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Saturday, March 22
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Another step toward getting things where I'd like them to be. A few weeks ago, I added direct links to the source blogs on blog-specific tag pages, like the tag pages for QTicker World , QTicker Seattle , and GaySeattle . But there's a different way to access site-wide tags and I couldn't figure out how to do the direct link for technical reasons that I'll explain below. While looking for something else, I found a post on the Community Server forum that tells me exactly how to make those links. The problem arises because the page showing sitewide tags uses CSControl:IndexPostData...
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Monday, January 14
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Now that all the move-out/move-in stuff is mostly behind me, I'm able to address a few beta issues that have been on my mind for all-too long. A change just implemented should give users an easier link to the various "ticker" posts that are included here. On the front page, you'd see them under "Qdo" or "Qticker" showing only a headline that links directly to the source blog. But a surprisingly large number of folks get directed by search engines to one of our internal pages that are mostly there just to supply the data for those home page headlines. Oddly...
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Saturday, November 10
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The great resource BrowserShots tells me that there's a rendering problem with these pages in IE 6 (that last one is a link to the screenshots, but I'm not sure how long they'll stay). Sigh. It looks like a box-model issue with the center column running too wide. I'll see if I can tweak it into position tomorrow -- hopefully without doing rendering conditionals for IE 6. It's odd, though, that it seems to work fine in IE 5.5, so it was some odd bug added just in 6.0. All of the others Windows browsers that they show work fine except for the "Partners" box that slips...
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Sunday, October 21
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Anyone who has clicked on the list of "Filed under" categories in the news digest (for instance) or on any post page will find that the link assocated with each tag takes one to a nasty error page. (That's one of those construction detours I've been mentioning on the home page.) I'm not sure why, just yet. I've asked for help in the Community Server forums, but I'm not counting on getting any. I don't think this is a mistake I've made. It looks to me an awful lot like there's something missing from one of CS's supplied configuration files. But the file...
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Friday, October 19
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I think I mentioned in a previous post (but I won't look right now) that I'd like to rearrange the column layout on some pages. The narrow left column is fine as it is. It now holds the partner links and will eventually get a few menu items above them. (And, hopefuly, someday, some paid ads). It's defined on the master page, and I'm inclined to keep it pretty much as is. But the right-side column doesn't work in many cases. It's too wide for a 120px Google "skyscraper" ad, but too narrow for their mid-size ads. I think it really needs to be different sizes on different...
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Sunday, October 14
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A few todo notes: Now that I'm more comfortable with the way the master pages / subpages work on asp.net and CS, I realize that my current column format is a bit too constraining for the future. I'll redefine the master.Master to give a choice of three column configurations for subpages. I think I'll stick with the current config only for the home page. On blog post and list pages, I'll set up an option in the master for a narrower center column with a right column wide enough to fit both a Google skyscraper (120px) and links to the blog's content like "Recent posts"...
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Thursday, October 11
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Again, the slowness of whole process has embarrassed me. It took way too long, but I've finally figured out how to get the custom menu items (Qblog, Qnews, Qyou) on the main navigation menu to become highlighted most of the time when the blog is selected. It's all extraordinarily simple, even in the method I used. I suspect that it could be made simpler still, but I haven't yet figured out how to do that. I'll trace back. It was obvious that I needed to do something with a class called CSContext. In his great CS Developer blog , Keyvan Nayyeri gives a rundown of the class here ...
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Tuesday, October 09
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Well, now... That was a major effort for what looks like a minor change. I now have most of the public pages running on a new page design. It doesn't look all that much different than it did before, but the process of making the change was a highly effective learning experience. I feel much more comfortable now with asp.net inheritance and CS's implementation of it. One most helpful step was to modify Web.config (after saving a good copy, of course) to make it generate more complete error messages. The process of doing that is explained in the brief error message that was appearing before...
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Monday, October 08
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Of course, as in any relationship, the first enraptured flush of infatuation gives way to the more difficult part of building a solid relationship. As often happens, the first problem for me came after meeting the "family". It can be tough figuring the family tree of inheritance, and forgetting a cousin's name can lead to problems. So, yes... I've been getting the cold shoulder, as it were, as I try to go beyond the first stage this relationship with asp.net and CS. I have the home page changed to a new theme based on the supplied CS "Basic" theme, but redone to look...
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Sunday, October 07
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This blog has turned into a bit of a dev diary for the awkward background process of creating this site. And since it's become a bit diary-like... What's a diary without a mash note, so here goes: So I'll say it: I'm falling in nerd-love or at least heavy nerd fondness for this CS system and asp.net. I'm not yet ready to replace the current home page with the reworked version, but I've been working on the new version without (as far as I can tell) breaking the current version. And I've been doing it with in the no-no process of making changes on what will become the...
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Sunday, October 07
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As I mentioned earlier , I jumped into Community Server before I'd taken the time that I had planned to devote to getting up to speed on the necessary background information. It's been a long time since I've done anything with .asp pages or IIS. (It was, in fact, only the first version of IIS that I worked with at all, back in the day a decade ago when I was at Microsoft.) I've been dealing only with Apache servers since then. Along the way, I've avoided big pre-built systems like CS in favor of rolling my own pages in various ways. But I can say now working with the CS system...
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Friday, October 05
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I've used the impressive CS feed-reading capabilities to seed the site with posts (both blog posts and news items) that I've created elsewhere. Eventually, it would be a good idea to change to author to reflect its real origination by this site's user (ie: me at this point). Again, there's sample code in the Wrox book that will be helpful. Page 232 offers some sample code for changing a post's properties. Side note: As I expected, this seeding of the site with posts from ttca.org is causing some search engine issues. Already, I've noticed that technorati.com won't allow...
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Friday, October 05
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The too-long process the other day with Community Server list controls has allowed me to get the home page of this site into something close to what it will (probably) look like on release. Getting it to the current state has considerably increased my confidence that I'll be able to make the site do what I hope it will do. I'm now fully impressed with the CS system, even if I'm still a bit overwhelmed by some of what I still need to do to get this into a shape that I'm willing to call a 'beta' and tell other people about. My next task will be to move the news digest posts...
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Tuesday, October 02
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Community Server's WeblogPostList Class vs IndexPostList Class...
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Monday, October 01
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I finally took the time today to read background on how CS works. That's what I had planned to do during my trip to Montana, but that plan got nixed by my unfortunate shortcut . But it's all making much more sense now after reading the two dev-oriented chapters in the Wrox book and by finding the documentation on the CS site that had escaped my view before. The explanation of how CS controls work is very helpful. Even more so is the complete help-file documentation of the current version. I needed to take the time to get that kind of background before doing much more with the site. And...
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Saturday, September 29
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So... why not add a "nerd note" category as we go through these files trying to make this site do what we want it to do. The current task is this: Getting the top-level blog choices in the gray navigation bar up there to become highlighted when a user selects the item. Because I changed the menu items in the bar, the existing highlighting mechanism isn't working. I want "Qblog" to show up as selected whenever one of the pages for that blog is selected. That's done by getting this bit of code into the appropriate place: < CSControl : SelectedNavigation Selected ="qblog"...
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