Visual28-Personal Blog of Mark Aplet - Design, web, and other topics

As I was developing my own skins I kept running into issues where I forgot to include some necessary event triggers. So I stripped out al the layout code leaving only the core tags that I can use as a starting point for a template. Here is what was left. Not much really. Let me also add, that I am not very familiar with mango just yet, so if I am missing information please let me know so I can add it. Perhaps the few developers that are currently working with Laura (the author of mango) we can help her write the much needed documentation.

So here is the code. You may also download a nifty zip archive of the page template.

I just wanted to post today surrounding my thoughts on Mango Blog. I am both excited and upset with the solution so far. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Mango Blog, It's a free open source coldfusion blog application that has just recently made it to it's 1.0 release. It's great that it has features not seen in other CF blogging software and the attention to details within the admin are leaps and bounds above the competition. In my opinion BlogFusion has been the only solution to come close in terms of look and feel of the application, and the features. BlogFusion unfortunately was built around the use of tables for almost all of it modules. I spent many hours reworking the modules for that app only to ditch it in favor of Mango.

I think mango blog will be the next wordpress for coldfusion as long as Laura (author of mango blog) continues to chug away at it's code. It has some really great features that even wordpress would be tickled to have. Things like skinning, themes, plugins, and the file manager.

Speaking to skinning this is both my love and hate for mango. I like how easy it is to just drop in features or widgets. What drives me nuts is the lack of documentation. There is no central PDF to download that has at least of available tags for things like, comments, posts, and search. Currently documentation is a few unorganized pages on the mangoblog website. So right now the only option is to wade through the example skins digging and searching for what you need.

Mango is only a 1.0 release as of writing this, and I am sure the docs will come. Sounds like Laura is up late working on the source code and answering forum posts which I think is almost a better source for documentation. At least you can search the forums :) To say the least, I am anxious for docs.

So what is mango? Well the blog your reading now is in mango. Curently the skin is a pre-packaged theme. I am plugging away at my own but it's a slow process and think it will take another week or more to have something basic done. crossing my fingers for a swifter solution.

What a weekend it has been. I have spent most of the weekend tweaking servers and server software just to get MS SQL installed. I got it working finally after a whole lot of nail biting, fretting. In my home server I use Windows 2003 Web Edition. It was chosen simply because it was a cheep alternative compared to the advanced versions. When I installed it several years ago, I figured I had read the documentation and understood what it was capable of. Well Turns out I didn't. Not at all.

I have used MS Access as a database for all my personal sites for years. It has served me well. I would not want to use it for a client site and use MS SQL for that. Well today I wanted to install an application that requires SQL so I grabbed my SQL 2000 Disk and tried to install. I launched the installer and tried to install the server and client tools and poof the installer quit. I tried a few more times to install the software with the same result. After spending most of the day doing research turns out SQL Server Standard is not supported on 2003 Web Edition.

WTF!? That is exactly what I was thinking. Now I understand that your not supposed to run your database server on the same box as your web box but this is a personal blog server and has fewer than 500 hits per month at best. I can not see Microsoft's justification in deliberately breaking this feature in the web edition just to generate sales for higher caliber server software.

After more research I found SQL Server 2005 Express was supported by Web edition. Yippee I thought. That is until I had to download a myriad of applications to make the whole thing work. NOTE: .NET 2.0 framework must be installed before even attempting to install the 2005 Express Server. I also installed the Studio manager while I was at it. Even though the software is free its such a pain in the butt to make work. Seams like you have to be an uber geek to make stuff work.

Well I got the software installed but getting coldfusion to talk to the server was a whole other task. When I first attempted to create a datasource I got the generic connection error saying that SQL was not available. *sigh* Turns out you have to enable TCP/IP and manually set the ports 1433 I found this article by Steve Brownlee "Connecting ColdFusion to SQL Server Express" that walked me through the whole process.

In the end it worked and that is what is important, but being a usability guy, I am left wondering, Does Microsoft ever consider the users experience when developing their software and in particular their website? Shouldn't that also be important?

Well Im no guru in the matter but I have fresh experience so if you have questions and need some help feel free to shoot me an email.