toeinwater.co.uk

Upgraded and Improved

Just last night, I upgraded the website to the latest version (1.4.5.0) of BlogEngine.NET.

There are some great new features; my particular favourite being the new widget engine. In fact, the widget engine is so good that I removed all the code from my master template and simply inserted a reference to the widget. Then, at run time, the widget injects all the bits you see in the right hand column. Nifty, or what?!

As well as that, I crafted a new theme called ClarityBlagBlog as well as a companion theme for those who like to view websites on mobile phones or PDAs.

ToeInWater - New Theme

Those of you who visit this site will no doubt have noticed the new theme! It's based on the one I created for toomanygoodbyes.com, but adapted to take into account all the things you see in a blog: blogroll, tag clouds etc.

Again, when I have finished the tidying up of some of the code, I will make it available as a download.

Using Paypal Buy Now buttons with BlogEngine.Net

Whle I was building toomanygoobyes.com. I knew that there had to be provision for selling the CD via Paypal. However, through a combination of goodness knows what, this seemingly simple process became very tricky indeed.

First off, on the order page, I simply pasted the code for the button into the HTML and saved it. Lo and behold, the TinyMCE editor that is used as the text editor for BlogEngine.Net rather frustratingly strips out all <form> tags.

So, I then spend several hours looking for ways round this. There had to be a simple solution. The nature of the website was such that a full e-commerce solution or even DNN site would be overkill. Anyway, there were some suggestions of how to stop the code stripping out but nothing worked, so I hit upon the nextt thing . . . .

I created a user control called myPaypalButton.ascx and injected this into the order page in three places. I then saved the page and the buttons displayed. So far so good.

Click the first button and there is a post back to the existing page. Click the other two, however, and Paypal is thrown up and all is well. Still, it's no good having a non functioning button.

As it turned out the solution to all of this was not complex, unlike some of the answers I found on the internet. Indeed, the answer could not be found on the internet.

The solution?

I simply created a dummy form in my user control before the real form:

<form action=""></form>

I then uploaded the control ad all three buttons worked Hurrah!

New Website Launch: toomanygoodbyes.com

Today, 02/08/2008, I uploaded a brand new site!

TooManyGoodbyes.com is dedicated to bringing new listeners to the music of Elegant Simplicity. The site is focused, streamlined, ultra modern, compliant and very, very fast!

It was built using BlogEngine.Net, but using it in a very novel way. Instead of it being used as a blog, I converted it to be a basic CMS system. If you visit the site, there is no way you would know it was not a blog. It was very easy to do the conversion: it was simply a case of removing all the things not required and switching off various functions in the settings page.

The theme is brand new, based very loosely on the Clarity theme. I call it ClarityBlackCMS. I will make it available as a download soon for those of you interested in using BlogEngine.NET as a simple CMS system.

As well as the usual BlogEngine.NET stuff, I created several custom controls: the side bar subscribe/unscubscribe box, Paypal buttons, testimonials and album promo. The site works beautifully in all browers. Altogether, it took maybe 36 hours in total to build from start to finish, including writing all the copy, which is original to the site, as well as creating the .pdf downloads and the mp3 samples.

Why not check it out?

Scribus (Pt 2)

I am thrilled to read that Scribus v1.3.4 (in development at the moment but available as a download for the brave!) will fully support bleed, crop marks, printers marks and all the other goodies one needs for really professional output.

I cant wait to try it: if it is any good, then I can see it replacing InDesign - finally freeing me from the tyranny of Adobe. Obviously, I will still need to keep InDesign for work sent in from clients, but for all my own work then Scribus could be the very fellow!

New Category

A new category for my blog has been created. Called Tips and Tricks, I will use it to pass on some web design tips and tricks I have picked up over the years in the hope they will help someone else. The first item published is how to tame the DNN search engine!

Taming the DNN Search Function

As most people would agree, the DNN search funcion is a mighty untidy looking beast: it's not very customisable and it looks, quite frankly, horrible. For one thing, the number of the returned search item is not in line with the result. For another, the link that points to the resullt is duplicated. You get the actual page title as a link as well as a huge url string pointing to the same thing. So, your carefully designed skin breaks when the string pushes outside the page boundaries.

Anyway, fed up with this, I decided to get my hands dirty and put it right.

As ever, back up everything first and test this out on a local server. You can use any text editor you like, but you will get better results and gain more understanding by using Visual Studio (expensive) or Visual Web Developer 2008 (free!).

Ok, fire up your program of choice and open up your local copy of your website. In solution explorer, go to admin and open up SearchResults.ascx. This file contains the code that renders the search output on your page. First thing to do is locate the code beginning with:

<asp:HyperLink id="lnkLink" runat="server" CssClass="CommandButton" NavigateUrl=

This is the horrid super long link you get with your resuts. Select the entire <asp:HyperLink> tag and comment it out.

Next, locate at the top of the page the first instance of <asp:TemplateColumn>. Change this to <asp:TemplateColumn ItemStyle-VerticalAlign="Top">. This will sort out the result numbers for you. Save the page, browse to your site and perform a search. What a difference! Next, log in as admin and make sure only Show Description is ticked. Log out and search again. Looks miles better, doesn't it?

If your're feeling confident, go back to the SearchResults.ascx and play about with the properties of any element that takes your fancy (visual studio makes this sort of thing dead easy!). In my case, I added a horizontal line to seperate the resuts, or you could simply specify a colour in the AlternatingLineStyle section. I also centred the page numbers.

Check out what I have done at elegantsimplicity.com 

Examples page added

I have just added a new page - examples - to the site. This gives some details about some of our work and links to the sites themselves.

Elegant Simplicity: Aquatorium

Ok, I will admit that this is a blatant plug for my own band, but what the hell!

Last week, we re-released our 2004 CD of demos, rare and unreleased tracks. Called Aquatorium, it is 78 minutes long and a bargain at £7.99 from the bands shop or direct from the label at proximityrecords.co.uk. The booklet is full colour thoughout, with fully annotated sleeve-notes. In addition, there is a pdf download of the lyrics.

End of plug!

New DNN Theme for Elegant Simplicity.com

I created a new theme/skin for elegantsimplicity.com and it went live last night. It's a bizarre trad/modern hybrid that is mostly pure CSS and XHTML. I think it looks rather groovy!