Hey Anthony,
I totally agree with the idea of having the base blog package as being as simple as possible and that for certain features they can be installed as plugins/packages to allow each user to customize their blog to their own needs.

I must admit I haven't looked at uBlogsy, so I will go and download it now and have a play and then see if we can start getting an awesome team together to colloborate on an awesome blog package.

Cheers,
Warren :)

I fully agree on this. The thing I like most about uBlogsy is it's flexibility to customize the functionality and layout.

For my latest project, I used uBlogsy as a News package without any problems or big customizations.

IMHO the most important functionality for a Blog/News package is:

tagging
categorization
archiving 

Hey Anthony

Can you explain exactly what you needed regarding

tagging
categorization
archiving 

Warren, the blog itself is actually quite simple.

It's the features that are time consuming. And a lot of that depends heavily on how the new umbraco api will look.

Hi Anthony,

I did nothing really special.

• customized uBlogsyListPosts.cshtml so every post in the list was truncated to 300 characters
• added an Image property (of datatype Digibiz Advanced Media Picker datatype) to the uBlogsyPost document type
• customized the layout for the listing on the homepage (@Parameter.Small == "1") so that the image was included.

maybe I should write that blogpost after all :)

What I needed regarding tagging, categorization, archiving?

uBlogsy served all my needs I guess:

The tagging solution in uBlogsy is really nice. A thing uBlogsy does (and Blog 4 Umbraco doesn't for example) is that the blog editor can choose tags from a list of existing tags, this is very useful

Also the fact that one can choose to use month folders or not is really useful, for some blogs with lots of blog content it's useful to have archiving per month while for blogs with not so frequent blogsposts it's more usefull to have everything archived per year.

Good disclosure of information is in my opinion the most important for a blog or news section. The information on a website get's more value if it's more easy to find, disclose.

Very cool!

(Edited this post to make it more clear I'm suggesting a change of any of the work with uBlogsy, sorry if it appeared that way at first.)

I'm all for collaboration on parts that can help everyone who like to add blogging features to their Umbraco sites. And if Anthony likes to - can be added to uBlogsy.

Hope we can keep each other updated and share what we come up with / are working with / along the way?

I decided to move my blog to Jupiter, before 1st of march :-o and will be doing it step by step, as simple as possible. To begin with I was not thinking "blog editing" per se, but rather ordinary website with looks of a blog.

I made a Trello board for collaboration on general Umbraco 5 blogging components. https://trello.com/board/jupiterblogging/4f226af57e19dfa722059231 if you see the use for it.

It would also be nice to see people on JabbR Umbraco room to discuss collaborations :)http://jabbr.net/#/rooms/umbraco

Hey Anthony, I'm dead keen to get involved in this!

Jonas, really like the idea of using the Trello board as well!.

Let me know what I can do to pitch in!

Alrighty Euan :) I found you in Trello and sent you an invite.

Hey Euan

Well after working on uBlogsy 2.0 for many months, I can say that there is a lot of work to do.

Anthony

What do you mean by archiving? Anthony, did you have an archive page?

Did you have category nodes?

I'll get uBlogsy up and running in V5, and then we'll all talk about extensions...

At the very least, things people like are: Comments, Date folders, Search

Each of these should be their own separate packages so that people can use them in other types of sites. 

And they all need to be of the highest quality. So I'm going to be really anal about intuitiveness of functionality and usability. Not to mention code elegance :)

Package names: uCommentsy, uFoldsy, uFindsy

I should take a patent out on names that start with u and end with sy :)

Great idea :) I use uBlogsy on one of my umbraco sites and also love the simplicity of it, it gives you what it says it does and everything else is optional.

I'll help out as much as I can if needed, though I must admit I only discovered Umbraco recently and I'm still getting into it, but man, it's a platform worth investing time in!

I'm here to lend a helping hand in any way :)

Anthony, very good to hear you are good on the way of a Umbraco 5 version of uBlogsy!

I'm sorry if it appeared as I was suggesting changes of any of the work with uBlogsy in my post (I re-read my post and I thought it might appear so), that was not at all my intention. I meant my post as a part of a discussion as how to collaborate on parts that can be used in any u5 site - but primarily targeting blogging features. And if they/any of them can be used in uBlogsy, its awesome :)

(I edited my post now, trying to make it clear).

Jonas,

No problem. I didn't interpret it that way.

HI Anthony,

With archiving I mean the usage of 'year links' with all blogposts for a certain year. I do use the uBlogsy - Category Selector datatype.

An archive page would indeed be a nice idea.

greetings,

Anthony

I love the idea of seperate packages and its definitely a worthy goal.

I'm actually facing a somewhat simular situation in a project I'm currently working on. So far I have tried to keep things as clean as possible, knowing that in the end I would want to package it up. My main concern now is that I'm already using 6 existing packages (and growing) and it doesn't seem that easy to just say: first install those other packages as there's quite some things that need to be configured first (web.config, custom configs, datatypes, macros, etc.). There's also the issue of versioning (please let the packages I depend on still be compatible when updated) & bugfixing (for example the project I'm currently working on uses a package which has a bug in the context I'm using it in which I managed to fix but I had to include the source code in order to use it).

However, I do think with a little effort we should be able to keep things manageable!

Bugs are often because of lack of time, and hence lack of TLC. If you're anal (which I am), it takes longer, but you have less bugs.

I cant see more than 3-4 packages being bundled with uBlogsy. Then everything else will be an optional extension.

Hey Euan

What do you think of making a generic disqus comment dashboard for V5?

Disqus is pretty easy to implement in just a couple lines of js in a .cshtml file. Even getting latest comments is quite easy.

The hard part would be to make a dashboard or even a section which would talk to the disqus api. That way a user never has to log into disqus seperately.

There is already a package in v4:

http://our.umbraco.org/projects/website-utilities/disqus-management-

Hi Anthony,

Are you planning to have some sort of a Theme engine? I think I'd be nice to have this feature so people can download a certain theme package and plug it to uBlogsy.

Cheers,

Jorge 

Jorge, it's on the list of things to do.

Euan I think comments are very important for the blog. If there was a comment package (disqus or otherwise) which can be bundled with ublogsy but not necessarily tied into it then sweet.

The reason being that so many people ended up using uBlogsy as a news section, and did not want comments.

@anthony excellent. Thanks

Yeah, that was the plan, make a comment package that was an add on as apposed to being completely tied into it.  But I think Disqus is a good option as lots of blogs/news sections use it and it should be easy to keep it seperate from the blog package.

Yeah the reason I think disqus is good is because it was an absolute pain in arse to make comment subscription with emailing, notification etc.

I'd like to avoid having to do it again lol

I think a disqus dashboard control which talks to the api to view, accept, delete should not be that hard.

That said though, a comment package without subscription/notification may be quicker to make.

Is there any sense of when a beta of uBlogsy for Umbraco 5.0 will be coming out.  I am excited to see it.

I realize that this may be too soon, but I am curious because I am creating a site in Umbraco 5.0 and would love to have the functionality.

Doug it's almost there.

I've already finished the port to v5. Just doing some css tweaks.

Caveats...

Comments will not be available. The v5 API is apparently not there yet.

Search works will have a problem with performance due to current v5 limitations. But those should be fixed soon.

In the mean time, an enormous number of nodes is not advised :)

That is great.  It sounds like a good start and I can't wait to see it.

Any word on when the package will be available for v5?

Basically when the Umbraco 5 package engine is created.

Unless you want to create the doctypes by hand.

Have you gotten any sense of when the Pakage engine is going to be done?

Are they looking at that in 5.0.1 or is it going in 5.1.0?

This is frustrating waiting to be able to use v5.  I need some of the features that the packages provide, plus I desperately need membership.  BTW, that wasn't directed at you, just a comment for the crowd.  :-)

Thanks for your great work.

Doug

I'm working on a doctype deployment package which allows you to define doc types in xml. But it is a hella long way from being ready.

Any updates on uBlogsy for v5 status?

Ping.  Any updates would be great.

Umbraco needs a packaging engine.

Cant package up doctypes etc without one.

I spoke to Shannon last week about perhaps extening my dev data set xml rewrite. It would require a lot more work. But that is what I would end up having to use to deploy ublogsy anyway.

Thanks for the update.

I've never had to create a package for Umbraco so I have no idea how it works.  Are the new Nuget packages capable of doing what is needed?

Doug

There still needs to be creation of doctypes (among other things) via code. It's not currently available in Umbraco 5. It will be soon though.

Great.  Thanks for explaining and I apreciate the effort on this.

Doug

The latest Umbraco 5 release makes it easier to create content which is sweet!

var doctype = Hive.Cms()
    .NewContentType("newsItem") // content type alias
    .Define("title", "singleLineTextBox", "tab1") // property name, type, tab group
    .Define("aNumber", "integer", "tab1")
    .Commit();

Will this surfice what you need to do rather than having to wait for a packaging system? Hoping so. :) Thanx for digging a little deeper on it Anthony.

Hello, How close is uBlogsy for v5.  If it is not close I may be forced to use Wordpress :-(  

Thanks

Any new updates for us?  Any chance you got past the DocType packaging problem?

An updated estimate on when the v5.x version is coming would be greatly apreciated.

Thanks,

Doug

Matt, just use uBlogsy 2.1.0.1 on Umbraco 4.7.2.

Doug, the packaging was not fruitful. Too many things missing from the api to do in a timely manner. v5 packaging is in development so I'll look at packaging uBlogsy the v5 way when it's made. That will apparently be some time after CG.

Thanks for the update, but it is disapointing to hear.  If I can help I would like to.

At one point you mentioned setting up the DocTypes manually.  Would you be willing to share what you have and I can try to work through the DocTypes and other issues myself.  I am happy to share back anything I find.

Doug

Hey Doug

I can share the code with you. But I personally wouldnt bother as the core is working on a packaging engine which is apparently meant to be launched around CG12

Hey Anthony

If you are open to sharing I would apreciate it.  For two reasons;

1. I would like to see a project from the inside out so I can learn more.

2. I have a web site that I made the mistake of doing in Umbraco v5.1.  I can't back out now and I have deadlines so I can't wait until mid-late June for the latest stuff.  This whole thing about Umbraco isn't real until v5.2 really has been horrible for my project.   

I am hoping that with some work I can get your system doing at least part of what I need in the site.

Well the scripts and business logic are there... but you need to manually create all the doctypes, macros, and dictionary items.

Note though that uBlogsy for v5 in it's current state, is a cutdown version of the one for v4.x

No comments, no custom tags datatype.

Have you had a chance to play with the pacage manager in 5.2 Nightlies Anthony? Are they building something you will be able to use?

Probably a redundant reply but since v5 is dead, i'll be back porting as much as i can to uNlogsy for v4

I need to use similar type of moderator for twitter feeds.  Can I use this for twitter feeds too..  Any suggestions to extend this for twitter feed moderation will be great.

is working on a reply...