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  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 26, 2013 @ 21:06
    stephanie
    0

    Newbie Help -- Installed v6, Business Starter, and UBlogsy

    Trying to integrate Ublogsy with the business site per the nice article here:

    http://www.carbonsoft.co.uk/articles/2012/06/integrating-ublogsy-templates.aspx

    But, it seems that everything in Ublogsy is razor now.

    I'm experienced at old asp.net webforms, haven't made the plunge into MVC/Razor, but happy to. Can anyone point me broadly in the right direction for integrating the two packages? 

    1. Does everything have to be moved to razor or moved to standard masterpages?

    2. Is it possible to integrate Ublogsy and the Business starter kit with v6 or am I barking up the wrong tree?

    3. Would it be easier to abandon the Business starter kit and just build a site around Ublogsy? A lot of the site will be news articles and blogs.

    4. Are there settings somewhere that determine whether I can use razor or standard templates?

    Appreciate any help I can get. 

    Thanks!

    Steph

  • gary 385 posts 916 karma points
    Mar 26, 2013 @ 22:52
    gary
    100

    Hi Steph

    Decisions, decisions?

    Will try to answer as best as I can, but firstly Welcome, bem vindo and hello to and from the Forum.

    1. Yes  - - - - - and no! Oh why did I start this reply??

    You can use MVC, Razor V2, for this you use layout files, just as in Mvc. Your Umbraco documentTypes use  a "template" that is a .cshtml file and is called by @RenderBody()  in a Layout file. Razor is used through out. You can use partials and all nice things, it's a bit like Jaffa Cakes.

    You can use webforms, with masterPages, with them funny aspcontent things, your umbraco docType will use a template which inherits from a master template with them funny asp content things. However amongst those asp things you can also use Razor, but it is slightly different, kinda more Wilkinson Sword than Gilette.

    2. UBlogsy Yes - the latest version is apt for V6 and MVC

    Business Starter - No, as far as I am aware has not been updated. There is an MVC Starter Kit available in Projects, so you should be able to combine those, but my suggestion would be to look at both separately before trying this.

    3. Yes - see answer to 2, probably more valid now I read Question 3.

    4. Yes. you need to modify the umbraco settings config file --- Umbraco>Config>umbracoSettings.config > line 141 

        <defaultRenderingEngine>Webforms</defaultRenderingEngine>  change to

        <defaultRenderingEngine>Mvc</defaultRenderingEngine>
    If you install the MVC Starter Site, it should do this for you, but just check this before you do anything, you cannot change later it has to be from the beginning.
    So to round up for uBlogsy it must be razor and MVC, no going back. It can be a bit frustrating, but there is generally enough help around to get you through. You also have 2 examples ie uBlogsy and MVC Starter to get you going. ie working with images etc. . . if you need to modify.
    Hope I have helped a bit, sure you will have more questions, but ask away.
    regards
    G

     

  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 26, 2013 @ 23:21
    stephanie
    0

    Thanks!!! I can see now that they are incompatible. I'm thrown by my unfamiliarity with mvc and umbraco. I'll do just what you recommend -- the mvc starter (it says there's a 6.0 compatible version) and ublogsy. I'm sure I'll be back at this forum quite a bit ; )

    Steph 

  • gary 385 posts 916 karma points
    Mar 27, 2013 @ 00:43
    gary
    1

    Hi

    Its quite a bit to get your head around quickly.

    Just dont fear it - we have all asked some very dumb questions on here, what is obvious to one person just isn't to another.

    There are some quirks, but I think it is important to have a goal, just "playing" only gets you so far.

    Here is something very basic, but it may help-

    documentType contains properties (properties are made from dataTypes eg textstring) - docType is "attached" to a template - the template calls the alias of the property. The content is created in the property "fields" and displayed via the template.

    To create content you need a docType, a property and a template. (Anything more is just showing off!!!!)

    Not trying to be patronising, but with so much going on around this very simple model, it took me a long time to settle into a "flow" with umbraco, going backward and forward between the sections, but it now seems almost natural.

    Using MVC I would generally spend more time in Visual Studio, you can get intellisense (in WebMatrix too).

    Its a learning curve, it can and at times, will be frustrating, V6 is new for everyone and we are all still learning so don't feel like you are on your own.

    regards G

     

     

  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 28, 2013 @ 18:47
    stephanie
    0

    Not patronizing at all. I appreciate all the help I can get. I'm making good progress getting comfortable with it. Even got it in VS and able to debug, which helped me right off the bat to figure out what was wrong with my first attempt at integrating ublogsy. Just fyi, the mvc starter and ublogsy integrate very well. Was finally able to pull ublogsy under the mvc starter's homepage and am customizing templates. I'm really excited that we have a great cms for .net developers.

    Thanks again!

    Steph

  • gary 385 posts 916 karma points
    Mar 28, 2013 @ 20:42
    gary
    0

    Hi Steph

    Happy to got off to a good start.

    Just out of interest, when you install uBlogsy, does it hijack the root-node, pushing everything else down?

    I have thought about introducing it into a current site, but would want it as an addition rather than build the main site around it.

    Maybe you are in a good position to answer as you had a starter rather than a whole site.

    Would appreciate your feedback.

    Regards

    G

     

  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 28, 2013 @ 22:48
    stephanie
    0

    When I installed it after first installing the mvc starter, it became a node under "Content" -- like a site root. So, there was the "Home" node from the mvc starter, and below it, at the same level (sibling) was the Blog Site Root. I moved the entire Blog Site Root node under the Home node on the mvc starter site. The only thing I had to do was to go into the mvc home page document type, click the structure tab, and add Ublogsy site root to the allowed child node types. You'd have to do that first, or it won't let you make ublogsy a child of the mvc starter home.

    I've added it to the main navigation and all works well. My next issue is getting the latest posts onto the site home page, which is outside the ublogsy node. I think I'll have to ask on another forum.

    Thanks!

    Steph 

  • gary 385 posts 916 karma points
    Mar 28, 2013 @ 23:06
    gary
    0

    Hi

    Thanks for that, was expecting a lot of messing around but it seems pretty straight-forward. Cool.

    uBlogsyWidgetListPosts.cshtml looks like it should do what you want, only had a quick look, but paste it into home and see. If it does pull the posts, then strip and style as required. It appears to call the posts via helpers, so should be page idepenent, ie no heirachy to worry about. But as I have not seen it in use, only guessing really.

    Thanks again

    G

  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 28, 2013 @ 23:12
    stephanie
    0

    I just found a widget that works -- \Views\Partials\uBlogsy\Widgets\uBlogsyWidgetListPostsForHome.cshtml  -- I can render that on the site home page, which is totally outside ublogsy, and it works, easy peasy. I'm feeling much better about finishing this project next week. Whew! 

    I tried some other widgets but they blew up outside of the blogsy root. So I guess if I need other stuff out of the root I'll use the code in that file as a start.

    Things are actually falling into place easier than I thought they would. Obviously documentation is a problem here, but the forum is helpful enough it overcomes that problem

    thanks again!

    Steph

  • gary 385 posts 916 karma points
    Mar 28, 2013 @ 23:32
    gary
    0

    Nice!!

    Finishing a project - now there is something to consider. 

    Well done on your achievements thus far, hope you can get all finished on time, willing to help if you need.

    G

  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 29, 2013 @ 00:06
    stephanie
    0

    It's a small site, which made me think it was a good candidate for learning Umbraco. Mostly I just need to skin now. THOUGH there's a new requirement to take donations online, so I'm a bit undone about that at the moment. If it were straight webforms, I could have that done in a day, but this, ugh. It *seems* there are some ecommerce packages available, and if I can find one that integrates with Paypal it may be the easiest way to go. Do you know of any? 

    Thanks!

    Steph

  • gary 385 posts 916 karma points
    Mar 29, 2013 @ 00:16
    gary
    0

    Things have changed regarding packages due to Umbraco 6, not all are updated, but realistically a form that integrates a payment method should be sufficient even if it is temporary. That will depend if you want to integrate into Umbraco back-end for data collection and newsletter / email update type things.

    I will have a look in the morning for you as it is rather late here now, let me know your requirements and I will see what I can come up with. One of the good things is that you can also tap into anything available in asp mvc, so there must be something that will work for you.

    Let me know and I'll post tomorrow

    G

  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 29, 2013 @ 01:01
    stephanie
    0

    Yes, I just looked at tea commerce and it says it's not a package, and while I may like to use it in the future, it's overkill for donations at this point. I DID find that I can add stand alone aspx pages to the site (add the name to key="umbracoReservedUrls" in the web.config on the root), which means I could be lazy and put the paypal payments advance form on that page and add a dumb ipn handler page too, outside of umbraco. Which I may do given my timeline. I've never used paypal advance but my clients wants to take credit cards on his site, not be re-directed to a paypal page. Apparently advance works by using an iframe. 

    Thanks again for all your help!!

    Steph

  • Funka! 398 posts 661 karma points
    Mar 29, 2013 @ 18:36
    Funka!
    0

    Consider also that paypal has a "button generator" if you log into their merchant tools, which when placed on a page and clicked will open a popup window on paypal's own servers where the transaction or donation can be carried out. Thus, you could do this all client-side (by inserting the copy-paste code the generator gives you into your template), and not have to worry about server-side form processing or full-blown e-com if you need to get this done easily. Good luck to you however you end up doing this!

  • Funka! 398 posts 661 karma points
    Mar 29, 2013 @ 18:38
    Funka!
    0

    Sorry, didn't see all of your earlier reply indicating you'd already considered this and that it's not what you wanted...

  • stephanie 52 posts 133 karma points
    Mar 29, 2013 @ 18:44
    stephanie
    0

    Yeah, I know how to do the other stuff that eventually redirects you to a hosted paypal page. There's some perception that it's undesirable, but if they only knew the behind the scenes shenanigans that developers can do with credit card data on sites they should LOVE going to paypal...

    Thanks!

    Steph

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