Chanh's blog

Mod_rewrite was the only mean to have search engine friendly URL for a long time but it is no longer the case with this Microsoft URL rewrite module! It is extremely easy to use not like Mod_rewrite!

I will write more on how to use this URL rewrite module at my Docs site later but for now I will just post some high light!

Once this module is installed there are three templates available and they are:

# User Friendly URL
# Rule with Rewrite Map
# Request Blocking

There are so much more you can do with it!

You can download it here.

You can get more information here.

I have been looking for a search solution for our intranet site and have evaluate several search packages!

I recently come across Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express which is a free application that you can download from here.

It can crawl content from various sources such as Windows SharePoint Services sites, file shares, Exchange Public Folders, and Web sites. Although Search Server Express includes only a subset of the search features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 but from what I can see it is just perfect for my need.

Here are a features list of this product.

On top of that, don’t forgot this is a SharePoint Service bundle with search so you can do all things that you can with SharePoint including Wiki, blog, calendar, and lot more…

With such a features list who need anything else!

I have been playing with Windows SharePoint Services for a long time but with the latest WSS short for (Windows SharePoint Services SP1) and especially with service pack 1, it is very mature and ready for production use.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is included in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows Server 2008, and is also available separately as a download.

With  WSS you can build site as Wiki, Blog, social networking, document sharing, extensible with web parts, ASP.NET, integrate with SQL reporting services, etc.  You can develop for WSS with Visual Studio tools or SharePoint designer.  It comes with support for workflow which you can create human process for thing like form approval, decision making, etc.

I will write more about WSS here and at my main site http://ongetc.com on how-to and pratical use of WSS.  Stay tune!

For the first time, there is content managment system utilizing MVC pattern for ASP.NET.

Oxite is an open source web application using ASP.NET MVC. The current version is an alpha release.

Oxite provides with these features:

• pingbacks
• trackbacks
• anonymous or authenticated commenting (with optional moderation)
• gravatar support
• RSS feeds at any page level
• support for MetaWebLog API
• web admin panel
• site search
• ability to create and edit any pages and a child page of another page on your site.
• The web-based edit and create page or use put in your own HTML
• the built-in authentication system.
• support for multiple blogs on one site, or data for more than one site in the same database.

Site power by Oxite: http://www.visitmix.com

Download Oxite here: http://www.codeplex.com/oxite

Many CMS written in Java are likely to be designed with MVC pattern and in recently time you will find more CMS written in ASP or PHP that claim to be MVC base.

It depends on what you are looking for!

For Java I have a list of CMS that I collect in my search.

For PHP, there are many framework that design with MVC pattern but does not written as CMS and here is my list.

Now there are couple that worth mentioning which are popular amongst PHP MVC seekers such as CakePHP, CodeIgniter, etc.

There are many attempts to write CMS on top of CakePHP but I have yet find one that I really like.   Joomla 1.5 claim to use MVC pattern, Expression Engine use CodeIgniter, and many WACT base CMS but they are not as nice as a CMS that designed to be a CMS.

If you are in the market for a MVC framework and do it yourself type of guy then any of the framework will do you well but if you expect to find a well written CMS that written based entirely on MVC pattern it will be hard to find because I have yet find one!

I hope the list I provided above help you in your search for a MVC based CMS!

Happy MVC CMS hunting!

Ways to pick a CMS!

When you browse the forum at opensourceCMS you might come across this type of question many times:

What should I use?
Please recommend me..?
What CMS?
CMS for … site?
Need suggestion?
Choosing a CMS question?

At PACKT Publishing they are also getting a very similar kind of questions. Here is a quote from their site:

One of the most frequently asked questions received at Packt is ‘What is the best open source Content Management System for me?’ This isn’t the easiest question to answer, however we asked Chanh Ong, a computer specialist and contributor at opensourceCMS.com for his views, and this is what he had to say…

Here is a recap of what I wrote In the article for PACKT Publishing:

This article started out by defining “what is a CMS?” “What is the scope of this article?” “How content definition could be differed in people mind?” “How do you decide which CMS is best for you?”

I also looked at what criteria to use to define your requirements. With your tentative set of requirements, this article suggests where to go to do some hands-on experiments to gain more understanding about different choices of CMS, and how to fine tune or expand your criteria. I also shared a little of my experience when opensourceCMS went through the process of choosing a CMS.

You can read the whole article here.
Chanh Ong
http://ongetc.com