Duplicate an Umbraco site to another account - c#

Is it possible to duplicate a live Umbraco site which we have full access to (Backoffice, passwords etc.) and copy its content into another account? The idea is that we want a clone of the live site to practice on without danger of changing something and accidentally ruining the currently working and published live site.
To simplify, we have:
A working live Umbraco site with admin privileges so we can access all files.
A new, separate Umbraco account which is essentially a blank canvas with access to all files.
We would like to duplicate all the files and content from the live site to the new account just to have something that closely resembles the live site to practice building widgets etc.
We are working in Visual Studio 2012 with C# and Razor and want to use the latest version of Umbraco CMS (currently 7.3.0-beta Prerelease according to NuGet Package Manager).
Have I got the right idea with this approach or is there a better way? I am aware of Umbraco Courier but would like to know if there are any options other than a paid-for add-on.
If this is the best approach, what is the procedure, and if not, what are the options and why are they preferable?

This can be achieved quite easily by copying the files to a new environment, restoring a backup of the database to a new environment and then updating the connection string in the web.config. This will give you a working copy of the live site. If you are looking for a continuously synchronised solution then that is a different matter, Courier has never worked for me reliably.

Related

Umbraco CMS can you store views in a Database?

I'd like to install umbraco in a way that will allow multiple instances to be deployed, but to share media and views between them (think "load balancing").
The default installation appears to place media and views in subdirectories of the installed Umbraco instance. For media, it would appear that the data can be moved to a central location using either S3, Azure Blob storage, or custom IFileSystem providers.
It is not clear to me whether the same can be done with Views.
Is it possible to redirect storage of views to a virtual file system? If so, how would this be accomplished.
(I don't need code, just to know what classes/configuration is needed, I'm specifically using Umbraco CMS 7.x, if this is behavior has changed since previous versions.)
Thanks in advance.
No, this is not possible.
If you are even just thinking about load balancing then make sure to follow this exact documentation, there is currently no other way of load balancing Umbraco reliably.
Also, to add to Sebastian's answer... the general way to achieve what you want is to turn on file replcation between the load-balanced servers.

C#: Drupal database access

I am making a C# program that recreates websites in offline mode for use at computers within the company, that are not connected to the internet. These offline websites are identical to their online versions, with all content displayed.
I already have a solution for websites with simple MySQL access, but I need to rewrite the program, so that it can handle Drupal based websites aswell. However, I couldn't figure out how to access Drupal's SQL database, or even what to look for.
The original program uses the website's templates (that are already rewritten in HTML), and places the data mined out of it's database in the templates. Problem is, I don't know where to look for Drupal's templates, or if there aren't any, what data should I gather from it's database.
I use MySQL Connector to reach the database with C#. Should I look for the nodes? If yes, where?
If you want to go down that path you will have to sort of act like Drupal, in order to know which things to read from where. Each module installed has their own tables and functions in a particular way, so not always all the data are nodes with fields.
I you need to work with websites in offline mode, I would suggest using a portable webserver, that way you just copy the website to the root folder and run a script to copy the MySQL database as well, the point being that it's portable, you can carry it around in a flash drive and to run it, you don't need to install anything.
Again, what you want to do is possible, but it will require a tremendous amount of work and you cannot guarantee that things will behave well when you install new modules.
Another approach would be to look into the Boost module, which creates offline, static files based on the request you make to the site, and stores them in a configurable folder.
Another way: build a screenscrapper which reads the HTML from the homepage, and recursively follows the links and modify them before saving the HTML yo your local copy.
Summing it up.. avoid accessing the database yourself and try to read the HTML already rendered.

Protect source code of an ASP.NET website

In our college they have competition--students have to develop and show some code. It has a cash prize. I have done an entry as a website (C#) using asp.net. The problem is that my website is in the computer laboratory of the college, so anybody can open Visual Studio and copy my project or edit it.
I want to protect my project. Is there any way to put password for the project alone in Visual Studio? To make it attractive I have hosted the website in the IIS of the server, so by using the IP adresss I can run the project anywhere with intranet access.
When I put a lock like EasyFileLocker, I am unable to open and run the project using the IP address.
I want to run my project anywhere in the intranet, but also protect its code.
How can I do that?
Presuming your source code is somewhere safe (if not, then put it somewhere safe over which you have control), then the deployed end result need not expose the source code in its raw format; you can pre-compile ASP.NET websites entirely (such that even the markup can't be edited on the server - at least not very easily) - do this by selecting the pre-compilation options on the deploy screen, being sure to uncheck "allow this website to be updatable".
the exact method of specifying the right build options differs between VS versions, but the options are the same ultimately: Precompile, (Don't) Allow precompiled site to be updatable.
The result is the code of your website ending up in binaries, including the page markup (the files still exist, but simply as placeholders with their substance missing.) For someone to get at your code, they'd need to reflect your binaries.

error while integrating blogengine.net 2.0 to a website

I was integrating the blogengine 2.0.what i did is
created folder inside my project called blogs.
copied all the files from the blogengine.net 2.0 (web).
made changes in the web.config and changed master page path.
as per
http://www.ajaymatharu.com/integrating-blogengine-into-an-existing-site/
4.while running the project it is showing the error in styles.
the screen shoot of the error is...
screen shoot of the project solution explorer is.
web.config file...
Probably not the answer you're looking for but I would go the sub-domain route and avoid all of these issues completely. Also makes it easier to maintain and upgrade. Every time there is a BE upgrade you potentially face similar issues by trying to integrate it into an existing site.
Here's one I did already: http://homenetdirect.com/
All I had to do was customize the blog CSS to match that of the parent site - you might even create a "complimentary" design...

Sharepoint intranet portal

Migrating (rewriting) a whole portal originally made in .net to shareopoint doesn't seem like a very easy thing to do.
I've been assigned such task and now i'm just learning, planning and starting to get things practical in order to accomplish it faster.
It's not exactly a question, it should be a discussion about it and may help others who might get to do the same job further on.
1 - There's something like a "message board" in the current portal, which i'm planning on building with a blog site kind, what do you sugest?
2 - as asked in another question, i have to manage users, and the local active directory is organized and reliable, so i guess that's what i'm going to use
3 - There's got to be a way to store files, images, documents and having version controlling in some of them.
4 - There's got to be a customization in design and a cleaning in the default controls of sharepoint masterpage (which may be useless for the desired purposes)
5 - About 30 local users and being accessible from the internet (local server) in case our consultors have to access it from clients
6 - i have available a version of the Visual Studio 2010 (already with the graphical webpart designer) because the company i work is MS gold partner.
7 - I'm going to program webparts in c#, and the designing part is still a mistery to me, since i'm not that familiar to shareopint yet.
I'd like some tips, links and answers.. i'm going to be watching this question from now on and answering any other information.
1.) SharePoint 2007 has some blog/wiki/board functionality but it's very immature. I tried to get my team to use them but the user interface is lacking and it is challenging to enhance those elements. SP2010 might offer a better experience though.
2.) User management in SharePoint is easy to perform but difficult to manage. Establish processes for adding/modifying end users and keep the number of people with that ability to a minimum. Otherwise it gets out of control and you end up not knowing who has access to what. I would also suggest relying on AD groups as opposed to giving individuals specific access in sites.
3.) Document storage is SharePoint's forte, I think you'll be impressed.
4.) SharePoint branding will require some time but other people have it down to an art form. Note that some pages (referred to as Application pages) shouldn't be fully controlled. Also note that you don't want to remove controls from the master page as some functionality in SharePoint assumes the controls are there - rather it is better to hide them using CSS.
5.) This sounds like a bad idea. SharePoint exposed to the Internet is supposed to be severely locked down - but if you lock it down (i.e. remove access to Application pages), the functionality that you seek won't be available. Have you considered an intranet and separate extranet?
6.) Should be okay, VS2010 is supposed to be a better development experience with regards to SharePoint.
7.) Keep your branding and functionality separate and be sure to deploy them using solution files (as opposed to working directly with the file system). Also, never ever read/write the database directly.
I think you'll find that replacing a custom intranet with SharePoint is a common task but there will be a learning curve. The hard part will be branding and data migration. End users will reject the new system if it is slow - so be sure to get the architecture and configuration right before launch (might require a consultant).
1 - There's something like a "message
board" in the current portal, which
i'm planning on building with a blog
site kind, what do you sugest?
SharePoint discussions are perfect for what they are intended ... small targeted discussions. A forum is very different. It is a centralized area with multiple threads with different topics. You can try CodePlex (which is your friend)
SharePoint Forums
2 - as asked in another question, i
have to manage users, and the local
active directory is organized and
reliable, so i guess that's what i'm
going to use
AD is perfect if you already have it ... nice thing is that you can use the Profile page to update AD information which syncs ... you have a lot of capability with this. But, one of the main benefits is that SharePoint can support multiple authentications. You can extend a SharePoint site and plug in a different authentication (like SQL Auth) and then multiple sets of users can interact on the same sites with different permissions. Not to mention that SharePoint doesn't just provide site access but you can make security granular all the wat down to individual items in a list or library.
3 - There's got to be a way to store
files, images, documents and having
version controlling in some of them.
This is where SharePoint has the most capability OOB.
4 - There's got to be a customization
in design and a cleaning in the
default controls of sharepoint
masterpage (which may be useless for
the desired purposes)
We have a completely customized MasterPage complete with code behind. You need to know about Feature Stapling and Feature Receivers. Also use Heather Solomon's website
5 - About 30 local users and being
accessible from the internet (local
server) in case our consultors have to
access it from clients
SharePoint seems almost overkill for this number of users.
6 - i have available a version of the
Visual Studio 2010 (already with the
graphical webpart designer) because
the company i work is MS gold partner.
Get the Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint
7 - I'm going to program webparts in
c#, and the designing part is still a
mistery to me, since i'm not that
familiar to shareopint yet.
Look into Application Pages instead of WebParts ... Application pages are way more flexible for custom forms than web parts. Web parts are only usefull for when functionality needs to be available on an ad hoc basis so that you can allow users to drag the functionality onto a page or if you need to restrict functionality to specific sets of users (since layout pages are available to all sites).
The answers to this person's similar but not identical question may be helpful: Sharepoint for a C# Asp.net Developer
There's a lot of help available in other existing SO questions. Just click on the "sharepoint" tag, then sort by votes, and you'll find a lot of interesting reading.
Regarding 7 - Programming web parts:
Have a look at SmartPart on CodePlex. This is a fairly easy way to create simple web parts especially if you have some ASP experience.

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