My First Orchard CMS Website

http://www.orientart.com.au is my first Orchard website. It is built on Orchard 1.7.2.
I have inherited TheThemeMachine as the theme. I have restyled the menu bar so it
is not so techy. I have created a slider module (based on bxslider) for showing the
featured products. I use taxonomies for product category, Amba.ImagePowerTools
for product picture. I do not use Map module for showing Google Map, instead I use
HTML widget.

NHibernate Journey (1) – “show_sql”

I am following Your first NHibernate based application to start my NHibernate journey.

In the article, it uses NUnit for test, but I have to use MSTest as I am using VS Express 2013 in which NUnit GUI cannot be installed.

I have set “show_sql” to true in the hibernate.cfg.xml when first time test Add method of product repository and there was not

SQL statement outputted. Until I was running “session.Get<Product>” then there was SELECT statement appearing in the output of the

test. According to the article, there suppose to be INSERT statement appearing in the output as well when adding new product to the

database. What is wrong?

Kentico: Running API Examples from within CMS Desk

If API Examples is installed, the examples can be run from Support –> API examples.

Many of the examples have been hard coded with culture “en-us”, they will be most likely failed if the site is using a culture different from “en-us”.

The example code is like below, it fails on the red line:

#region "API examples - Creating documents"

   /// <summary>
   /// Creates the initial document strucutre used for the example. Called when the "Create document structure" button is pressed.
   /// </summary>
   private bool CreateDocumentStructure()
   {
       // Add a new culture to the current site
       CultureInfo culture = CultureInfoProvider.GetCultureInfo("de-de");
       CultureSiteInfoProvider.AddCultureToSite(culture.CultureID, CMSContext.CurrentSiteID);

       // Create new instance of the Tree provider
       TreeProvider tree = new TreeProvider(CMSContext.CurrentUser);

       // Get parent node
      TreeNode parentNode = tree.SelectSingleNode(CMSContext.CurrentSiteName, "/", "en-us");

       if (parentNode != null)
       {
           // Create the API Example folder
           TreeNode newNode = TreeNode.New("CMS.Folder", tree);

           newNode.DocumentName = "API Example";
           newNode.DocumentCulture = "en-us";

           newNode.Insert(parentNode);

           parentNode = newNode;

           // Create the Source folder - the document to be moved will be stored here
           newNode = TreeNode.New("CMS.Folder", tree);

           newNode.DocumentName = "Source";
           newNode.DocumentCulture = "en-us";

           newNode.Insert(parentNode);

           // Create the Target folder - a document will be moved here
           newNode = TreeNode.New("CMS.Folder", tree);

           newNode.DocumentName = "Target";
           newNode.DocumentCulture = "en-us";

           newNode.Insert(parentNode);

           return true;
       }

       return false;
   }

You can modify the culture to your site’s culture and the example should be able to run on your site.

Tips for upgrading Kentico CMS site from v6 to v7

Recently I upgraded one web site written in Kentico CMS v6 to v7 and would like to share my experience.

Preparation

Due to the some API changes in v7, you might need to change your code a lot if your web site is mainly using ASPX template.
To track your changes, it is better if the changes can be recorded down and can be revert any time if it is needed. This is where
source control comes in place. If you have not apply source control to your web site yet, this is the good opportunity to start
using source control.

Here are the suggestions for using SVN as the source control for this upgrading purpose:

1. create a new repository
2. create trunk and branches in the repository
3. check out the trunk to a local folder
4. copy all files and folders from your web site folder into trunk folder
5. add all files and folders and commit to SVN repository
6. create a branch into branch folder based on the trunk

The idea behind this is to record all changes to the branch during the upgrading. Depends on the complexity of the web site,
the changes you will make to the source code might take few days/weeks, so that I do not recommend that upgrade the
production directly, instead, you should make a copy to your development machine and upgrade this copy first. All the changes
made to the local instance will be committed into the new created branch. When the upgrade is done and has been test,
production then can be upgraded. The upgrade to the production will be as simple as following steps:

1. copy files from the production server into trunk.
2. commit all the modifications if there is any.
3. merge changes from the branch
4. copy file back to production from the trunk

Upgrade

The database upgrade script might contains changes to the views. But I have found that in Micorsoft SQL 2008 R2, after execution
of the upgrade script, the views might not be synchronized properly. In my case the error was some data conversion failures.
The root cause seemed to be the changes on base views had not propagated properly to other views which were base on the base
views.

If you need to perform the upgrade manually, it requires to delete a lot files and folders before updating files to new version’s.
The instruction has listed the files and folders, but it is very fussy if you go through the list and delete file/folder one by one.
A easier way is to copy the content of the list to a text file, then add “del “ to the beginning of the full name of the file and add
”del /s/q “ to the beginning of the full name of the path, save the text file as a .BAT file, this batch file can delete files and folders
in one go and save you a lot of time.

There is an undocumented change you need to take care if your page uses CMSForm for editing a document in the same way as
the Form tab in the CMS Desk content page, you need to assign DocumentManager.LocalMessagesPlaceHolder to the the CMSForm
element’s MessagesPlaceHolderto property, otherwise, there will be an exception when the form is submitted.

My Weapons (Tool set)

1. 7-Zip.
2. Adobe Reader
3. EditPad and Notepad++: Advanced text editor.
4. Fiddler Web Debugger: http/https traffic inspector.
5. firstobject XML Editor: Formatting XML and browsing nodes in a tree view.
6. Google Chrome: HTML/Javascript/CSS inspector/debugger.
7. IDE:
1. Delphi:
   components:
1. CnPack IDE Wizards
2. madshi’s madCollection
2. Microsoft Visual Studio
8. Kentico CMS.
9. Link Shell Extension: Managing file’s hard link.
10. Microsoft Network Monitor.
11. Nullsoft Install System
12. Paint.Net: Graphic tool.
13. Pdf995.
14. soapUI.
15. Synergy: one set of mouse and keyboard for multiple PC.
16. TeamViewer
17. VisualSVN Server, TortoiseSVN and WinMerge
18. WinDirStat: shows disk usage in colour blocks
19. Windows Live Writer: Writing blogs.
    Plugins:
1. Live Writer Code Prettify Plugin

An easy to use tool for query Oracle database

LINQPad can be used for query Oracle database as well. All you need to do is download IQ Driver for Oracle.
The steps are:
1. Click “Add connection” in the connection tree.
2. Click “View more drivers …” in the “Choose Data Context” dialog
3. Click “Download & Enable Driver” under the “IQ Driver – for MySQL, SQLite, Oracle” section.

In my case, parameters in Advanced tab of IQ Connection need to be populated to be able to connect to Oracle database directly.

A way to validate your email address

http://verify-email.org/index.php?option=com_emailverifier&check=bochen.lin@global-health.com&view=emailverifier&layout=verify&format=raw&2f8b80496c78ca0e01ff56a06da6bc8f=1

×

bochen.lin@global-health.com - Result: Ok

MX record about global-health.com exists.
Connection succeeded to mx.global-health.com SMTP.
220 mailhub.ws.com.au ESMTP

> HELO verify-email.org 
250 mailhub.ws.com.au

> MAIL FROM: <check@verify-email.org>
=250 ok

> RCPT TO: <bochen.lin@global-health.com>
=250 ok