Finally, some 8 months after the Blog4Umbraco Extensions library became available, I decided to post it to the package repository onour.umbraco.org and create some actual documentation for it - this is the result...
This document may also be downloaded as a PDF from here.
Introduction
The Refactored Blog4Umbraco Extensions came about because the current version of Blog4Umbraco (currently 2.0.26) had some issues when it came to creating multiple blogs within a single website, and in addition under some circumstances creating a new blog entry would cause a "Yellow Screen of Death" (YSod).
In order to address these shortcomings this package was created, and later extended with other functionality. The current functionality offered by this package includes:
- Allowing Comments to be Disabled at the Blog Level
- Enable setting a Blog-wide Category and having Tags bound to that Category
An additional Datatype called Blog Tags and derived from the built in Tags Datatype is also provided which is the basis upon which the Blog-wide Category is built.
For a more detailed and technical description of the package, the reader is directed to the blog entries found at /blog:
- Blog Categories in Blog4Umbraco - Take Two
- Adding a Blog Category to Blog4Umbraco (the method described here is not recommended, but provides additional background information).
The Future
Work is currently underway to release a version 3 of Blog4Umbraco (B4U) which will address the issues discussed here and add other much needed functionality including Trackbacks and Comment Notifications.
Post-Installation Steps
After installing the package, additional steps are required in order to activate the features. These involve modifying the Blog-related document types as follows:
Globally Disabling Comments
In order to be able to globally disable comments, edit the Blog Document Type by adding a new property based on the True/False data type as follows:
If the Disable Comments checkbox is checked on a Blog page then the Close comments field will be also become checked when it is saved.
Blog Categories
Updating the Blog Document Type
In order to facilitate Blog Categories, an additional property needs to be added to the Blog Document Type as follows:
Coupled with the change to the Blog Post Document type below, this will cause tags added to blog posts to use the category set in this property of the corresponding Blog.
Updating the Blog Post Document Type
Change the Tags property in the Blog Post Document so that it uses the "Blog Tags" type instead of the built-in "Tags" data type:
Enabling Time fields in the Blog Entry Post Date
In the original Blog4Umbraco package, there is no way to enable the Post Date to use time as well as date, which results in all posts being set as being posted at midnight.
The updated Umlaut.Umb.Blog.dll file included in this package addresses this issue, but you still need to modify the Blog Post document type in order to take advantage of the change. In order to do so, change the Post Date property type from "Date Picker" to "Date Picker with time":
Other Issues:
Blog for Umbraco generates the following error when attempting to create a new Blog:
Issue # 5612 - http://blog4umbraco.codeplex.com/workitem/5612
Operand type clash: int is incompatible with ntext
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Operand type clash: int is incompatible with ntext
Workaround:
If you encounter this type of error, double-check the Author Picker and make sure that the datatype is set tointinstead ofntext.