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AtomSite 1.4 Update in Web Platform Gallery

AtomSite is now up-to-date in the Web Platform Gallery aka microsoft.com/web. This makes it incredibly easy to install AtomSite and have IIS7 configured. This is why on our new download page we have it marked as the featured way to download AtomSite.

When you install AtomSite using through the Web Platform Gallery, it automatically ensures you have ASP.NET MVC installed and that the file permissions are set appropriately.

Going forward, we plan to have more experimental versions. Each time AtomSite is at a stable point, we will push that version the Web Platform Gallery.

Did you install from the Web Platform Gallery? Let us know your experience!

Posted by JarrettV on April 15 at 5:32 PM

Comments (1)

AtomSite 1.4 Widgets Release

This release of AtomSite 1.4 contains a new widget management system that allows you to personalize your site with ease. We've also improved the AtomSite Manager in many areas.

Most pages and some widgets have customizable areas. You can include widgets into these customizable areas to alter the appearance and functionality of your website. The following screen allows you manage those widget includes.

You can manage the widgets at any scope. If you include a widget into an area at the workspace scope, it'll show in every collection within that workspace. Also, if you include a widget in a master page, it'll show in every child page. Pages and widgets are built to target certain areas.

Learn more about widgets

Widgets can also be included inline into the content of an entry. For example, you may want to post a poll or have a contact form on certain entries.

We have a new twitter plug-in that is included out-of-the-box. This widget can be included on any page. The widget can be configured to show X number of tweets. Also, you must choose a twitter user name that has a public feed. If you are running AtomSite in medium trust, you may need a special setting to allow outgoing web requests.

AtomSite now supports medium trust. One major change we made was switching the default logging subsystem. AtomSite will no longer write trace and error information automatically to a log file. If you are running in high or full trust you can enable log files.

How to configure logging

Finally, we greatly improved many areas of AtomSite Manager. For example:

Filter entries and annotations by category or quickly search them
Filter users by role
Create or update user
View role matrix
Improved support for multi-folder workspace mode
Improved dynamic links on entries and annotations
Better support for limited access by contributors and authors
Better IE7 support and support on small mobile screens
Install theme from zip file
Customized CKEditor
Auto-restart when changing certain settings
Choose file extension of blog pages (default is .xhtml)
Improved core plugin warnings

For a complete list of changes with this release, see the release page on CodePlex.

Download Release 1.4

Posted by JarrettV on April 01 at 5:17 AM

Comments (2)

AtomSite 1.3.1 Release

This release of AtomSite 1.3.1 is a small refresh that fixes a few bugs and updates the javascript and DotNetOpenAuth library.

Updated solution file to VS 2010 RC
Fixed media uploads with Windows Live Writer
Fixed blog URL link in collection feeds
Fixed content encoding header of wlwmanifest, sitemap, and other xml files
Fixed read-only issue for accepts in AtomSite Manager collection settings
Updated jQuery to 1.4.1
Updated jquery.timeago to 0.8.1
Updated jquery.tools to 1.1.2
Updated jquery.single-ddm to 1.2
Updated OpenIDPlugin to use latest DotNetOpenAuth version 3.4.0.10015

We updated the default CDN locations and plugins with this version as well.

AtomSite 1.3 BlogML Release

This release of AtomSite 1.3 contains a new BlogML plugin that allows you to import and export from a BlogML file. We've also improved the AtomSite Manager Tools area to support more import/export tools.

AtomSite 1.2 Settings Release

This release of AtomSite 1.2 has improved composite web site performance by allowing asset combining and minification. To support this new feature, we reorganized the folders where assets are stored.

Type	Folder	Example
Cascading Stylesheets	/css	/css/default/CommentWidget.css
Images	/img	/img/default/icon.png
Javascript	/js	/js/default/CommentWidget.js
Plugins	/plugins	/plugins/CommentPlugin.1.0.0.0.zip
View Files & Theme Info	/themes	/themes/default/CommentView.aspx

This new feature greatly reduces the number of requests made to download a page. The biggest performance improvements can be seen in the AtomSite Manager where each page contains many widgets. Not only does it make each page load faster, but development is easier as well. For example, a widget can have it's own stylesheet and javascript files making things easier to manage and locate.

Learn More About Asset Combination

This release also includes improvements to the AtomSite Manager. Many of the settings in the service.config file are now exposed on the Settings screen (see to the right). The screen shows different options for each scope: Entire Site, Workspace, Collection. These screen support:

Adding/removing administrators
Adding workspaces (in multi-workspace mode only)
Adding collections
Adding/removing authors and contributors
Changing which content types a collection accepts
Removing categories
Changing other settings

For a complete list of changes with this release see the release page on CodePlex.

Download Release 1.2

Posted by JarrettV on August 04 at 6:06 PM

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AtomSite 1.1 Plugin Release

Note: AtomSite runs best on IIS7 with ASP.NET MVC 1.0

The eleventh release of AtomSite contains improvements to plugins, themes, and other areas in the AtomSite Manager. You can now easily install and uninstall plugins. Other new or improved features include:

Fix plugin installation updates to plugin entries in Service.config
Fix plugin upgrade updates to plugin entries in Service.config
Fix include insert into page area and widget areas
Fix login issue when user name is different from primary Id
Fix overwrite of all authors upon wizard basic settings completion
Added link back to site at top of Manager
Updated plugins page in Manager to support install, uninstall, upload & install
Fixed missing javascript reference in EditEntry and EditMedia
Remove OpenIdAuthenticateService as not used
Update plugin system, now supports zip
Implemented QuickPub on Dashboard
Fixed some of the CSS to look better in IE6/7
AdminRightNowWidget now has links to entries and annotations on AdminDashboard
Added filter support to AdminAnnotations and AdminEntries
Fixed help link in Admin.Master
Fixed link to pending entries on AdminDashboard
Added Admin SelectionCriteria for easily selecting entries and annotations by state
Updates to AtomSite Manager
- added filtering to AdminEntries.aspx
- added filtering to AdminAnnotations.aspx
- updates to theme page, not yet functional
- added additional links on AdminRightNowWidget.ascx
- fixed button on AdminPendingEntriesWidget.ascx
Admin Theme Info added
Admin theme page updates
Finished theme chooser in admin manager
Added sample post for new version
Remove extra images from OpenIdPlugin.csproj
Updated Readme for 1.1 release
Fixed wizard updating Admin link in About entry
Updated/fixed plugin installation from zip file
Setup OpenIdPlugin as pre-installed plugin
Updates to parameters.xml for Web Application Installer
Fix caching to only cache for anon requests (most common)

Posted by JarrettV on June 28 at 7:41 PM

Comments (2)

AtomSite 1.0 Admin Release

The tenth release of AtomSite contains a new administration area called AtomSite Manager. We've also improved compatibility with Live Writer and support more installation scenarios. Other new or improved features include:

AtomSite Manager
- Dashboard
  - Right Now
  - New Annotations
  - QuickPub (not yet functional)
  - Pending Entries
- Entries
  - Edit Listing with Paging inline approval, etc. (status filtering not yet functional)
  - Add/Edit Entry
  - Add/Edit Media
- Annotations
  - Edit Listing with Paging inline approval, etc. (status filtering not yet functional)
- Plugins
  - Enable/Disable
  - Upload/Install/Uninstall (not yet functional)
- Users
  - Listing
  - Add/remove (not yet functional)
- Other areas under construction
- Inspired by WordPress
Plugins
- Upgrades now detected
LiveWriter Compatibility Improved
- Workaround for theme not detected
- Workaround for loss of media collection setting
Virtual Directory installation supported
Alternate default workspace wizard support
Misc. fixes

Posted by JarrettV on May 01 at 1:15 AM

Comments (2)

AtomSite 0.9 Modularity Release

Note: AtomSite was previously known as BlogSvc

The ninth release of AtomSite is major change towards modularity. Also, this release contains the following new or improved features:

New Plug-in Support

Installation
- Drop in bin folder
- Supports extracting embedded theme/script files to correct folders
Register Additional View Engines
Registering Routes
- Supports collection constraints
- Support for multiple workspaces (areas)
- Support for secure routes (https)
Dynamic Controllers
Services
- Supports cross-service events via singletons
Widgets
- Supports both composite and simple view type widgets
- Supports three different scopes, Service, Workspace, Collection
- Widget can register stylesheet dependency link
- Widget can register javascript dependency link
- Widget can include in-line script at bottom of page
- Widget can have nested widgets
- Widgets can be cached (with proper authorization support)
- Planned support for script/style compression and consolidation planned
- Planned support for drag drop widget management planned
Themes
- Revised to use YUI layout grids to support dynamic templates
- Side bar can be moved to either side
- Supports multiple fixed-widths and fluid layout
Metadata
- Data could be used to install, register, uninstall
- Planned support for plug-in admin pages
- Planned support to submit to a global plug-in registry
Merits
- Supports order in which plug-in is activated
- Supports overwriting previous plug-in routes

New OpenId Plugin included and enabled out of the box.

To go along with the name change, we also have a new website. I am working on setting up the plugin and theme areas. Also, I've organized the documentation area and will be updating and adding information for this release over the next week.

Visit the release page on codeplex to download.