Sarasota Web Design and Sarasota Web Development

Blog
Website Development Specializing in Orchard CMS

  • David Hayden - Orchard Web Developer
  • Orchard CMS Developer
  • Orchard Module and Theme Developer
22
Feb
ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API Routes and ApiController

ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API Routes and ApiController

This is the 3rd post in a series of ASP.NET MVC 4 Tutorials. The first two posts were on ASP.NET MVC 4 Bundling and Minification and ASP.NET MVC 4 Entity Framework and Data Migrations. In this tutorial I want to briefly look at the new Web API integration in ASP.NET MVC 4. Web API introduces a new route for API calls as well as an ApiController that responds to Get, Post, Put, and Delete requests from REST Clients. Web API introduces formatters that can do content negotiation via XML, JSON, etc. as well as provides better customization of the response using HttpResponseMessage.

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Tags: asp.net mvc 4 tutorials
Author: David Hayden

21
Feb
ASP.NET MVC 4 Bundling and Minification

ASP.NET MVC 4 Bundling and Minification

ASP.NET MVC 4 provides bundling and minification of CSS and JavaScript, which reduces the number of HTTP Requests and payload size resulting in faster and better performing ASP.NET MVC Websites. There are a number of ways you can reduce and combine the size of CSS and JavaScript using the new feature, and in this ASP.NET MVC 4 Tutorial I want to show how you can create custom bundles where you specify the name and order of CSS and JavaScript Files. In this case, I specify the CSS and JavaScript that is part of Twitter Bootstrap. Don't forget to also check out my previous ASP.NET MVC 4 Post - ASP.NET MVC 4 and Entity Framework Database Migrations.

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Tags: asp.net mvc 4 tutorials
Author: David Hayden

21
Feb
ASP.NET MVC 4 and Entity Framework Database Migrations

ASP.NET MVC 4 and Entity Framework Database Migrations

ASP.NET MVC 4 was released in beta by the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Developer Team and it comes with a number of really cool features: Bundling and Minification Support of CSS and JavaScript, Database Migrations using Entity Framework 4.3, Web APIs, Mobile Web with support for jQuery Mobile, Real Time Communication via SignalR, and Asynchronous Support. The Database Migrations using Entity Framework Code-First is really cool and is very much like Rails where you can change your code and then via Package Manager add migrations and update your database as your code evolves. Because the EF Migration Files and Configuration get added to your Visual Studio Solution, all the database migration changes get added to source code.

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Tags: asp.net mvc 4 tutorials
Author: David Hayden

14
Feb
Head First Mobile Web Book Review

Head First Mobile Web Book Review

Once again I want to thank O'Reilly for their wonderful Blogger Review Program that allows me to read some really good books in exchange for book reviews. I've started to enjoy the Head First Series of books after recently reading Head First jQuery and Head First HTML5 Programming. Head First Mobile Web is another great title in this series of development books that demysitfies mobile web development by introducing the mobile web developer to a plethora of technologies and solutions for developing mobile websites, including: responsive web design using HTML5 and CSS3 media queries; progressive, mobile-first responsive web design; mobile device detection; jQuery Mobile; and PhoneGap Build.

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Tags: css3 html5 mobile web development
Author: David Hayden

28
Jan
Installing Umbraco 5 for Orchard Web Developers

Installing Umbraco 5 for Orchard Web Developers

I have been developing Orchard Websites, Themes, and Modules full-time ever since Orchard was released as 1.0. During that time I have developed a fondness for ASP.NET MVC Content Management Systems and wanted to try my luck with Umbraco 5, which is soon to be released and also uses ASP.NET MVC and Razor as the underlying technologies. Over the past month I have been spending my evenings learning how to develop Umbraco 5 Websites and Packages and thought I would slowly start to post about Umbraco 5 just as much as I post about Orchard CMS. Albeit there are lots of great resources on Umbraco Web Development, but I hope my posts will provide a little insight on how it compares to Orchard, too. As I continue to write Umbraco 5 Tutorials I will take care in showing how it compares to Orchard and the strengths and weaknesses of both.

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Tags: umbraco 5 tutorials
Author: David Hayden

21
Jan
Simple.Data for Microsoft .NET Data Access Layer

Simple.Data for Microsoft .NET Data Access Layer

I created an internal ASP.NET MVC 3 web application for a client which gave me an opportunity to play with a few technologies outside of my normal toolbox. One of those tools was Simple.Data, which is a simple data access solution good for simple, table-centric, forms-over-data .NET web applications. Normally I would use something like my own ActiveRecord Framework, Castle ActiveRecord, LINQ-To-SQL, or the Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block for such a trivial data access layer, but I enjoy learning new tools and took the opportunity to play with Simple.Data. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the simplicity of Simple.Data when you have a quick forms-over-data ASP.NET MVC Web Application that doesn't require the sophistication of something like NHibernate, LLBLGenPro, Entity Framework, LINQ-To-SQL or other O/R Mapper.

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Tags: data access
Author: David Hayden

04
Jan
Modifying Web.config to Serve Site.xml and Static Files with Orchard CMS

Modifying Web.config to Serve Site.xml and Static Files with Orchard CMS

I received an email from an Orchard Web Developer wanting to know how to serve his site.xml file from his Orchard CMS Website. If you add a site.xml file or other static file to the root of your Orchard CMS Website you will get an HTTP 404 Not Found Error. This isn't so much an Orchard CMS question as it is an ASP.NET and Web.config question, because the answer lies in the web.config file for Orchard which is currently configured to respond to all static file requests at the root with a 404 Error if there is no route configured in ASP.NET MVC to handle the request.

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Tags: orchard tutorials
Author: David Hayden

25
Dec
Twitter Bootstrap Orchard Theme

Twitter Bootstrap Orchard Theme

Twitter came out with a Bootstrap toolkit "designed to kickstart development of webapps and sites. It includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more." The Bootstrap CSS and JavaScript is indeed nice, so much nicer than the default Orchard Theme - Theme Machine. Now that I have a little free time over the holidays, I thought I would create a custom Orchard Theme based on Bootstrap from Twitter. It's still not quite finished, but Bootstrap is definitely working with Orchard CMS and I am excited to start offering it as a theme for my clients.

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Tags: orchard themes
Author: David Hayden

23
Dec
Orchard CMS Related Blog Posts Custom Module

Orchard CMS Related Blog Posts Custom Module

One of the most popular features included with Orchard CMS is the blogging engine. I personally love to blog in order to share my knowledge and experiences with my fellow .NET Developers whenever possible. During the past week while on vacation I received a request from one of my closest clients that they needed a Related Blog Posts Custom Orchard Module. This is a custom module I have wanted to create for myself for quite a long time, so I came out of holiday hiding for a couple days to create a quick custom module for Orchard that allows a blogger to assign related blog posts to a blog post in Orchard CMS.

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Tags: orchard modules
Author: David Hayden

23
Dec
Profile Performance of Orchard Websites Using MVC Mini Profiler

Profile Performance of Orchard Websites Using MVC Mini Profiler

I mentioned in a previous Orchard Blog Post the importance of looking at Orchard Websites as more than just a collection of modules, Custom Orchard Themes - Converting Existing Web Design and HTML Templates. An Orchard Web Developer has to look at the Orchard Website as a whole and optimize it, particularly for performance. When playing with the new Projector Module in Orchard CMS, I really started to look at its performance. Sure the Projector Module makes displaying information on the website easy by allowing one to query the content information in your orchard website using various filters, sort criteria, and layouts, but that comes with a price in performance as it has to work in a generic manner to support all kinds of scenarios. I wondered what that price looked like and used the MVC Mini Profiler for ASP.NET MVC to view the various database queries hitting the Orchard Database.

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Tags: orchard performance
Author: David Hayden