Some references

MIsc
Experience in setting up Umbraco and my first website.

Chapters

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Reasons for selecting Umbraco
• Chapter 3: Some references
• Chapter 4: Where to start
• Chapter 5: A digression – XSLT
• Chapter 6: Event Calendar
• Chapter 7: Do some design
• Chapter 8: Images
• Chapter 9: Rendering the output
• Chapter 10: Templates and CSS
• Chapter 11: Back to Media Pickers

Some references

“And still he was full of 'satiable curtiosity!” (Rudyard Kipling, “The Elephant’s Child”)

Reference material

This is somewhere to park a list of references that I have found particularly useful.

• Umbraco website – particularly Books and Forums.
• Umbraco Community Search at http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=006828407427845235189%3Au1fygyy_s54
• A Wiki containing (I think) a previous incarnation of documents at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Umbraco
• Looking for reference material on the umbraco.library set of functions. So far the best (only) reference I have found is:

“The easy way is to download <a href="http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/"> Reflector for .NET</a> and just drop the umbraco.dll into it and browse to the umbraco.library then you can see all methods (and how the work internal)”

Also:

“You can see all the umbraco.library extensions inside the umbraco UI.
1: Go to developer section
2: open an xslt file
3: Click the "Insert xslt:value-of" button (second from the left)
4: Click "Get extensions"
5: in the left dropdown, choose "umbraco.library"
6: the right dropdown will list all availiable methods”

• The source code repository at http://www.codeplex.com/umbraco

Useful packages and add-ons

• IISAdmin, at http://www.jetstat.com/iisadmin/
• Ismail’s Event Calendar, see http://ismail.umbraco.net/2006/7/14/events-calendar.aspx and http://forum.umbraco.org/packages/upgrade-calendar-to-work-with-v3.

• To look at the structure of a node, use the XmlOutput plugin described at http://forum.umbraco.org/14055
  (When installed, invoke (in my case) e.g. http://umbraco/umbraco/XmlOutput.aspx?nodeid=1096 to see the result)
• Alternatively use the macro provided by Doug at Percipient Studios, downloaded from: http://www.percipientstudios.com/downloads/umbraco/DebugPrintOutAllNodes1.1.xslt I have slightly modified this to include the values of data fields in the output; this version is at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/maynard-smith/DebugPrintOutAllNodes.xslt
• The Umbraco offline utilities package at http://www.thoehler.com/en/projects/umbraco-utilitites.aspx, offers image upload and management, plus other useful goodies.
• Multiple media picker by Lefteris, see http://forum.umbraco.org/14785.
• ImageGen, from the Umbraco Package Repository. Or go to http://www.percipientstudios.com/imagegen/overview.aspx.

Writing User Datatypes

There are two mechanisms for adding your own Datatypes if you need them. Both are outlined at http://forum.umbraco.org/extending-umbraco/creating-new-data-type-using-wrapper. In brief:

• Write a standard ASPX User Control, and wrap it in the UserControlWrapper which is included in the standard build. One has to implement a very simple interface which just passes one property in and out, and that’s about it.
• Replicate the interface used by the standard datatypes. This is a bit more complex, but most of the complication can be defaulted if you only have a simple requirement. The result looks like a built-in datatype so you save a bit on configuration.

To be investigated

These are things I have seen references to, and look useful, but have not got round to investigating.

• XSLTSearch
• umbracoRedirect package at http://www.neehouse.com/umbraco_cms/packages/redirect.aspx