Microsoft Content Management Server
This section will contain Tips and Tricks, Talks and News about MCMS related Posts.I have worked extensively with MCMS 2002 and 2001 and like to share the issues I have faced and resolution to them.
Real exciting news from Web Content Management team at Microsoft.The Service Pack 2 now provides much awaited support for Microsoft SQL 2005 and Viusla Studio 2005 is now available in MCMS 2002.Master Pages as well as the authentication and navigation provider models support.
Here are few useful online free books listed on MSDN that will get you started with Microsoft Content Management Server before you do your own investment and buy a MCMS 2002 Book or take an official MOC Training.
Here is a Great article explaining Web publishing Content Management Systems in general. Who should be using them. What are the advantages and benefits of using a web based Content Management System and the different players offering Web based Content Management Solutions.
I get lot of queries from the Clients and from my Blog readers about the recommendation MCMS 2002 Book/Tutorial. The following book is great for Starters as well as seasoned MCMS professionals. I would highly recommend it ....
I have created a Windows App utility that can search All or Specific Portal for any particular string to be found in any of the placeholders.
Portal is determined to be the First Level Channel after /Channels root.
Recently I came across this issue with KB#836895. It installs perfectly on Windows 2003 machines but refused to install on Windows XP development machines.
Since we are using some custome paramters that needed to be passed to different MCMS posting it was hard to debug since all the development machines where Windows XP.
MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2 will have the support for ASP.Net 2.0 though there will still be some New features that will not be supported or fully suported by MCMS running under ASp.Net 2.0 framework for example Web Parts ...
Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 makes it easy to create multiple websites using the same template set. This feature is very useful if you are creating sites that require different feel and look but same/similar functionality or at-least share some templates between each other.The challenge here is how to add a CSS to the rendered posting so the feel and look is different depending on which MCMS Site Hierarchy you are in.
Following is the solution. This solution allows you to treat
This post will evolve with time. I wanted to share the resources that I myself use to troubleshoot the issues with MCMS deployments during my consulting assignments. I am just starting this post now but down the road I will also add step by step guide for things to check while installing and running MCMS 2002 installation in Production, Staging, Content and Development Environment. So keep visiting back to get more details.
I have seem a few Breadcrumb Controls for Microsoft Content Management System that display the Hierarchy/Path of the current Posting(page). While designing a MCMS 2002 site the site-map is laid out in such a way that the Navigation of the site is made simple and its easily accessible by the MCMS API calls.Its common to have a Hierarchy like this
/Channels/RetailerSite/en-CA/LeftNavigation/OurProducts/Computers and
/Channels/RetailerSite/en-CA/LeftNavigation/ThirdPartyProducts/WebCams.
Here we go again. One of the simplest but kind of hidden functionality is how to determine if the current posting is accessed in live mode or in the edit mode. Microsoft Content Management Server has several modes to display the page out of these three are the most prominent ones i.e. Published , UnPublished and Editing Mode. It is frequently asked that how you can display hint to the authors while they are Creating a new posting or editing an existing one ...
Here is another article in the MCMS 101 series. This one deals with getting a list of all the Channels / Postings that contain a specific Customer Property.
Remember that custom property should only be used for searches that are not very extensive and return a small set. If your have requirements of frequent searches on a Mets Information of a Channel(folder) or Posting(WebPage) then a better solution is to have a User Database linked to it. I will talk about it in my future Posts.
It is common to create multiple websites in a single instance of Microsoft Content Management server 2002 Server. Usually these sites share same site structure with different Content and different Skins. The simplest and efficient way to kick off a new site is to copy the child channels and posting after creating the Root channel for the New site.
I am often asked what is the optimum value to put in the “Maximum Nodes in Memory Cache” setting in the Site Configuration Application Tab 2 named Cache in your Production environment. The idea is that the node cache is big enough to hold a 'copy' of all the nodes for your entire site, so the suggested size calculated from following script is the one to go for.
MCMS 2002 has a XML placeholder definition object but there is no XML placeholder Web Control shipped with the product. Woodgrove Sample MCMS website comes with a XML placeholder control but it real annoying in the sense that you only have 10 rows of text visible at a time. It is common requirement to customize the XML placeholder feel and look and also the functionality.
The most common functionality required in any MCMS project is to get access to the content contained in the placeholder. MCMS has different kind of placeholder definitions like HtmlPlaceholder, ImagePlaceholder, XmlPlaceholder and AttachmentPalceholder. It is desirable to get the content according to the type of placeholder for e.g in case of ImagePlaceholder you want the URL of the Image or some other properties rather then just a blog of string or HTML.
One of the simple but very handy feature is to be able to have shortcuts on your desktop that can invoke site Manager that is pointing to Development, Content, Stagging and Production Environment.