Is it possible to allow a user to customize sections of our website to match their look and feel? For example, to modify logos and CSS, possibly pointing back to their site for the actual content. Ideally I would also like a third-party (ASP.NET) tool to manage this, rather than coding a hack myself.
Edited: I want a solution where a customer can just use a menu to modify the attributes they want, so that there is no need for me to interact with the customer at all.
What you want is a CMS (Content Management System), there are lots out there. Just find one that suits you.
I hear Sitefinity is good.
Related
I've created a website for a client of mine. It is coded in ASP.NET with C# and hosted on GoDaddy. She requires this website to updated daily by her. However, this client has very little knowledge of how to edit HTML or text within a site. I don't want to edit it every time she wants an update on the site.
What would be the best solution to my problem? I have looked up Content Management Systems, but I'm a little confused by what exactly it does in terms of coding and the management of the existing site. Does it require me to reformat the whole site to follow the CMS's 'templates'? Would it be better for me design my own back-end panel for her to edit the content (this would obviously take significant work)?
If you want to stick with a site you're developing from scratch, I'd use the HtmlEditor from the AjaxControlToolkit or a similar control, and store the html content in the database.
Then, when outputting the html from the database to the client pages, I'd make sure to use the Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library to sanitize the html using the GetHtmlFragment() function (since this is tagged asp.net). It's not that much work, actually, if you design the database correctly, and if you've got the skills.
CMS systems are (trying not to oversimplify) entire web sites that are already built and allow people to edit the content using built-in content editing functionality. They range in functionality and extensibility from a "You get what you get and there's very little you can change" to "You can customize the heck out of it and buy or build your own modules to extend functionality." There are a lot of good ones out there, some free, and some expensive.
I want to change the appearance of the default editor parts, and am a little unsure of how to go about doing this, as there seems to be a surprising lack of documentation on the subject.
I've been able to create a custom declarative catalog with some trial and error and overriding the RenderCatalogPart method, and now wish to do something similar with my AppearanceEditor and PropertyGridEditor. I've tried just changing the style of the editor parts using CSS, but they are already arranged into tables which are impossible to get rid of. It's not even possible to just take the class as is, because the classes are sealed. So I'm basically stuck with having to write my own from scratch, I guess the questions are as follows:
1) How do I go about getting the information on the controls I need to render?
2) According to the documentation, I need to override the ApplyChagnes and SyncChanges methods - but I can't find any information on what I actually need to put in these methods.
3) On a similar note, is it possible to change the layout of the EditorPart itself, so that the AppearanceEditor, BehaviourEditor etc. are displayed side-by-side instead of on top of eachother?
4) Is there any way to have the page catalog displayed somewhere on the page, even in browse mode? I'd quite like to use it as a 'minimised' area, where users can send web parts they don't want immediately. At the moment they go back into the page catalog and users tend to just add a new part instead. I know that I can have multiple catalog zones on the page, which is great, but it only shows up in catalog mode.
Any help would be very much appreciated.
I didn't get any replies here, but I was able to figure out a way to do some of these.
In the end I decided to use reflection to get each public property on the web part that was WebBrowsable, and figure out what sort of control to display from the type.
The ApplyChanges() and SyncChanges() methods essentially just persist the changes from the page to the personalization blob and vice-versa. It's a matter of rendering some controls on the page, and mapping the values to the properties of the web part in these methods.
I don't think this is possible without writing your own.
Haven't been able to do this, but I don't imagine that it's possible sadly.
i am creating an ASP.NET C# web application and I am looking for the easiest way to do a comments system.
I'll explain.
I have a page containing Items (list items containing texts)
I want the users to be able to click on one, and then he is allowed to reply or comment to it. and he can see what others have replied too.
Is there a library or API that can do that? and if not can you give me tips on how to do it?
Have a look at systems like DISQUS or Livefyre. The benefit of using such services (besides avoiding development) is social integration.
I would like to make a system where my users can customize the look and feel of my webapp.
My goal is to give them an HTML editor and some predefined tags like [BUYBUTTON] and [PRODUCTLIST] they can use.
These tags should be replaced with actual ASCX controls so that they not only display the HTML output, but have any code-behind functionality.
A generic find and replace of text/html is easy, I can't wrap my head around how to make the controls embed into the template.
Can someone give me a little push in the right direction here? I will be doing this within a DNN module if it matters.
I would look at how DNN's XML Skin parser works.
I wasn't able to find any good tutorials but here is a link so you at least know what Im talking about.
Cheers.
I would suggest to look at the source code of announcement module, which is doing almost same thing that you want to do.
Only difference here is, announcement module is storing the template in settings, so you can have different layout templates for different modules on same page/portal.
Hope this will help you, happy coding
I have an web based application. The content for the Home page has been currently mentioned in the HTML code for the Home page using , and tags. To change the content anytime in future, it needs to be changed in the HTML code. :(
Is there a way that we can pick up the content from some external place and get it reflected through the website. This ways, any change if required can be made at the external location without referring to the application's code.
Please advise if there is any solution for it.
Thanks.
You can
Use a database
Include external files using Server Side Includes
Read external files and write their contents and an alternative method
Sounds like you're looking for a Content Management System (CMS), which will allow your content editors access to modify only specific blocks of a page that you specify.
There are a ton out there to do what you want, so you don't have to start from scratch. Just Google 'CMS'.
Although I haven't used it myself, DotNetNuke is a popular one these days and has a free version.