Latest from our blog

• DotNest sites upgraded to the latest Orchard Core (2.1.6) version

  Wednesday, March 12, 2025 2:54:24 PM

  We have recently finished upgrading DotNest to the latest Orchard Core version (2.1.6) so that you can enjoy the very best and latest Orchard has to offer on your own sites too!

  Coming from version 1.8.3, it was a fairly large task as both .NET/ASP.NET Core and Orchard introduced tons of changes: Some of them breaking, but also a large number of bug fixes, improvements and new features. Version 2.0 was especially impactful, as it includes important changes under the hood that increase the overall performance and reliability of the whole application. We are thankful for the huge (and ongoing) community effort that went into these releases!

  Besides making everything more stable and better overall, how does this affect you as a site owner/operator? There's no easy answer, because it depends on how your site is configured, but we encourage you to check out the Orchard Core 2.0.0 and 2.1.0 release notes. Here are some of the highlights:

  • We disabled the Email feature on sites that do not send emails (e.g., for user registration, password recovery, workflow email activity) so it won't bother you. Please let us know if this happened on your site by mistake.
    
  • The Twilio SMS provider is no longer enabled by default, so if you use it to send text messages, enable it under the SMS settings.
  • Media Indexing is now split up into a handful of features specific to a file types, so enable those if you want to keep indexing PDF, plain text, and Office files.
  • Improvement: Dashboard Widget stereotype makes it easier to create dashboards.
  • New features:
    • Azure AI Search
    • User Localization (on the Admin Dashboard)
    • Secure Media Files give you control over how your media files are accessed.
    • URL Rewriting for improved SEO.
    • Workflow Trimming cleans up workflow instances beyond a specified retention period. This feature cannot be disabled and the retention period is maximized in 180 days.
  • New workflow event: User Confirmed
  • New permissions:
    • Disable Two-factor Authentication
    • Apply Theme
  • Site Owner permission is deprecated, Administrator role is now a system role.
  • Improved culture support in Liquid. Also see our tips on customizing the theme of your site.

  How do you like this upgrade? Let us know in the comments below and thanks for using DotNest!

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• DotNest.com now runs on Orchard Core

  Monday, March 03, 2025 11:52:10 PM

  Believe it or not, while you could create Orchard Core sites on DotNest for years, until now, this website still ran on Orchard 1 :). This is now the past, though, and DotNest.com is as up to date as the DotNest sites!

  You'll get the familiar DotNest experience, nothing new to learn. There are a couple of notable improvements, though:

  • You can now secure your account with two-factor authentication. Check it out here.
  • The new site is much faster, you'll like it!
  • And finally, you'll be prompted to update your password on the next login - just something we needed to migrate the accounts to the new site. All your data is intact, especially your sites, which had nothing to do with this migration anyway (they run in a different app).

  Enjoy, and our case study is coming soon!

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• GPU Day case study: Migrating another Orchard 1 DotNest site to Orchard Core with smart compromises for quicker implementation

  Sunday, April 28, 2024 7:05:43 PM

  We’ve already presented a case study for the Show Orchard website focusing on migrating an Orchard 1 DotNest website to Orchard Core with content migration using the Orchard 1 Recipe Migration feature; you can read that here. Now, the GPU Day website is very similar except the content migration was simplified and we didn’t overhaul the website markup and styling. It’s a great example of how you can easily transition to Orchard Core keeping everything as is if you don’t have the time or budget to modernize every area of the site.

  As most of what we at Lombiq do, this project is also open-source. If you’d like to follow along, you can have a look at the theme’s source code here.

  This is a post by Márk Bartha, software engineer at Lombiq.

  Introduction

  GPU Day is a conference organized by the Wigner Scientific Computational Laboratory that focuses on massively parallel computing, visualization, and data analysis in both scientific and industrial applications. We also presented our Hastlayer .NET hardware accelerator project many times there too.

  The website serves as an information hub for these annual conferences. It was initially running on Orchard 1 DotNest, but now it was time to migrate it to Orchard Core. While these migrations always come with certain challenges due to the new features introduced in Orchard Core, we tried to keep things easy by not changing the frontend of the site, even though it's somewhat outdated.

  Rethinking content types

  Each GPU Day event needed to display various types of information, such as the schedule, speakers, and location details. Previously, with Orchard 1, this process required creating separate content items for each type of information and then linking them using the Projection or Content Elements in the Layouts editor. However, Orchard Core offered a more streamlined approach and we could simplify it.

  First, there was no real need for the option to organize the elements' position, so we didn’t just replace it with FlowPart. We used content fields instead, for example, the "About GPU Day" section is now just an HtmlField instead of a separate content item.

  For organizing the event schedule, we introduced an Event Day content type to represent each day of the event, capturing its title and date. Additionally, we created an Event content type for each specific activity, detailing its time and other relevant information. There’s another content type called Event with their details along with the date and time of it. With all this information we were able to add a BagPart called Schedule to the GPU Day type and let the admins add Event Day items. Then, there was a query responsible for fetching all the Event items where their day matches with the one set to the Event Day item.

  The Speaker items, similarly to the Event items, are managed separately, but we also use a Taxonomy called Year. It’s the same implementation we had on the Orchard 1 site: if the Year value matches with the one selected in the Year TaxonomyField on the GPUDay type, then a query can fetch the related speakers.

  Migrating the old events

  While we didn't utilize the migration utility, we still needed to transfer all the past events. Although there weren't many content items, recreating the events manually would have required us to also create all the speakers and scheduled programs, and there were around a hundred of them. Considering these events are already in the past, the easiest solution was to create a content type called Old GPU Day with an HtmlBodyPart and simply grab the markup from the live site. The only adjustments needed were to the image URLs. The relative paths were fine since we copied the entire media library, but in the old system, they were prefixed with "https://dotneststatic.com/”. We had to replace this with a Liquid media filter (e.g., https://dotneststatic.com/media/images/wigner-logo.png became {{ "~/mediatheme/images/wigner-logo.png" | href }}). Finally, we ensured that these are rendered exactly the same as the normal GPU Day items and that the queries listing the old events capture both the old and new ones, ensuring that a visitor won’t notice any discrepancies.

  Keeping the original styling completely

  Back then, the theme was originally built on a third-party template. We implemented multiple shape templates where the markup followed the original design. With the migration, we didn’t aim to overhaul or modernize the styling. We still wanted to use our NodeJS Extensions for asset compilation, though. So, we simply copied over the old .scss files along with the third-party assets and ensured they compiled, resulting in the same styling. It was more or less straightforward; however, we had to fix a few breaking changes with the new compiler, such as using math.div() instead of a slash (see more about this here).

  To keep the markup as it was, we copied the original Liquid code into their corresponding templates. The Liquid code had to be modified since it is not entirely compatible with Orchard Core, which uses a different library and set of filters. For example, the {% Href "~/Themes/GpuDay.Theme/Images/wigner-logo.png" %} code was changed to {{ "~/mediatheme/images/wigner-logo.png" | href }}.

  Lombiq modules and utilities involved

  During development, the NodeJS Extensions utility proved invaluable, as it automatically compiles all assets during the build process. The Lombiq Media Theme is an ideal choice for developing a media theme for DotNest, compiling your templates and assets into a deployable package; refer to the documentation for further details. Lastly, we used the Lombiq Privacy module to ensure GDPR compliance.

  Summary

  Migrating old websites from Orchard to Orchard Core doesn’t have to be a huge hassle if you're willing to make some compromises. We were content to use the old markup and assets, and we managed to store the entire HTML markup of the old events in an HtmlField to keep the process simple and less labor-intensive. Ultimately, the admins can now enjoy the more user-friendly content editing capabilities of Orchard Core to create this year's GPU Day event – see what Balázs Kacskovics told us about it:

  Our work became much easier with the new admin panel. With fewer menu items, it became much more transparent and intuitive than before. Now, finding the relevant options and content items is a simple task. Also, fewer content types mean less hassle for us, e.g. the editing of the new GPUDay content item is more efficient and less time-consuming, also we can make fewer mistakes with the new frame.

  If you're considering migrating your Orchard 1 website to DotNest Core, this is an excellent time. Should you have any questions or encounter challenges don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We're always ready to bring our expertise to your unique project needs. Get in touch with us today, and let's start making your Orchard Core website even better!

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• DotNest is 10 years old - celebrate with our special offer!

  Monday, March 04, 2024 3:00:15 AM

  It's incredible to think about it, but DotNest just turned 10 today. Yes, we started on the 4th of March, 2014! While we're primarily an Orchard Core SaaS today, at that time, it was Orchard 1, of course. And since then, you've chosen us to host almost 6700 Orchard sites - wow, thank you! We wanted to celebrate this unique occasion with a very special limited offer; read on to see what you can get now if you launch a new site on DotNest.

  You can create an Orchard Core site on DotNest any time for free. However, we offer some premium features too. The most popular paid feature is the ability to use a custom domain name (like example.com) with your DotNest site, instead of the default example.dotnest.net one. If you purchase that service for a whole year, then we give you a month for free. But now, to celebrate 10 years of us working together, for every new site you can have an additional 10% off of this yearly fee! Instead of $275, one year of custom domain usage now is only $248.

  But this is not all. You can do a lot with your DotNest site, as you can see from the knowledge base. While we have everything documented, having a mentor for this, who gives you some guidance and a helping hand surely makes it easier. We've done this with many companies and individuals before, as you can see from our case studies. And now we'd be happy to help you, too: If you launch your new site, we'll provide you with one hour of expert one one-on-one consulting!

  Do you want to launch your DotNest site and use this special offer? Be sure to do it before the end of March, because we'll have this in our birthday month only! Contact us to make use of this limited opportunity and we'll get you going.

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• Interactive Orchard Core tutorials now available with Lombiq Walkthroughs

  Monday, January 29, 2024 4:25:12 PM

  Do you want to learn about the most important Orchard Core features with a hands-on tutorial that guides you with interactive tooltips, right there in Orchard Core? We now have a module available for you!

  We recently added the Lombiq Walkthroughs for Orchard Core module to the selection available to all DotNest sites. This module teaches you the Orchard Core fundamentals by guiding you through step-by-step tutorials right there on the Orchard Core admin. Popups and tooltips tell you what to look for and what to do, as well as they include links to further recommended resources. Check out a demo video of this module here.

  And now you can use it right away on DotNest! Just create a new DotNest site, select the Walkthroughs recipe when running its setup, and you'll get a neat Orchard Core tutorial starting right on the homepage!

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