Cultiv Web Solutions

In Umbraco 4 there is something called "/base" that is mostly used to easily output some XML without having to create a document type, template and content item. This evening, Warren Buckley put me to work when he asked what I would ...

Read: Using Areas in Umbraco 5 to replace /base
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After a few weeks of tinkering, my first real package for Umbraco v5 is finally here! And… surprise, surprise, it's another incarnation of the Cultiv Contact Form package. Disclaimer: This has been tested to work with changeset 5232 (d9cbdf1252fe) and will NOT ...

Read: Creating an Umbraco 5 package
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A few months ago I posted about outputting javascript objects (Json) using an umbraco's "/base". As you might've noticed, I've been becoming a fan of using Razor in Umbraco and had a bit of an epiphany the other day: why not use Razor ...

Read: Razor vs. "/base" to output Json in Umbraco
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I've installed Umbraco a million times, so I know how it works. But sometimes people get frustrated when they're starting with Umbraco for the first time. Sorry XP users, this is written for Windows 7 (you really need ...

Read: How to install Umbraco manually
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After having used Umbraco for 2 years, I keep looking for ways to make my life even easier. As you may know, initial deployment of an Umbraco site is super easy. But then, a few weeks later, you've enhanced your site, added fields and macros ...

Read: Umbraco developer productivity with uSiteBuilder
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In my previous post I've shown the basics of using Razor. But I also wanted to find out what works better in XSLT versus in Razor. Luckily, my page needed paging. Paging is something relatively simple that requires a bit of logic, not something ...

Read: How to use Razor in Umbraco - Paging
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This article is about the upcoming version of Umbraco (4.6.2), that uses normal .cshtml files instead of the .razor file extension. Examples will also be presented in HTML 5 format, so do remember that the tags are part of HTML 5, not Razor. ...

Read: How to use Razor in Umbraco
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There's a saying in Holland that translates to (literally): "A good beginning is half the work". While that is a bit of an exaggeration, starting with a good structure to your new Umbraco site can be very important. Last Friday I was ...

Read: Tip of the week: The "ultimate" site structure setup
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So Contour for Umbraco is really, really cool, that much is for sure! But.. Styling forms is really hard! You have to hack a lot of CSS to make a moderately sexy looking form. I am not a frontend developer ...

Read: Making Contour even sexier
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So, you want to create and use javascript objects in Umbraco! Not a problem. I'll be showing you an example using "/base", Json.NET and a little bit of what I'm doing with Contour at the moment. /base Umbraco's ...

Read: Using "/base" to create and consume a JSON string
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On Codegarden '10 I entered the package competition on a whim, after installing the shiny new Umbraco 4.5 on my laptop there. I was inspired to try and see if the package that I had not completely completed would work on 4.5 and when ...

Read: PhotoMetaData package now available
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Just a few weeks ago, someone showed me woorank, a very cool website analysis tool. Woorank tells you what you can improve on your website to help search engines find and evaluate your content better. By giving you a score from 0 to ...

Read: SEO optimizing in Umbraco
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Recently, I was told that I was being a bother and that I shouldn't develop in VS2010. Sure, the current RC is not the final version, but it's a release candidate, not much will change between now and the RTM (unless something really bad happens). ...

Read: Convert between VS2008 and 2010 projects, automatically
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Today, I had a little problem after adding some properties to a document type in Umbraco. I've had this problem before and I keep forgetting how to fix it. When opening a node of this document type (in Umbraco's Content area, not ...

Read: Umbraco - Object reference not set..
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Wow, who would've thought 10 months ago when I was introduced to Umbraco that I would be nominated to be an MVP? I sure didn't expect that! I'm not asking for votes, I'm proud to be listed among giants and you ...

Read: Umbraco MVP - Don't vote for me
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Rather than making a long post with a lot of images, I decided to do something new for this post: a nice little 6 minute screencast! It's just a quick run through of how I create a new Umbraco installs on my ...

Read: Screencast: Installing Umbraco
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If you've been reading my blog, it should be clear by now that I'm a bit of a fan of the Git version control system. I've been hosting some projects on Unfuddle for a while now, but have not been very happy with ...

Read: Dropbox as a Git central repository
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I'm running a very simple web server for Cultiv and some other projects. It's a virtual server to which I have full remote desktop access. This means that I am the administrator and I decide what goes on at the server, no interference by my ...

Read: A basic backup strategy
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Recently, I've been working on a site that presents 30 to a 120 items from Umbraco's media section in the frontend of the website. In the past few weeks, I've been tweaking the site for performance and noticed that there were an ...

Read: Released: Media cache package

So now that you've started using Git, you might want to share your repository with your team using a central repository. I'll show an example of how to do that by using a free account at Unfuddle.com. Sign up for Unfuddle and ...

Read: Version control in Git - Part 3 (a central repository)

So you're ready to start using Git? Here's how to start: First of all, go and download and install the Git extensions for Windows. The featured (full) release is recommended. In Visual Studio, you'll now see a few new ...

Read: Version control in Git - Part 2 (set-up and usage)

Version control systems are evil. They hate me and are out to get me. I can't count the number of ways that I've been bitten by SourceSafe (safe.. ha! get it?), CVS, SVN and TFS. Enter Git, my saviour. For now. I have ...

Read: Version control in Git - Part 1

This site has been the target of comment spam attacks for a while now. I tried to stop the spammers by using the "Honeypot Captcha" technique as described by Phil Haack. Unfortunately, the spammers apparently already have pre-existing knowledge about the comment forms and ...

Read: Umbraco tip of the week: Adding reCAPTCHA to your forms
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This is a really short tip: Don't create a new documentType with the alias "Folder". This alias has already been used by folders in the media section. In normal day-to-day use this is not a problem, but it becomes one when you ...

Read: Umbraco tip of the week: "Folder" is not a good name for a documentType

Today, I was handed a piece of HTML which featured a login form. My assignment: create this in Umbraco, using the default Membership provider. This could be considered as an "Umbraco tip of the week", however this applies to ASP.NET webforms in ...

Read: Styling the ASP.NET login controls
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This morning, I thought I'd protect my site a little better to get some understanding of what would be required to do so. First of all, I thought I'd enable Windows authentication om my /umbraco folder. Couldn't be easier, right? Wrong. ...

Read: Umbraco tip of the week - security on your live servers
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I've just released a simple Umbraco package that will create a sitemap XML for submitting to Google and other search engines. The resulting XML is 100% compatible with the sitemap.org specifications (which should be supported by all the major search engines). ...

Read: Released: Search Engine Sitemap package

While building a website last week, I was looking for a way to make a simple contact form. Unfortunately, there was nothing available on our.umbraco.org. So I made my own package and it is now available for download. I've also added a ...

Read: Released: Contact Form Package
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So you start out building your website without knowing exactly what you are doing. You add new nodes under "Content" and it looks nice, but then you try adding navigation... The default XSLT navigation templates only work when you add a node ...

Read: Umbraco tip of the week: Redirects
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Not only can you debug your umbraco site by adding "?umbDebugShowTrace=true" to the current URL, but you can also show a list of element in the page using "?umbDebug=true". Using the URL rewriting feature, you can also disable the debug querystrings so ...

Read: Umbraco tip of the week - Debugging from within the website

Every time you start a new Umbraco project, there is one thing that you will do first: Set-up a home page. As this takes a few minutes, I've created a simple package that will help you out by installing the home page. ...

Read: Presenting: The CleanHome package

This seems like a very useful project, I'll definately be looking at it for future projects. Quote: "all of your style sheet and JavaScript files in your ASP.NET web application can be automatically minified, compressed, combined, and cached". ...

Read: Efficient JS/CSS handling in .Net

I've been looking for the best way to debug when creating user controls for Umbraco, and there were no complete instructions available online. The simplest way for me has been as follows. When I create a new Umbraco website, I ...

Read: Easily debug your custom Umbraco user controls in Visual Studio
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