Content Technologists: Interview with Deane Barkerby bill written on 03.01.2012 at 05:01

The January 2012 episode of the ektron Content Technology Podcast will feature an interview with Deane Barker (@gadgetopia), someone well known for his writings on content management and technology. We’ll be talking about content migration, and given his work as the Content Management Practice Director at Blend Interactive, it’s a topic Deane has a lot of experience with. Subscribe to the podcast to be notified when the new episode is available.

search and nosqlby bill written on 24.08.2011 at 02:18

Interesting question on StackOverflow asking why search servers like Lucene are not considered in NoSQL conversations.

three years ago a co-worker and I were using Lucene.NET as what seem to fit the description of no-SQL. We did not use it just for user-inputted search queries … What I don’t understand is, why [are solutions like Lucene] not counted in the typical lists of no-SQL solution options?

See the thread on stackoverflow for a few thoughts.

Also, read Justin Cormack’s fantastic blog post on Search, SQL, NoSQL, Persistence. Great read.

WCM in the Windows Azure Cloudby bill written on 14.07.2011 at 05:19

I am co-presenting this week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference on “Ektron in the Azure Cloud” Monday, July 11, at 11:30 a.m. PDT. More details here.

Being a Highly Successful Developerby bill written on 27.06.2011 at 21:10

What do you think it takes to be a successful developer? Someone who is a great problem solver? Understands design patterns? Reads great developer books? See what I put on my list; check out my blog post on the ektron bloghub titled 7 Tips to Being a Highly Successful Cms Developer.

New Podcast Series: ektron Developer Conversationsby bill written on 16.06.2011 at 13:40

Today on the ektron bloghub I announced a new podcast series launched today called “Ektron Developer Conversations.” The goal of the series is to capture interesting conversations with members of the ektron engineering team and the developer community.

In the first episode available today, I talk with Ted Henry and Keith Pepin, two highly skilled and passionate front-end developers, and the conversation spanned HTML5 vs Silverlight, challenges facing front-end developers in general, and the future of front-end development tools.

• Subscribe on iTunes
• Subscribe to feed directly
• Download the episode as an MP3 file

Chicago Developer Meetupby bill written on 02.03.2011 at 11:49

The first ever Chicago area Developer Meetup was this evening and it was a good night. We had three presentations– Sue from Rock Island County talked about her experiences building navigation, Marty Samples from the Server Side demo’d a custom ajax driven taxonomy component, and I gave presentation on the new Framework API. An enterprise cms architect (Justin Ryan) was also there, so we had an open “Ask the Architect” session where people shot questions out for him to answer. Thanks to everyone from the Chicago area who showed up! We’ll meet-up again in a couple months. In the meantime, make sure to join the Chicago Ektron Developer Group on meetup.com to be notified of upcoming developer events.

Ektron Partners with Seesmic for Enterprise Social Desktopby bill written on 23.11.2010 at 02:40

Over on the Ektron Blog hub today I announced the availability of the Ektron Plug-in for Seesmic Desktop.

This release was significant to me in two ways.

First, from a personal workflow perspective, my enterprise activitystreams now play in the same space as my personal social networks. Ektron’s Intranet is a First Class Social Network in my mind, because it runs parallel to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn– and not siloed on a webpage on the Intranet. Enterprise activities flow from the Intranet and onto the desktop, giving insight into activities and information that might have otherwise been unnoticed, in real-time, along with activities from personal social networks through LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Fantastic.

Second, ektron’s integration is built on a platform I’ve wanted for a long time now– In 2009, I pleaded with the Lazy Web for an extensible social management client (see Dear Lazy Web: Extensible Twitter Client). Over a year later, Seesmic Desktop 2 launched with an extensibility architecture. It’s the first of its kind and allows developers to build plug-ins for it that extend social services like LinkedIn, YouTube, FaceBook. This is great stuff.

If you’re using Ektron’s eIntranet (v8.02 or later), check out the plug-in to learn how you can use Ektron’s Enterprise Social Desktop integration.

ektron on windows server 2008by bill written on 09.10.2010 at 05:48

In order to run ektron on Windows Server 2008 you need to first install and configure the Indexing Service and also install the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility components on IIS 7. It is best to do this before you attempt to install ektron on Windows Server 2008 since the installer will halt once it detects these compontents are missing. To install these components, do the following:

Installing install the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility on IIS 7

1. Click Start, click Administrative Tools and then Server Manager.
2. In the left navigation pane, expand Roles, and then right-click Web Server (IIS) and select Add Role Services.
3. On the Select Role Services pane, scroll down to IIS 6 Management Compatibility.
4. Select the check boxes for IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility and IIS 6 Management Console.
5. Click Next from the Select Role Services pane, and then click Install at the Confirm Installations Selections pane.
6. Click Close to leave the Add Role Services wizard.

Installing and configuring the Indexing Service is also done through server manager

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Server Manager.
2. In the console tree of Server Manager, right-click Roles, and then click Add Roles.
3. In the Add Roles Wizard, click Next.
4. On the Select Server Roles page, click to select the File Services check box, and then click Next.
5. On the File Services page, click Next.
6. On the Select Roles Services page, click to select the Indexing Service check box under Windows Server 2003 File Services, and then click Next.
7. On the Confirm Installation Selections page, click Install.
8. Follow the instructions in the Add Roles Wizard to complete the installation.

It’s also suggested that you create a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in for the Indexing Service, After you install the Indexing Service. To do this:

1. Click Start, click Run, type mmc, and then press ENTER.
2. On the File menu, click Add/Remove Snap-in.
3. In the Available snap-ins list, click Indexing Service, and then click Add.
4. In the Connect to Computer dialog box, click Local computer: (the computer this console is running on), and then click Finish.
5. To close the Add or Remove Snap-ins dialog box, click OK. The console displays the Indexing Service snap-in.

That’s it. Once you have these steps complete, your Windows 2008 Server is ready to install ektron.

synergy 2010by bill written on 08.10.2010 at 19:14

The latest ektron developer roll-up is available on the ektron bloghub which covers this week’s release of ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta and the Synergy 2010 conference (as well as pointers to a handy jQuery Quick Start Guide and other blog posts). Ektron Synergy 2010 is next month (Nov 7-10) and is a great event, I highly encourage you to attend and guarantee you will have a great time and learn a lot. For more details, read the full post on the ektron bloghub.

developer roll-upby bill written on 01.10.2010 at 20:32

New post over on the ektron bloghub, covered this week: Microsoft released SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2. Both the Service Pack and Feature Pack updates are available for download; Microsoft TechNet posted a patch for Security Bulletin MS 10-070 detailing the vulnerability in ASP.NET that could allow information disclosure; and also information about New England Code Camp 14 in Waltham, MA. For more details, check out the developer roll-up.