss, Outlook, excel etc. These adapters will be available for free in the Commercial Edition and for a small fee for the Free edition.

Roadmap

In the 1.x version we will add the following functionality:

• FieldAdapters. Sounds boring but this is a big thing. When you import data now, sometimes the import will fail. For example if you import boolean as text (true/false) and want to store that in a True/False field in Umbraco it will fail. Umbraco expects that the value will be 0/1. FieldAdapters will solve this problem. If a insert of data fails. CMSImport will check if 1 o more FieldAdapters are available to convert the data in the right format. This will be added to version 1.1 which must be ready before CodeGarden 2010.
• Dictionary Import. Need I say more?
• Hierarchical imports(PRO only).

In the 2.x version we will add the following functionality:

• Hierarchical import support in Data Adapters. Not the same as the 1.x Hierarchicalimport feature ;-)
• Export/import definitions (PRO only). An easy way to deploy Import definitions

More Info

For more info, download, or purchase you’ll go to http://www.cmsimport.com/

Just a small blogpost to announce that I’ve just made a new release of the Package Action Contrib project. The following actions are added to the project:

• AddConfigurationSection
• PermissionForApp
• AddLanguageFileKey
• MoveFile
• UpdateAppTree

You can download the new release and documentation from codeplex. I’ve also updated the WIKI page on our.umbraco.org.

Many thanks to the contributors of this release, Simon Dingley, Chris Houston, Dirk de Grave and Søren Spelling Lund for submitting their code!

This forum post  triggered me to share some code that I had. A while back I was building a site which  let the customers define their own custom overviews One requirement was that users could define the sort by property . To do this you can use the property picker but it wasn’t friendly enough for my case so I ended up building a custom macro parameter type.

To start you need to create a new class library and add references to the following assemblies:

• Businesslogic
• Cms
• Interfaces
• Umbraco
• System.web

In the example below I’ve created a class that inherits from dropdownlist. This was the easiest way since I needed a dropdownlist and didn’t want to play with the control tree, Now more important is that this class inherits from the IMacroGuiRendering Interface.  This add two properties ShowCaption, to show the caption on the parameters tab and more important value which holds the selected value . 

             1: 
            using System;

             2: 
            using System.Collections.Generic;

             3: 
            using System.Text;

             4: 
            using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

             5: 
            using umbraco.interfaces;

             6:  

             7: 
            namespace MacroRenderDemo

             8: {

             9: 
            public
            class OrderBy
: DropDownList, IMacroGuiRendering

             10:  {

             11: 
            protected
            override
            void OnLoad(EventArgs
e)

             12:  {

             13: 
            base.OnLoad(e);

             14: 
            if (this.Items.Count
== 0)

             15:  {

             16: 
            this.Items.Add(new ListItem("Title", "nodeName"));

             17: 
            this.Items.Add(new ListItem("Date", "createDate"));

             18:  }

             19:  }

             20:  

             21: 
            #region IMacroGuiRendering
Members

             22:  

             23: 
            public
            bool ShowCaption

             24:  {

             25:  get { returntrue;
}

             26:  }

             27:  

             28: 
            public
            string Value

             29:  {

             30:  get

             31:  {

             32: 
            return
            this.SelectedValue;

             33:  }

             34:  set

             35:  {

             36: 
            this.SelectedValue
= value;

             37:  }

             38:  }

             39:  

             40: 
            #endregion
          

             41:  }

             42: }

When you build the project and add the binary into the bin folder of your Umbraco site you still can’t select the new type from the parameter type list. First we need to register the class  in the database. Below you’ll see the database table that holds all the Macro property types.

It is important that you add the Assemblyname  including the namespace to the macroPropertyTypeRenderAssembly column and add the name of your class to the  macroPropertyTypeRenderAssembly column .

Now we can use the parameter in our macro’s

and off course we can now use the new parameter in our template when we select the macro

Another example how flexible Umbraco is. If a requirement isn’t available out of the box, usuallyall it takes is to implement an interface and write a few lines of code.

Let’s start with wishing you all the best for 2010. 2009 was an insane year for me, I had given myself one year  being successful in business running my own Umbraco  projects instead of being a .net contractor. That turned out great, I’ve got a lot of new customers, have build a few great sites for my customers  and did a few Umbraco consulting jobs. So now it’s time to make plans for 2010.  First thing is that I’m moving to a real office instead of working from home. I’m really excited about this because I’m moving to an office building with lots of small companies, I think that’s really inspiring.

When I’ve started investigating Umbraco back in 2008 we had a small amount of companies in the Netherlands (mostly freelancers) that where building websites based on Umbraco. Nowadays I see new companies that build Umbraco websites every week, not only small shops but also really big agencies. For this year my focus will be on helping companies (worldwide) being successful implementing Umbraco sites for their clients by offering consultancy services and custom package development  instead of building sites from front to end.

As you might know I’m also working for a long time on UmbImport PRO. My plan was to release this package last year. It’s the top prio on my todolist for Q1 this year. Also another package will see the light this year, UmbLinkChecker. As the name says this will be a package that checks every link in your published site, not only in content but also hard coded links in your templates etc., I will build a free and Pro version. Since Umbraco has more than 75000 active installs I think it’s profitable to build commercial packages for Umbraco and we will see more and more commercial packages from different vendors. Hope the Umbraco store will be back up in 2010 and filled with great products.

The last year I couldn’t find enough time to blog or write WIKI’s and helping the community with their problems on the forum. I’m hoping this year that will change, since I’ve got a lot of info that I’d like to share.

Have a great 2010!

Usually I develop websites that require login functionality for one or more roles, now this is all cool for my clients but it’s a nightmare for me because I simply can’t remember all the login and passwords. To make my life and other developers life’s a little bit easier I’ve developed the Memberswitcher package. This package let's you easily login members and switch between members by simply selecting a member from a pull down list instead of enter the username and password. It’s using a lower level asp.net membership method to login the member based on the username and is fully compatible with all the asp.net Membership controls. Also the methods to fill the Membergroup and Member pulldowns are using Membership methods, so it will work with the Umbraco members but also with other membership providers.

Once installed, an extra macro is added to the list. In your template select the Memberswitcher macro, optional specify a node to redirect to once logged in and that’s it.
<umbraco:Macro RedirectToNodeAfterLogin="" Alias="MemberSwitcher" runat="server"></umbraco:Macro>

When you visit the website you’ll see the control in action. First select the Membergroup and Member.

 
When you click the Login selected member button you’ll be logged in as you can see in the following screenshot that is using the asp.net LoginStatus control.

Needless to say:
DO NOT USE THIS PACKAGE IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT!!

Download the package here

A few weeks back I had this  issue when deploying a site. I needed to modify a documenttype to add a few properties and after a few minutes an error was raised and the only thing I could see when I deleted the property and saved the documenttype again, or opened a document based on that document type was the following error message (thanks Dan for the picture). 

Did I make a backup? ehh no, so I needed to fix this. Okay let’s look at  the error message again. An Object reference not set error is thrown while deleting the property. Love that Umbraco is open source and I can have a look at the source code. Below you see the method that is responsible for deleting the property from the documenttype.

             1: 
            public
            void delete()

             2:  {

             3: 
            // flush cache
          

             4:  FlushCache();

             5:  

             6: 
            // Delete all properties of
propertytype
          

             7: 
            foreach(Content c in Content.getContentOfContentType(new ContentType(_contenttypeid)))

             8:  {

             9:  c.getProperty(this).delete();

             10:  }

             11: 
            // Delete PropertyType ..
          

             12:  SqlHelper.ExecuteNonQuery("Delete
from cmsPropertyType where id = " + this.Id);

             13: 
            this.InvalidateCache();

             14:  }

As you might have seen there is no check for null values on the 9 (c.getProperty(this).delete();). This is what caused the error while deleting the property. I assume it's sort of the same issue when opening a document. Now that I know this I can work on a solution. As I mentioned earlier, I needed to add properties to the document type. Below you find the code I’ve used to do that.

             1:  ContentType ct = ContentType.GetByAlias("_advertiser");

             2: 
            foreach (PropertyType
i in ct.PropertyTypes)

             3:  {

             4: 
            if (i.Alias == "linkToSpecial")

             5:  {

             6: 
            // Delete all properties of
propertytype
          

             7: 
            foreach (umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Content
c in umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Content.getContentOfContentType(ct))

             8:  {

             9: 
            if (c.getProperty("linkToSpecial")
== null)

             10:  {

             11:  c.addProperty(i, c.Version);

             12:  c.Save();

             13:  }

             14:  }

             15: 
            //Remove comment to delete
the property from the doctype
          

             16: 
            //i.delete();
          

             17: 
            //ct.Save();
          

             18:  }

             19:  }

As you can see, I’ve used a  few hard coded values. _advertiser is the alias of the document type and linkToSpecial is the alias of the property that I wanted to add on the Document type. If you want to delete the property  remove  lines 9-13 and remove the comment on line 16 and 17. You can use this code in a usercontrol and use that usercontrol as a dashboard control. Needless to say, this code comes without a warranty.

I’ve added the issue to codeplex, please vote for it!. Hope this post is a nice work around for the issue.

Just a little quick tip. When you install Umbraco v4.0.2.1 (don't know about other versions) without runway and you publish your site, you will see a blank screen. This is because the data/umbraco.config file contains the runway site as you can see in the sample xml below. 

          <!
          DOCTYPE
          umbraco[
&lt;!ELEMENTnodesANY><!ELEMENTnodeANY><!ATTLISTnodeidID #REQUIRED> ]><rootid="-1"><nodeid="1048"version="6f0d47e7-8cf1-43e5-a5ad-c687e0b78331"parentID="-1"level="1"writerID="0"
creatorID="0"nodeType="1045"template="1042"sortOrder="2"
createDate="2008-05-02T09:52:36"updateDate="2009-02-18T10:19:26"nodeName="Runway
Homepage"
urlName="runway-homepage"writerName="Administrator"
creatorName="Administrator"nodeTypeAlias="RunwayHomepage"path="-1,1048"><dataalias="bodyText"><![CDATA[<p>Runway
gives you a bare-bones website that introduces you to a set of 


well-defined conventions for building an umbraco website.</p><p>The
Runway website is very simple in form and provided without any design or functionality. 


By installing Runway, you&rsquo;
ll begin with a minimal site built on best practices. You&rsquo;ll
also enjoy the benefits of 


speaking the same &ldquo;language&rdquo;

as the rest of the umbraco community by using common properties and naming conventions.</p><p>Now
that you know what Runway is, it is time to get started using Runway.</p>]]></data><dataalias="siteName">Runway</data><dataalias="siteDescription"><![CDATA[Off
to a great start]]></data> ..................... </node></root>

Work around for this issue is to republish the entire site first. I've added this issue to codeplex. Please vote here.

I'm very pleased to announce that I finally released the V1 version of UmbImport. For those of you who don't know what UmbImport is:

UmbImport helps you import content or members from any datasource into Umbraco. The following datasources are supported by default:

• SQL Server
• CSV file
• XML file

You can also create your own custom DataAdapter. Check out the following links to screencasts to see the power of UmbImport. 

• Import content 
• Import members

The package is added to our.umbraco.org the new Umbraco community site , so you can download it there or use the UmbImport site. On our.umbraco.org you will find a forum also where you can drop your questions/feature requests/ bugs etc. In August I will release a manual also. If you find any issues please report it on the forum or comment on this post.

In February I wrote this blogpost which describes the process of how to add a menu item to the context menu using the Umbraco V4 Event system. In UmbImport PRO I've used this mechanism. When I was testing this I came across a bug in my code when using a pagepicker, this was showing an empty tree in the node picker.

Then I got a little flashback to the level 2 course I attended last November where Niels told us to check if there was a menu attached to the node (which is not the case for the pagepicker) before adding menu items to it, otherwise an exception is thrown what will result in an empty tree. This is what happened in my case. In the example below I've only added node.Menu!= null check and now everything is working fine.

             1: 
            using System;

             2: 
            using umbraco.BusinessLogic;

             3: 
            using umbraco.cms.presentation.Trees;

             4: 
            using umbraco.interfaces;

             5:  

             6: 
            namespace UnpublishAction

             7: {

             8: 
            /// <summary>
          

             9: 
            /// Add unpublish to the menu
item
          

             10: 
            /// </summary>
          

             11: 
            public
            class AddUnpublishActionEvent
:ApplicationBase

             12:  {

             13: 
            public AddUnpublishActionEvent()

             14:  {

             15:  BaseContentTree.BeforeNodeRender += new BaseTree.BeforeNodeRenderEventHandler(BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender);

             16:  }

             17:  

             18: 
            /// <summary>
          

             19: 
            /// Before a menu item gets
rendered we will add the unpublish action if the document is published
          

             20: 
            /// </summary>
          

             21: 
            private
            void BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender(ref XmlTree
sender, ref XmlTreeNode node, EventArgs e)

             22:  {

             23: 
            ///Only unpublish when published
          

             24: 
            if (node.Menu!= null &&
!node.NotPublished.GetValueOrDefault(true))

             25:  {

             26: 
            //Find the publish action and
add 1 for the index
          

             27: 
            int index = node.Menu.FindIndex(delegate(IAction
a) { return a.Alias == "publish";
})+1;

             28:  

             29: 
            //Insert unpublish action
          

             30:  node.Menu.Insert(index, UnpublishAction.Instance);

             31:  }

             32:  }

             33:  }

             34: }

             35:  

Download Source

Hope it didn't get you into trouble, sorry if it did.