In preparation for Umbraco CodeGarden 11 this coming week, ProWorks has created a Commerce for Umbraco Sample Website and Starter Kit that you can download and try out for yourself! This site is similar to the starter site the ProWorks uses to create e-commerce sites.
Restore the database backup to a SQL Server instance.
Create a SQL Server user and map it to the new database. Write down the credentials as it will be entered into the web.config.
Website:
Unzip the web files to a new directory.
Edit the web.config and modify all connection strings and umbraco connection info to point to the database and user credentials you just created.
Setup the new site in IIS. Make sure its setup to use .Net 4.0.
Setup the file permissions on disk to allow the new website to modify files on the disk.
Commerce:
Edit web.config and replace all “commerce4umbraco47.local” with the host binding you used when creating the new website in IIS.
Edit the \config\commerce\commerce4umbraco47.local.config file and replace all occurrences of “commerce4umbraco47.local” with the host binding you used when creating the new website in IIS.
Rename the “commerce4umbraco47.local.config” file in the \config\commerce directory to coincide with the host binding you used when creating the new website in IIS.
Open the site in your local browser!
If you have any questions about the sample site, please comment below!
I just stumbled across a new site that would have been very useful in getting up to speed with XSLT and XPATH not only when getting started with Umbraco, but also with Sitecore. It’s Pimp My XSLT by Chriztian Steinmeier (@greystate).
Basically, you can change the current page by clicking the tree, then see what pages would be returned by using the various axes on the bottom-right. Fun fun!
Of course, the real meat of the site is in the articles. Check it out!
Most SEO experts say that when you have two or more domains or URLs that have duplicate content, then Google will penalize you. Google and SEO experts recommend that you use 301 redirects to tell search engines that you have duplicate content and to forward to the correct domain or url.
This is clearly a very simple solution. If you want something more robust, then please check out this post from Mike Taylor: URL Rewriting and SEO. It has some great discussion and is Umbraco-centric despite the title. Thanks Stefan for the recommendation!
Recently we upgraded an Umbraco 4.0.3 website to Umbraco 4.5.2 and found that the ‘Yet Another Media Picker 4′ package isn’t supported in 4.5.2. Unfortunately, simply selecting Media Picker as the new type isn’t going to work because the YAMP4 stored its media id in the NText field in the database instead of as an Integer. Yikes! Database deep dive…here we go!
When I got into the thread, it was a bit confusing and it was actually referring to a different package so I thought I’d blog my experience with the conversion process and YAMP here.
1. Backup your database
2. Find the content page properties that have used the YAMP4 to store media and review to make sure it looks good.
SELECT pd.*
FROM cmsPropertyData as pd
inner join cmsPropertyType as pt on pt.id = pd.propertytypeid
inner join umbracoNode as n on n.id = pt.dataTypeId
WHERE n.uniqueID = '9C6A12A7-C7E3-4515-B0E3-5D63B402063E'
3. Copy and cast the dataNtext field to dataInt for those records. Thanks to Nik for the process on this one.
(BTW, you backed up your database, right?)
UPDATE cmsPropertyData
SET dataInt=CAST(CONVERT(varchar(20),dataNtext) AS INT)
FROM cmsPropertyData as pd
inner join cmsPropertyType as pt on pt.id = pd.propertytypeid
inner join umbracoNode as n on n.id = pt.dataTypeId
WHERE n.uniqueID = '9C6A12A7-C7E3-4515-B0E3-5D63B402063E'
4. Clear the dataNtext field
UPDATE cmsPropertyData
SET dataNtext = null
FROM cmsPropertyData as pd
inner join cmsPropertyType as pt on pt.id = pd.propertytypeid
inner join umbracoNode as n on n.id = pt.dataTypeId
WHERE n.uniqueID = '9C6A12A7-C7E3-4515-B0E3-5D63B402063E'
5. Change the ‘Yet Another Media Picker’ Data Type in the Developer section to use the ‘Media Picker’ as its rendering control.
6. Test your Content pages with images on them and verify everything is working.
This is a series of notes and what I could cobble together from various Umbraco upgrade articles and sources. I also found a few issues that weren’t documented by anyone that gave me some grief. I’ll likely add any 4.7 specific items as well when I get a chance to test this process with that version.
I’ve found that you may want to upgrade from 4.0.x to 4.5.2 then to 4.7 because the upgrade install script didn’t seem to run in the 4.6.1 upgrade I performed. Basically, the database wasn’t updated properly when I went straight to 4.6.1.
I have found it better to copy using beyond compare so my packages don’t disappear and any UI.xml or locale changes don’t get lost. But if you prefer, copy away!
The Custom Player allows you to create a customized player that you can add to your website or blog. YouTube provides a nice easy to use one-page wizard to show one of your playlists, favorites, or your own videos.
Here is an example of a custom player that is set to play a specific playlist. As videos are added to this playlist they will automically be added to this custom player. Cool, huh?
Tip: Login to your YouTube account and create a playlist. You can add videos, your and others, to your playlist. Custom players can be set to display from a set playlist. The nice thing is that as you add new videos to your playlist, the plugin will be automatically updated no matter where its published at.
Use Facebook as your Page – Log in as “ProWorks” and post comments as your fan page and and even post on other people’s posts as your fan page. Basically, you can switch between your personal profile and a fan page view. Try it now! (Need Help? Try this how-to: New Facebook Fan Page Feature: How To Post As Both Your Page and Yourself)
Email notifications – You can now get an email every time someone comments or posts to your wall. Finally!
Things I don’t like so much:
New “most interesting” sorting of the wall posts – Each person who visits your page and views the wall with the “Everyone” sort will see a different post order. The order is based on some sort of “most interesting” score that they receive. Note the date order below.
When logged in as me (Jason):
When logged in as ProWorks (the Fan Page):
When Loyan views the page:
So that’s pretty crazy.
The good news is that you can preview the changes before making the switch to make sure your tabs and everything looks good. If it doesn’t look good you have until March 11th to fix it because that’s the date everyone will be switched over no matter what.
Other Resources:
Take a look at these links for more information about the new Facebook Fan Page and how it may affect you.
With the release of the new Facebook Fan Page look and feel one key new feature was added:
You can now decide whether you want to post on your Facebook Fan Page as yourself (your personal profile).
The old fan page forced you to post as your fan page persona if you were an admin of a fan page. However, with this change you can switch between posting as yourself and posting as your fan page.
How to set it up:
1. Edit Your Page
2. Select the “Your Settings” menu item on the left menu and un-check the “Posting Preferences” checkbox.
That’s it. Now you will post as your personal profile on your fan page!
If you want to post as your fan page in the future, then simply use the new “Use Facebook as Fan Page” feature to toggle between your fan page and your personal profile.
3. When logged in as yourself, click the “Use Facebook as…” link on the right side:
Now you will be able to comment, like, and post under the “Fan Page” profile. If you go to your home page (news feed) you will see information for pages that your page likes as well as fans instead of your personal feed. Pretty cool.
4. You can switch back easily by simply clicking the same link (it will list your name):
In preparation for Umbraco CodeGarden 11 this coming week, ProWorks has created a Commerce for Umbraco Sample Website and Starter Kit that you can download and try out for yourself! This site is similar to the starter site the ProWorks uses to create e-commerce sites.
