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from the Evil Empire Building my new blog with Orchard – Part 1
Building my new blog with Orchard – Part
1
Saturday, August 28, 2010
ASP.NET (/bleroy/Tags/ASP.NET) CodePlex (/bleroy/Tags/CodePlex) Orchard (/bleroy/Tags/Orchard)
Several people have asked me if I would move my blog to
Orchard (http://orchardproject.net/). There are actually several
challenges with this that have nothing to do with Orchard itself,
but suffice it to say that right now I’m not really considering it.
On the other hand, for a long time I’ve been wanting to create a
second, more personal blog about movies, books, video games
and opinions to clearly separate the software stuff from the rest.
I’ve been posting several times on science
(http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/tags/Science/default.aspx), games
(http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/tags/Gaming/default.aspx) and even on politics
(http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2008/09/10/quotrealityhasawellknownliberalbiasquot.aspx)
here but it always felt a little wrong and I felt obligated to tone it down seeing that this blog has a clear
association with my employer, Microsoft.
Anyway, the release of Orchard 0.5 (http://orchard.codeplex.com/releases/view/45076) looks like the
perfect opportunity to create that new blog. I have big plans beyond just blogging for this site and the
flexibility of the Orchard platform will be perfect for this.
I will document the whole process here as it unfolds.
(http://orchard.codeplex.com/releases/view/45076)I’m starting with a standard 0.5.144 zip release
(http://orchard.codeplex.com/releases/view/45076) as downloaded from CodePlex
(http://orchard.codeplex.com/releases/view/45076). As I wanted to be able to do local module
development that I would later deploy to my hosted account, I started by deploying into a local IIS 7
directory configured to run in the default ASP.NET 4.0 application pool. This way, I can point VS or
WebMatrix (http://orchardproject.net/docs/WorkingwithOrchardinWebMatrix.ashx) to my local
directory and hack new modules.
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My next step was to deploy the files to my hoster after convincing him to switch my site to the 4.0 app
pool. I used WebMatrix to do the ftp transfer as I find the publication UI to be quite nice but I could have
used any ftp client (I also use FileZilla). I deployed everything except for the contents of the App_data
folder.
One thing I had to do was to setup the machine key web.config entry (always a good thing to do) to
work around a MAC validation bug that has since been fixed in our dev branch.
While I was in config, I deleted the following lines, which declare the dynamic compilation provider:
<buildProviders>
<add extension=".csproj"
type="Orchard.Environment.Extensions.Compilers.
CSharpExtensionBuildProviderShim" />
</buildProviders>
Dynamic compilation (http://orchardproject.net/docs/Orchardmoduleloaderanddynamic
compilation.ashx) is a fantastic feature for local development as it enables you to build and modify
modules without explicitly compiling from Visual Studio and even without Visual Studio altogether. You
can just save your files as you go and it will just get picked up and compiled on the fly without your
having to do anything. It is what makes Orchard module development possible using only free tools
(http://orchardproject.net/docs/Creatingamodulewithasimpletexteditor.ashx).
But on a production server, I would consider it a liability. First, YAGNI
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAGNI). Second, there is about a million different ways it can go wrong (trust
me on that).
This being done, it was time to hit the site for the first time, which resulted in the Orchard setup screen
showing up. I was able in less than a minute to specify my site name, the login I wanted to use for the
superuser and my password.
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I chose to use the default SqlCE database because database backups and exports at my hoster are
overly complex, and SqlCE will enable me to download a snapshot of the site whenever I want to back it
up, database included. It also makes it trivial for me to get my production data back down to my local
development version of the site.
I immediately changed the theme (can’t stand the current Contoso default) to use the clean white classic
theme. I will modify it heavily after the next milestone when the theme engine is done, but this will do
nicely in the meantime.
After that was done, I created a blog, added it to the menu and set it as the site’s home page.
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Now that I had the blog as my new home page, I didn’t need the old home page, so I went ahead and
deleted it from the “manage contents” screen.
Finally, I created an about page and wrote the contents I wanted there. I added the page to the site’s
menu and disabled comments.
And that’s pretty much where I’m at today. In the next post
(http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2010/09/09/buildingmynewblogwithorchardpart2importing
oldcontents.aspx), I’ll show how I will import existing posts with their comments from my FaceBook wall
and from this blog.
The site can be reached at this address (but there isn’t much to see yet):
http://www.vulu.net (http://www.vulu.net)
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Part 2 of this series can be read here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2010/09/09/buildingmynewblogwithorchardpart2importing
oldcontents.aspx (http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2010/09/09/buildingmynewblogwithorchard
part2importingoldcontents.aspx)
7 Comments
I'm looking forward to seeing this progress and following along, thanks
— Gareth Mark Elms Saturday, August 28, 2010 10:58:11 AM (/bleroy/buildingmynewblogwithorchardpart1#comment
977)
Great stuff 90% of my requirements are making the site look how my customer wants.
I like the modular approach however, I hope Orchard makes theming easier
Could you please post on how to create a unique website look and feel using Orchard ?
(my email through your blog must not work, as I didn't get any replies)
— Joey Saturday, August 28, 2010 2:42:05 PM (/bleroy/buildingmynewblogwithorchardpart1#comment978)
@Joey: we are working on the theming and general UI composition story. This is why I'm not
investing in building my own theme right now and neither should you until the end of this milestone
(ends in September) if you don't want to have to redo it almost entirely. :) Thanks for your
patience...
— Bertrand Le Roy (http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/) Saturday, August 28, 2010 5:22:50 PM (/bleroy/buildingmynewblog
withorchardpart1#comment979)
Looking good so far, never noticed those blogpost.import.commands before....
— Nicholas Mayne Monday, August 30, 2010 8:30:11 AM (/bleroy/buildingmynewblogwithorchardpart1#comment980)
Does current milestone ends on 1st Sept as mentioned in the roadmap? or is it going to be taking
some more time? starting a client project and ready to take some risk, but just need to know about
the UI composition plan? So I can make the plan accordingly.
— Raj Tuesday, August 31, 2010 7:00:16 AM (/bleroy/buildingmynewblogwithorchardpart1#comment981)
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@Raj: it's not the milestone that ends Sept. 1st, it's the iteration. The milestone ends at the end of
September.
— Bertrand Le Roy (http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/) Tuesday, August 31, 2010 7:05:19 AM (/bleroy/buildingmynewblog
withorchardpart1#comment982)
oh ok. Thanks for clarification. so will we be able to start kind of working with UI stuff after this
iteration? even if not final but at least the idea of where the UI story is going?
— Raj Tuesday, August 31, 2010 7:33:07 AM (/bleroy/buildingmynewblogwithorchardpart1#comment983)
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