On My Mind...

mojoPortal: Skinning the Search Input Box

Joe Davis — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:12:00 GMT

Ever wondered how to style the mojoPortal Search Input Box? I wrote a how-to on the subject late last week. I hope it helps! http://www.mojoportal.com/styling-the-search-input-box.aspx.

Are there any other topics you would like to see in the documentation? If so, send us an email and we will do our best to take care of it for you.

Joe Davis ...

Snow White Rows of Arlington

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:42:19 GMT

Performed by Sammy Kershaw

Song written by Hugh Prestwood

There are a lot of perfect reasons
To never fight another war
There are a lot of perfect questions
As to what's worth fighting for
There are a lot of perfect fools
Who refuse to read the writing on the wall

But the truth is there are people
Who've made it crystal clear
That it is their holy mission
To destroy all we hold dear
They are visibly out searching for the fire
To make this towing nation fall

Now we can just sit back and wait
Until they spill more precious blood
Or we can seek these cowards out
And nip their slaughter in the bud

Audios sweet home and family
I'm off to fight a war that must be won
You'll know why I'm going when you see
The snow white rows of Arlington

Every blade of grass is sacred
Every headstone is a shrine
To somebody who was willing
To put existence on the line
The liberty we take for granted
Was purchased with their patriotic lives

Are their sleeping spirits restless?
Do they listen for the sound?
Of the mustering of armies
To defend their hallowed ground?
Will we rise to the occasion
To ensure their legacy survives?

Through the willows blow soft breezes
They are whispering my name
Asking did they die for nothing?
Aren't I the keeper of the flame?

Audios sweet home and family
Wave goodbye to your Louisiana son
You will know why I'm leaving when you see
The snow white rows of Arlington

Audios sweet home and family
Wave goodbye to your Louisiana son
And if it be my fate you'll find me
Proudly sleeping in the snow white,
When you see the snow white rows of Arlington

Joe ...

Website Panel

Joe Davis — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:36:00 GMT

We have updated to the latest version of WebsitePanel to provide the best experience possible to our customers. WebsitePanel is the Open Source successor to DotNetPanel which is no longer in distribution.

This upgrade means we can offer our services at lower rates because we no longer have the overhead of Control Panel Licensing. In the near future, we will be offering services for Virtual Server Hosting, SharePoint and SmarterMail. All of these will be managed through the WebsitePanel software, allowing customers easy and familiar access to all of their services.

Good things are approaching i7MEDIA. Stay in touch to benefit!

Joe Davis ...

Using GreyBox and LightBox with mojoPortal

Joe Davis — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:41:00 GMT

Using GreyBox

mojoPortal comes bundled with Greybox which is a great in-site pop-up utility that can be used for displaying images and even other webpages in an in-site pop-up. It is used in the image galleries, help system, skin previewer, and a lot of other areas of mojoPortal

You might be interested to know that you can use GreyBox in your mojoPortal site without utilizing the ImageGallery or other features of mojoPortal that use it. Simply add the rel="gb_image[]" or rel="gb_page[]" property to any link and the the link target will open in a GreyBox pop-up window.

For example, clicking the thumbnail below will open the full-size image in a GreyBox window:

<a href="http://i7media.net/Data/Sites/1/blogdata/lightbox-dsc06798-full.jpg" rel="gb_image[]" title="4th & Broadway, San Diego, CA (C) Joe Davis"><img alt="" src="http://i7media.net/Data/Sites/1/blogdata/lightbox-dsc06798-thumb.jpg" style="width: 133px; height: 100px;" /></a>

The link below will open the mojoPortal website in a fullscreen GreyBox window:

<a href="http://www.mojoportal.com" rel="gb_page_fs[]" title="mojoPortal, The World's Greatest .NET CMS">Open mojoPortal in GreyBox</a>

Open mojoPortal in GreyBox

There are a lot of other neat things you can do with GreyBox that you may not be aware of so I recommend checking out the GreyBox website for more helpful hints.

Using LightBox with MojoPortal

Some people like other utilities like LightBox (the jQuery version), for example. I will demonstrate to you how to use LightBox alongside GreyBox with mojoPortal.

The Setup

The first step to using LightBox is to download the jQuery-LightBox release from http://leandrovieira.com/projects/jquery/lightbox/. Once you have downloaded the release, extract it to your local hard drive.
Using your favorite FTP client (mine is FileZilla):
1. Create a new directory under \ClientScript named lightbox and upload jquery.lightbox-0.5.min.js, jquery.lightbox-0.5.css and the images directory included in the zip to this new directory.
2. Browse to the directory containing your site's skin (\data\sites\[SiteNumber]\skins\NameOfSkin and download the layout.master file.
Using your favorite HTML editor (mine is Notepad++):
1. Add the following lines to the layout.master directly after the <asp:ScriptManager control
  <link href="http://i7media.net/ClientScript/lightbox/jquery.lightbox-0.5.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://i7media.net/ClientScript/lightbox/jquery.lightbox-0.5.pack.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $('a.lightbox').lightBox({ imageLoading: '/ClientScript/lightbox/images/lightbox-ico-loading.gif', imageBtnClose: '/ClientScript/lightbox/images/lightbox-btn-close.gif', imageBtnPrev: '/ClientScript/lightbox/images/lightbox-btn-prev.gif', imageBtnNext: '/ClientScript/lightbox/images/lightbox-btn-next.gif' }); }); </script>
Back in your FTP client, upload the modified layout.master file.

Using LightBox

Now to use LightBox, all you need to do is add lightbox as a class on any link that you want to open in a LightBox pop-up. For Example:

<a href="images/image-1.jpg" class="lightbox" title="my caption"><img src="images/image-1-thumb.jpg"></a>

You can see more examples on the LightBox website.

See It In Action

Some Friendly Words of Caution

Including additional javascript files in your site will make it run slower. The difference in speed may be negligible when adding just one script but don't get carried away.

Also, you may have noticed that I put the CSS and Images in the ClientScript\lightbox directory. I did this because I couldn't get the LightBox to work properly with those items in the \Data\Style directory like they should be. Also, I couldn't get the script to work with the CSS being loaded from the CSSHandler so I had to put a reference to the CSS file in the layout.master. This should not be done without thoroughly testing your site and making every attempt to put the CSS file where it belongs, in the CSSHandler's style.config.

Conclusion

In the end, I prefer GreyBox primarily because it is already built-in to mojoPortal and it does more than LightBox. If you find that you want to use something along with GreyBox, you can adapt this post to whatever tool you decide to use. It should help get you on your way.

Happy mojo-ing!

Joe Davis ...

mojoPortal Online User Group: A Great Value Add

Joe Davis — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:47:36 GMT

The mojoPortal Online User Group, started by David Dean of Yamisee, has been going strong for a few months now. A couple different people have led the monthly meetings, each bringing valuable information to those who attend. I believe this group is a great Value Add for the community as the meetings are open to the public and the type of information discussed ranges between installation, skinning and programming. Joe Audette, mojoPortal Founder and Chief Developer, attends the meetings regularly and is even leading the August meeting.

Over the past couple of months, the topics and leaders of the meetings have been:

April 2010: SEO Tools and Tips, David Dean of Yamisee
May 2010: Creating Custom Page Titles, Joe Davis of i7MEDIA
June 2010: Log4Net, Steve Land of StrongEye Solutions
August 2010: ZedGraph, Joe Audette

If you are interested in mojoPortal, I highly suggest you subscribe to the Forum thread on the user community here.

Personally, I want to thank David Dean for his hard work and dedication to the mojoPortal community.

Joe Davis ...

Lifetime Licensing on mojoPortal Pro Products

Joe Davis — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:24:25 GMT

I noticed recently that Joe Audette has changed the licensing on the "Pro" products offered on the mojoPortal website to be lifetime licenses. Previously, the licenses allowed updates for 1 year but Joe never really enforced that.

This is really nice for the community as we don't have to worry about renewing our licenses and purchasing upgrades. Pay for it once and forget it. Sounds pretty darn good to me.

Joe Davis ...

mojoPortal Page Titles

Joe Davis — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:12:17 GMT

Update: Joe Audette has decided to implement this in the next version of mojoPortal, due in a couple of weeks. He is updating the <portal:PageTitle control with this functionality.

I have from time to time needed to show a page's title within the content as a heading. The controls that come with mojoPortal don't really allow for this but I have come up with a handy little control that will show the Page Title on the page and allow you to choose how the text is rendered.

To get started, create two files; PageTitle.ascx and PageTitle.ascx.cs. Place both of these files in the <siteroot>\Controls\Custom directory (Note: You will have to create the "custom" directory). The code for the files is as follows:

PageTitle.ascx

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="PageTitle.ascx.cs" ClassName="PageTitle.ascx" Inherits="Controls_PageTitle" %> <asp:literal ID="litPageTitle" runat="server" />

PageTitle.ascx.cs

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; using mojoPortal.Web; using mojoPortal.Web.UI; using mojoPortal.Web.Framework; using mojoPortal.Business; using mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers; public partial class Controls_PageTitle : System.Web.UI.UserControl { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { PopulateControls(); } private void PopulateControls() { PageSettings currentPage = CacheHelper.GetCurrentPage(); if(currentPage == null){ return; } if(currentPage.PageTitle == "") litPageTitle.Text = currentPage.PageName; else litPageTitle.Text = currentPage.PageTitle; } }

To use the control, place the following in your layout.master directly after <%@ Master...

<%@ Register Src="~/Controls/custom/PageTitle.ascx" TagName="PageTitle" TagPrefix="cc1" %>

Now place the following where you want the Page Title to appear in the layout.master.

<cc1:PageTitle id="PageTitle1" runat="server" />

~~Come back soon to see a full description of how this all works.~~
I have decided not to describe the full functionality of this control as it is fairly self-explanatory and because Joe Audette has implemented this functionality into mojoPortal. You can use the <portal:PageTitle control after the next release.

Happy mojo-ing.

Joe Davis ...

Ruth Abigail Davis

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 04:03:08 GMT

I am happy to announce that Ruthie was born to Devyn and me two weeks ago. She is healthy and beautiful. We have been blessed once again by our Lord with the joy of parenthood.

Joe ...

Skinning the mojoPortal Admin Toolbar

Joe Davis — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:30:00 GMT

When Joe Audette released mojoPortal 2.3.3.4 he wrote an article called "Creating An Admin Toolbar" in the mojoPortal Skinning Documentation. The toolbar uses jQuery to easily show and hide itself and is skinned entirely by using CSS.

If you follow Joe's directions or you are using a skin that came with 2.3.3.4 with the toolbar enabled, you will have a toolbar that looks like this:

While this serves a perfectly good function, there are a few things about it I don't like. It is gray and there are no icons depicting the links. I happen to like icons and bright colors so, I came up with this:

Skinning the toolbar was very easy because it is all controlled by CSS. This article is meant to help you understand how to skin the toolbar but if you like what I've done, you can just download it here.

Create a copy of the jqtoolbar UI resources

The CSS and images for the toolbar are located in the \Data\style\jqtoolbar directory. The CSS is in the style.css file so I created a copy of this file and named it style-7.css.

Set site skin to use new CSS file

For the skin to use the new css file (style-7.css), I had to change the line below in my style.config file located inside of my skin directory (\data\sites\1\skins\myskin). Notice I am referencing style-i7.css and not style.css.

  <file cssvpath="/Data/style/jqtoolbar/style-i7.css" imagebasevpath="/Data/style/jqtoolbar/">none</file>

Change the background color of the toolbar

To change the color of the toolbar, I simply changed the background-image CSS rule on the div#toolbar and div#toolbarbut selectors to a background-color rule and set the color to #FFFF99.

Add icons to the links

To add the icons, I added an attribute to each of the controls for the links in the layout.master. To keep the markup valid, I used the rel attribute. I set the value of the rel attribute to a descriptor of the link itself (e.g.: rel="admin" for the admin link). I then used this new attribute to apply a different background image to each link.

It is important to note that this approach will not work with IE6 as it doesn't understand how to select an element based on it's attributes. The next release of mojo will allow you to use the CssClass attribute on the controls so that you can style them more easily. The value of the CssClass attribute will be added to the classes for the link.

Link Controls in Layout.master file

<portal:AdminMenuLink id="lnkAdminMenu" runat="server" rel="admin"/>
<portal:FileManagerLink id="lnkFileManager" runat="server" rel="filemgr"/>
<portal:NewPageLink id="lnkNewPage" runat="server" rel="addpage" />
<portal:PageEditFeaturesLink id="lnkPageContent" runat="server" rel="pageedit"/>
<portal:PageEditSettingsLink id="lnkPageSettings" runat="server" rel="pagesettings"/>

CSS for icons

div#toolbar a[rel=admin]{
  background: transparent url('administration.png') no-repeat scroll left center;
  padding-left: 32px;
}

div#toolbar a[rel=addpage]{
  background: transparent url('newpage.png') no-repeat scroll left center;
  padding-left: 32px;}

div#toolbar a[rel=filemgr]{
  background: transparent url('filemgr.png') no-repeat scroll left center;
  padding-left: 32px;
}

div#toolbar a[rel=pageedit]{
  background: transparent url('editpage.png') no-repeat scroll left center;
  padding-left: 32px;
}

div#toolbar a[rel=pagesettings]{
  background: transparent url('pagesettings.png') no-repeat scroll left center;
  padding-left: 32px;
}

The icons are from the Crystal Project but you can use any you like.

Hiding the menu by default

Personally, I do not want the toolbar to be displayed all the time. I would rather have a link which opens the toolbar when I need it. To accomplish this, I moved the display:none; rule from the div#toolbarbut selector to the div#toolbar selector.

Conclusion

I hope this gives you a head-start on skinning the new admin toolbar. Keep in mind that all of this was accomplished easily with CSS.

Happy mojo-ing!

Joe Davis ...

Oh, The Things to Come

Joe Davis — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:56:00 GMT

I was browsing through the SVN update log for mojoPortal this afternoon and I am very excited about some of the things Joe Audette is working on for the upcoming release.

I started browsing around the demo site (http://demo.mojoportal.com) so I could see some of the new changes in action. The list below are just the ones I found interesting, there are a lot more changes coming in the next release.

A new File Manager has been added and the old one has been re-factored. The new File Manager is very nice and is a big improvement over the old one. It uses Javascript whereas the old one doesn't so Audette decided to keep the old File Manager and allow users to switch back and forth between the old and the new. Usability is very big to mojoPortal and as a matter of fact, mojoPortal can be used entirely without Javascript if one chooses to do so. There is also a new link with the Administration and Edit Page links which opens the File Manager in a graybox. This allows for easy access to the File Manager at all times.
Adding users to Roles via the Role Administration admin page is a lot easier thanks to a new selector dialog. Previously, users not in a role were listed in a single drop-down list which made it very difficult to use when a site had a lot of users.
mojoPortal uses a CSSHandler to combine & minimize CSS files. This process makes caching easier and allows sites to load faster. The url to CSSHandler has been http://somedomain.com/data/sites/[sitenumber]/skins/[skinname]/CSSHandler.ashx. This required the Data directory or at least the skin directory to be executable which is not ideal. The CSSHandler URL has been moved to the root of applicaiton in the next release. Problem solved.
A new SQL Query tool will allow developers to easily see and modify data in the database from the website. This tool must be enabled by a site administrator in the web.config prior to it being available for use. It will allow developers to save queries which can be used to populate date in a custom module for quick and dirty data access.
The main administration links (admin, add page, edit page, page settings) used to be just that, links. If a site designer like yours truly wanted to display the links in a drawer or some other type of cool UI, custom code would have to be developed to create the links manually. This next version will include support for controls for each link which means it will be possible to declare them directly in the layout.master and they will show/hide automatically according to internal logic. See number 6 for what this really means.
The jQuery Extruder plugin has been included with mojoPortal which allows for an example of using a widget with the admin links.
The blog is getting some attention this go 'round. Community feedback suggested a preview draft option, paging, option to display only blog titles in the main blog page, and a few other improvements. All of them, that I noticed anyway, made it into the core! Check out the demo, to get a better idea of what has changed with the blog.
The Search facility will now provide a link to download items in ShareFiles modules. Previously, just a link to the Shared Files module was provided.

Rather impressive what Joe Audette can get done in just a few weeks, isn't it?

What improvements or features are you waiting to see implemented? Why not buy Joe Audette a Coffee to show him your appreciation?

Joe Davis ...

Adding You Are Here Message to mojoPortal Breadcrumbs

Joe Davis — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:20:00 GMT

mojoPortal provides a nifty little BreadCrumb control which will show the path to the current page. We have used the control in several of our sites and from time to time, our customer ask us to put the "You Are Here" or some other text in front of the breadcrumbs.

So that's simple, right? Well, yes and no. The BreadCrumb control doesn't have the ability to add a message to the crumbs so we have to add the text in the layout.master of our skin. Okay, that's simple too but the difficulty comes with making the message invisible when the page settings have breadcrumbs turned off or there aren't any to display.

The solution is to create a User Control with all of the logic needed to display the Breadcrumb Message when needed.

The User Control

For simplicity of this article, we will create our user control in a folder named CustomControls which we placed inside the Controls folder (\Controls).

The YouAreHere.ascx file

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="YouAreHere.ascx.cs"
    ClassName="YouAreHere.ascx" Inherits="Controls_YouAreHere" %>

<asp:literal ID="lblYouAreHere" Text="You Are Here:" runat="server" Visible="false" />

Not much magic here, just importing the necessary namespaces and creating our Label which will end up being the Message text. Notice the Label has the Text argument assigned and it is set to "You Are Here:". We will discuss this further later in the article.

The YouAreHere.ascx.cs file (code behind)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using mojoPortal.Web;
using mojoPortal.Web.UI;
using mojoPortal.Web.Framework;
using mojoPortal.Business;
using mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers;


public partial class Controls_YouAreHere : System.Web.UI.UserControl
{
    private string sMessage;
    
    public string Message
    {
        get { return sMessage; }
        set { sMessage = value; }
    }

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (sMessage != null)
        {
            lblYouAreHere.Text = sMessage;
        }

        PageSettings currentPage = CacheHelper.GetCurrentPage();
        if (currentPage == null) { return; }
        if ((currentPage.ShowBreadcrumbs)
            || (currentPage.ShowChildPageBreadcrumbs)
           )
        {
            lblYouAreHere.Visible = true;
        }
    }
}

Using the User Control (layout.Master file)

<%@ Register Src="~/Controls/CustomControls/YouAreHere.ascx" TagName="YouAreHere" TagPrefix="i7" %>

<i7:YouAreHere id="YouAreHere1" Message="How You Got Here:" runat="server" />

The first line should be placed after the <%@ Register... line. It registers the User Control on the page.

The second line should be placed directly before the <portal:Breadcrumbs... line. This is the User Control Tag which will show the Message. Optionally, you can set a custom message using the Message argument.

Note: i7MEDIA assumes no liability or responsibility for the use of this code. We do however want to help you if you need it so don't hesitate to ask us.

Happy mojo-ing!

Joe Davis ...

mojoPortal content features inside UI Widget

Joe Davis — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:28:00 GMT

With the release of mojoPortal 2.3.0.4 came the addition of Content Templates for FCKeditor and the examples included with mojoPortal for using the Content Templates were widgets like jQuery Accordian and Tabs. I like the Accordian and Tab widgets quite a bit because they allow me to easily include a very professional looking UI elements with very little work. Examples of the jQuery Accordian and Tabs are below:

The first idea I had for using the widgets was to include a couple different contact forms on one page, each with its own tab. So I set out creating the 3 different Contact Form instances that I needed. I was doing this for my church so I had one for the Pastor, Christian Ed. Director and the Secretary. I then created an HTML Content instance on the Contact Us page and added the Tabs UI widget to the HTML content. Now this is when I ran into a problem; there isn't any way to reference a mojoPortal module from within another module, so I had no way to put the Contact Form instances inside the UI widget.

I looked throught the documentation on the mojoPortal site but couldn't find anything that I thought would lead me in the right direction so I posted a question in the forum asking for help. Joe Audette, mojoPortal's founder and chief developer, responded with a very elegant solution. All I needed to do was create a my own module that included the Tab widget with the Contact Form instances wrapped up inside. Being the great guy he is, Joe provided me with the necessary code to make this work. The process is very simple:

Create a text file named whateveryoulike.ascx

Paste this code into the text file:

		<%@ Control Language="C#" ClassName="MultiModuleInTabsModule.ascx" Inherits="mojoPortal.Web.SiteModuleControl" %>
<%@ register assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" tagprefix="portal" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Web.Framework" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Web.Controls" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Web.Editor" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Net" %>

<script runat="server">
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    }    
</script>

<div class="mojo-tabs">
    <ul>
        <li><a href="#tab1">Tab 1</a></li>
        <li><a href="#tab2">Tab 2</a></li>
        <li><a href="#tab3">Tab 3</a></li>
    </ul>
    <div id="tab1">
        <asp:Panel ID="pnlModuleWrapper1" runat="server">
            <portal:ModuleWrapper ID="ModuleWrapper1" runat="server" ConfigureModuleID="15" />
        </asp:Panel>
    </div>
    <div id="tab2">
        <asp:Panel ID="pnlModuleWrapper2" runat="server">
            <portal:ModuleWrapper ID="ModuleWrapper2" runat="server" ConfigureModuleID="16" />
        </asp:Panel>
    </div>
    <div id="tab3">
        <asp:Panel ID="pnlModuleWrapper3" runat="server">   
            <portal:ModuleWrapper ID="ModuleWrapper3" runat="server" ConfigureModuleID="17" />
        </asp:Panel>
    </div>
</div>

Find the ModuleID for each Contact Form instance and modify the ModuleWrapper controls in the code above to match the correct ModuleIDs. Note: To find the correct ModuleIDs all you need to do is hover over the Edit or Settings link for the Contact Form instances and then look in your browser's status bar. The ModuleID will show as mid=SomeNumber.
Save the file you created in the first step to the "~\data\sites\[sitenumber]\Modules" directory. (Note: you can save the file to any directory in the mojoPortal application but I think it is best that you save it to a directory under your actual site in the Data directory because this will prevent it from being overwritten or accidentally deleted during upgrades.
Install your newly created module via the Administration > Advanced Tools > Feature Installation/Configuration screen inside of your mojoPortal site.
1. This is rather straight forward. All you have to do is give your Module a name, and input the correct path in the Control Source field. You may want to create your own GUID to make sure that it is unique.
Now you can add your new module to any page you like just as you would add any other module to a page.

Here’s a screenshot of the end result:

Happy mojo-ing!

Joe Davis ...

My First Post Using Word 2010

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:21:08 GMT

I wrote this post using Word 2010. So far the 2010 Office products are very nice. So far my favorite is Outlook. MS finally improved the IMAP client so no more Windows Live Mail!!!!

Well, it's late so I better go to bed.

Joe ...

New Site

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:30:00 GMT

I have moved my site from BlogEngine.Net to mojoPortal because it has more features. BlogEngine.Net served it's purpose but I wanted to be able to have more functionality on my site, mojoPortal allows me to have not only a blog but image galleries, forums, calendars, surveys, polls, and a whole lot more.

This marks the 4th platform for my site:

Serendipity (it was okay)
WordPress (hated it)
BlogEngine.Net (loved it)
mojoPortal (lots 'o features)

Go mojo!

I moved most of the posts from my old blog to here but some of them I moved to my company blog at http://i7media.net. If you're looking for a post about web hosting or mojoPortal, it is probably there.

Joe ...

E-Sword

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:23:00 GMT

A very close friend of mine told me about a great free Bible study tool that he and his wife use called E-SWORD. I have used a lot of different Electronic Bibles but I haven't found any of them to be something I could use on a regular basis. Usually just because of poor UI design, other times because they only had one or two translations.

I installed E-SWORD and was very happy to see that it has a nice user interface and a lot of available translations. Some of the translations, simply called Bibles by E-SWORD, are not free because they are not Public Domain. The prices for these translations range from $9.99 to $29.99, most being the former. The $29.99 Bible is the NIV Family Bundle which includes the NIV (New International Version), TNIV (Today's New International Version), and the NIrV (New International Readers Version). The NIrV is designed for young readers.

E-SWORD also comes with a ton of downloadable commentaries, dictionaries, maps, charts, and devotions. On top of all of that, there is a "live" version of the software available at http://live.e-sword.net so you can keep up with your studies from any Internet connected computer. There is also a PocketPC version of E-SWORD; unfortunately, I do not have a PocketPC anymore.

I have found my new favorite electronic Bible.

Joe ...

MCITP: EA

Wed, 20 May 2009 21:28:00 GMT

I passed the required exams to upgrade my MCSE 2003 to an MCITP: EA. I had to take the 70-647, 70-649 and 70-620 exams and in the process of completing those exams, I obtained these certs in addition to the MCITP:EA.

MCTS: Microsoft Windows Vista: Configuration
MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory: Configuration
MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure: Configuration
MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure: Configuration

I will not have any other place to put these logos so I figured I would put them here. :-)

Joe ...

Useful Queries for Active Directory Users & Computers

Wed, 20 May 2009 01:39:00 GMT

I created this list of queries years ago and it used to be on my blog but apparently the post was lost in one of the many moves I have done with this blog. Anyway, attached to this post is nice little zip with a number of good ADUC queries that may save you some time in your daily AD Admin life.

All Computers
All Contacts
All Groups
All Printers
All users
All Windows 2000 Computers
All Windows XP Computers
Disabled Objects
Exchange Recipients
Locked Out Users
Never Logged In
Password Never Expires
Public Folders
Users without Home Directories

As you can see, I created this group of queries long before Vista or 2008 came out. You can look at the syntax with the XP and 2000 queries to figure out how to create a query for the new OSes.

ADUC_Queries.zip (9.08 kb)

Joe ...

SharePoint New Item Menu Flyout

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:01:00 GMT

I spent an entire day trying to find this silly thing last week on the web and I had absolutely no luck. Today, while cleaning out my email, I found a message I sent to a collegue with a link to this product! I should search my email before wasting time searching the internet. :-)

Anyway, I'll post a link to it here so that others (hopefully) will not waste time searching. Collutions needs to do some SEO on their site. I didn't use the phrase Multiple Templatesat all when searching the web. I used phrases like multiple content types and New Item Menu Flyout.

Multiple Templates WebPart (2007) http://www.collutions.com/Lists/Solutions/DispForm.aspx?ID=17

Allowing for central management of document templates, the Multiple Templates Web Part simplifies the process of creating new template-based documents in a SharePoint (MOSS or WSS 3.0)Document Library.

All templates are stored in a categorized template repository and made available on the New button of a Document Library view.

Joe ...

KeePass for the T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream)

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:33:00 GMT

Well, my MDA has about had it. I doesn't like to work very well anymore so I called T-Mobile and asked them to replace it which they agreed to and then said no and yes and no and sorry but no and yes again (I hope that is the last time they change their collective minds). Anyway, I settled on the G1 because of it's nice web browsing capabilities. It will not sync with Exchange but that's fine because I don't like being that attached to work anyway (if work wants me to sync with Exchange, they can buy me a different phone). The phone will do IMAP and that is all I need for personal email.

After confirming with T-Mobile that I would take the G1 as replacement for my MDA I realized that KeePass, my favorite password manager which is available on most modern platforms, doesn't have a version for Android (the OS that is on the G1). I kinda panicked here because KeePassPPC has saved my butt on many occasions. I did some searching on the net and finally found KeePassDroid! I don't have my G1 yet so I don't know how well it will work but I decided I should post something on the net about it because it took some digging to find the app myself. That being said, I hope I have enough keywords loaded into this post that the next person looking for KeePass to run on their HTC Dream or G1 will find KeePassDroid faster than I did.

Joe ...

Sata DVD drive not working in 2008 Server Core

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:04:00 GMT

I recently purchased a Dell PowerEdge 2970 with a SATA DVD drive. I installed 2008 Server Core x64 without a problem but after the install I noticed that the DVD drive wasn't present. After a lot of searching online and finding nothing about this, I decided to contact Dell Support. They gave me a driver for the SATA controller the DVD was using but no way to install it on Server Core.

After a lot of searching on the net I found a few ways to install the driver. All but one of them was wrong (drvload and drvinst don't seem to work). The correct answer (pnputil) was found on Scotty McLeod's blog, more specifically, this post: http://winserverteam.org.uk/blogs/scotty/archive/2007/08/12/server-core-and-drivers.aspx.

So, I went back to the server and tried loading the driver that Dell told me to load using pnputil but I was presented with this error:

Processing inf : bchtsw32.inf
Failed to install the driver on any of the devices on the system : No more data is available.
Adding at least one driver package failed!

Take a look at the filename in the "processing inf:" line. Do you see that 32? That's right, Dell gave me a 32bit version of the driver for my 64bit machine! Oh well, I went back to the dell website and downloaded the x64 driver and then used the pnputil command all was good. The exact URL's and usage instructions are below:

Download Broadcom BCM5785 (HT1000) SATA Controller Driver (Dell package number R181056): http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R181056&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=246834
Extract the above driver to a location of your choosing. I used c:\InstallFiles\dell\drivers\R181056.
Run the following: pnputil -i -a c:\installfiles\dell\drivers\r181056\bchtsw64.inf. If this command finishes properly you will receive a notice stating: Successfully installed the driver on a device on the system.
Run diskpart and from the diskpart> prompt run list volume. You should see the drive letter for your DVD drive.

Hope this helps!

Joe ...