I want to be able to create a top-level Team site. On that site, I want to add sub-sites and below those sites, 1..n sub-sites to hold project level information. On the bottom level sites, it would be very helpful to be able to store custom attributes about each project (Business Areas, Categories, Start/End Dates, etc.). The owners of each bottom level site could put data in these attributes by either custom web parts or is there some SharePoint mechanism I'm not aware of?
From the 2nd level sites, I would create custom web parts to query the information in the bottom level sites and group data based on the custom information. The top level site again would query the sites below it for their custom information.
How do I do this? Can custom attributes be tagged on a site? Or just build custom web parts and store the data in a separate SQL DB and tie the site ID to the DB records?
I've looked at Content Types and Site Columns and I don't think they fit what I'm trying to do.
You can use the SPWeb.Properties property bag to store custom metadata assocatied with a single web. Here is a decent article to get you started reading/writing to it.
Related
I am looking for an advice. I have an ASP website, where pages are generated from database. I have URL, title, content, metatags and other page specific fields in DB tables.
I would like to reuse this databse in Umbraco and be able to generate dynamic pages from these data. I will want to use Razor in views. My dynamic pages will need to be integrated with CMS sitemap.
I will also need a backend to manage these data (added in Umbraco backend if possible).
Is that possible? What would be the high level steps?
Thanks!
UPDATE:
The data have multiple relationships and business logic needs to be applied before presenting them to the users. What I am looking for is a CMS that will allow me to define routes and inject search, index and detail partials (use global layout, set page title and metatags). It can be a more or less hacky solution as long as CMS updates don't break it.
Is Umbraco flexible enough to do such thing?
Many people who look at Umbraco for the first time try to work out how they can fit an existing project into umbraco and reuse code / databases.
The truth is that using Umbraco involves a shift in how you think about data. Essentially, in most cases, Umbraco is your database. Especially if all your database is doing is providing the data that you describe ie the contents of the standard pages of your website.
Your approach should be to rebuild the data structure of your site using Umbraco document types. Umbraco document types provide the data to your page templates (MVC Views).
You should really download Umbraco and take out a subscription to Umbraco TV to shortcut a rather steep, but very worthwhile learning curve.
Wing
I m new to Umbraco, I have watched Umbraco.tv videos and want to use Umbraco in a project as a cms for managing and editing content. I am highly thankful for your guidance, time and for your thoughts on 3 questions:
How a Umbraco based data driven proejct should be architecutured ? For custom database tables do you use a separate database or same Umbraco database ?
How you work with custom data (non content) ? Do you make everything a document type, even if it is data which you are not going to create content of, for example a simple form submitted data ?
For DAL what technology or ORM you use ? Does Umbraco provide any API for saving simple data which is not a content or document type ?
Thank you so much once again.
1 The architecture question is important but it also has be considered against how complex the project needs to be.
I would usually recommend a separate database for non-Umbraco data since this keeps everything nicely independent and manageable especially as projects grow. It also means that CMS-specific data (i.e. content) can be kept separately from none-CMS data, e.g. user registrations.
However, if the project is small and isn't likely to grow, keep it simple. Use the same database and piggy back off Umbraco's implementation of the Petapoco ORM. For example:
ApplicationContext.DatabaseContext.Database.Save(new Thing());
Or
var item = ApplicationContext.DatabaseContext.Database.Single(thingId);
2 For custom data, again it's a matter of need, maintainability and simplicity. Only use document types for what needs to be and can be stored in the CMS. My personal rule is that if it isn't content or organises content then it doesn't belong in the CMS. For example news and news categories obviously belong in the CMS. However, the comments made on an article have no reason to in the CMS.
3 With regards to DAL, as I have said, Umbraco has an implementation of Petapoco that can be used out of the box. If the project is basic enough, just use that. There is little point in using anything else unless you need some separation and/or some additional grunt in which case I would recommend using NHibernate or EF.
In addition to the points above,
Use NuGet;
Use the MVC mode of Umbraco, as it will provide you with substantially more flexibility. Check out the Hybrid Framework as it provides a very good start point for a robust and flexible project architecture;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PtzyrEFG7I.
You always need a doctype in Umbraco, even if a page doesn't offer any WYSIWYG type editability
I would recommend using a Service Oriented Architecture, and the .dlls you drop into Umbraco can call the service. You can then deploy this service and have full control over how you do data access. Choose whatever method you want. Most modern sites use an ORM and it doesn't matter which, although nHIbernate and Entity Framework are the favourites. Don't be frightened to mix and match a more direct form of data access though as it can give you more control, especially in situations where performance optimisation of large queries is important.
If you're not familiar with adding custom .NET functionality into Umbraco, Trying out adding .NET user controls into Umbraco will give you a good start, and to help you to understand how you can utilise your own .dlls in Umbraco:
http://umbraco.com/help-and-support/video-tutorials/introduction-to-umbraco/developer-introduction/using-net-user-controls.aspx
Anything custom I put in the same database as my Umbraco installation, but everything in custom tables. I don't touch the Umbraco tabes, I would not want to affect my future version updates.
Form submitted data I store in my own custom tables, I avoid creating content nodes with those, it's often tricky and doesn't give me the flexebility I often need. What I do instead is create an "Admin" document type, that is behind login (hard coded access, but easy to hook up to Umbraco users / members if wanted) and use my own custom UI to display my stored custom data.
I use PetaPoto (http://www.toptensoftware.com/petapoco/), it's a micro ORM that is added through a single file (installation is so easy then), using the same db connection string. Then I create custom models as I need and with with parts of the MVC. I normally stay away from route hijacking and rather use Surface Controllers and ajax calls for almost everything.
Hope this helps!
You can use the database containing the Umbraco tables for tables not used in Umbraco. If there are no hosting problems for you using multiple databases then you can simply link to a second database in the web.config - this would be safer than using the default Umbraco database as Umbraco packages often add database tables & there could be naming conflicts.
Viewing non-Umbraco data (eg from a database) is best done by adding macros that access the data using standard .Net patterns (eg razor scripts, .Net User Controls) & then in Umbraco you add in a reference to the macro in the template (view). You can use multiple templates (views) for any document type; so if you have a document type called 'forms' that contains no data you can use the 'allowed templates' checkboxes to say which view(s) are valid for this document type. When you add a content item you must specify a doc type at the start, but the template (view) can be changed at any time.
If you are storing data any .Net ORM will work with Umbraco (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_object-relational_mapping_software#.NET) I've used Linq to Sql, Subsonic & Dapper before now - but there are lots of options.
Take a look at my example using umbraco within Onion Architecture
https://github.com/afroukh/OnionCMS
I’m currently building an ASP.NET MVC 5 EF6 blogging web application.
I have two databases and contexts :
-a database for the actual data of my application (blog posts, blog categories, tags, etc) .
-a database for authentification and membership purpose (users and roles).
I am able to authorize a given user the right to add/edit/delete blog posts, using the authorize attribute in the BlogPostcontroller :
[Authorize(Roles=”Administrator,Author”)]
and it works pretty well..
MY GOAL : let’s imagine I want to grant an user the right to add/edit/delete a subset of all the blog post or blog categories (let’s say only to the “Cooking” and “travel” blog categories).
I started to think about creating a navigation property between the user and the blog category entities, but apparently foreign keys between two separate databases are not supported by the entity framework.
Do you guys have an idea of a walk-around for this problem?
Your help will be much appreciated.
This is what you need.
http://typecastexception.com/post/2014/02/19/ASPNET-MVC-5-Identity-Implementing-Group-Based-Permissions-Management-Part-I.aspx
Basically, the privileges is what you will need to configure and associate user roles.
If you want to keep your authorization data separate from your business data, i.e. in 2 separate databases where one contains user information and permissions and the other contains your blog data, then what you actually want to achieve is externalized authorization. That's actually a great intent. After all, do you keep authentication information with your application data? Of course you don't.
Different frameworks give you externalized authorization capabilities. For instance, in .NET, you have claims-based authorization.
You can also take a generic approach and use XACML, the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language. XACML uses attributes (it's an attribute-based access control model as opposed to simply role-based) and combines them into policies & rules to define what can happen. For instance, with XACML, you can write the following rule: A user can edit blog posts he/she owns.
In XACML, you have the notion of an authorization engine called the Policy Decision Point (PDP). That PDP links together all the information it needs to make decisions. In your case, it will use the 2 separate databases and create the relationships on them.
Now, if your use case is simple, using XACML might prove too much. In that case, just use claims-based authorization.
I am relatively new to umbraco and have just got the site build but the clients request for a microsite with a completely new look and feel.
So how do I set up a new microsite in umbraco.
Please Help.
Thanks a ton
To give pages within Umbraco a completely different look and feel from the others, there's a few different ways you can go. Obviously there's more than one way to solve a problem, but I'll just mention a few that I can think of and explain how they'd work.
Create a new master page template that has your new design, then create child templates for each document type, to include a home page, a standard text page and anything else you may need. Assign these templates to the document types that will use them.
Pros: Easiest approach. Allows most flexibility in design.
Cons: The user can choose the wrong template or forget to set the right template.
Create separate templates as in option 1, but also create separate document types. Assign the templates only to the new document types. Each document type can extend your existing ones to inherit the same properties or you can create entirely new ones.
Pros: Ensures that the uses uses the correct template all the time. Allows most flexibility in design. Allows site specific customization - can add or remove properties.
Cons: The number of document types doubles and therefore the amount that appears for the user to select. Of course the number that they see can be limited by what templates they are allowed to create.
Use existing templates, but include a check that determines which site is being visited, depending on the path or subdomain, etc., then dynamically load different style sheets.
Pros: You do not need to create separate templates or document types for the microsite.
Cons: Your master template's markup will have to be generic enough to compensate for both designs, therefore it isn't as flexible.
Once you choose an option for how you will structure and style the pages of the microsite (and remember that my list is not conclusive), you will need to determine where to setup the node structure. The best option here, if the microsite will be subdomain or if it has its own domain, would be to add it as a separate home node first and then add all of its own pages below it. Then you can actually setup a different host reference for the site within Umbraco. There have been a few answers on SO that mention how to do that:
Assigning hostnames in umbraco
Publishing multiple sites on a single instance of umbraco
Here are some basic steps to allow Umbraco to use other domain names:
Setup your web server to accept host headers for the specific domain/subdomain. In IIS 7.5, this can be done by adding bindings for the domain/subdomain.
The new node needs to be a direct child of the Content node.
Right-click the node and choose "Manage hostnames". Then add the domain/subdomain URL.
Hope that helps! Feel free to ask more questions.
I have a large custom ecommerce engine that is currently using a SQL Server database (stored procedures handling most data tasks), a WCF middle-tier (handling business logic), and an MVC front-end site (that has no knowledge of any database). Our need for a content management system is increasing rapidly and I'm trying to figure out the best way to implement one, considering our very taxed development resources.
My first thought it to simply have two websites, an Orchard CMS site and our e-commerce site. I could setup some type of request routing that would send URLs for catalog browsing and cart functions to the ecommerce site, while other URLs get handled by the Orchard site. I would have to have a couple of modules (or widgets) built within the Orchard site that would display things like the cart summary that appears in the heading of each page. This seems like the easiest method of handling this, even if it is short-term.
My other thought is to have the site completely built using Orchard. This would require porting our ecommerce logic into modules. This seems like it would be one hell of a task. All of our work is done via web services, so if a user goes to a specific category URL, the site would call a web service and pass some variables (customer ID, category, etc). The web service would return the categories, products and prices for that customer - which would then be displayed on the screen.
Lastly, an even more complex version of the last option would be to actually store the products in Orchard, so that editable fields (description, meta tags, etc) would be managed through the Orchard CMS. This would require major changes to (or absorption of) our WCF middle-tier. This seems like it would be almost impossible, but may allow better handling of more media down the road (photos, videos, MSDS sheets, product literature, etc).
What are your thoughts so far, between these three models.
You can create a simple Orchard module that is a lot like an area in an MVC project. It uses controllers and views and is easy to do if you're familiar with MVC. You don't need to integrate it very heavily with Orchard if you don't want too. Your module's content would be in a folder and Orchard would manage the rest of the site's content.
To make the pages in your module use the orchard theme from the site you just need to add the [Themed] filter to your controller.
The hello world example in the Orchard Documentation shows you how to do this.
This would be the easiest option, but there would be benefits if you decided to store the products as Orchard content items. It would be more difficult to get there, but you'd be able to take advantage of other Orchard modules and add content parts like tags, comments and reviews to your products.