how to get started in writing this Orchard module - c#

I'm a newbie in Orchard development, and I'm now about to write my first module for it.
my requirements will contain a multi-page path in order for the user to complete the order.
1- search for your desired number
2- search results (pick your number).
3- enter your info
4- thank you (log this order)
I don't want someone to do my work, but I need to know where to start, and how to manage my assets, and the most important, is how will I be able to manage the user interaction wit my form.
many many thanks, hope to hear from you.
Update: This has not been finalized yet, as all of the resources I've checked couldn't answer my question.
what I need to achieve here is something like a wizard. some steps depending on user inputs. but all the samples was a one-page module with administration page or something.
please help.

The best explanation for building a module that I have seen is on www.Pluralsight.com. The content is not free but depending on your situation it may be worth the cost.
Advanced Orchard by Kevin Kuebler
Orchard Fundamentals by Kevin Kuebler

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Best Control For Step By Step Data Gathering

i am writing some kind of survey program in c#. I have 29 different questions and user should start from 1st quetion to 29. Which control is proper for this program ? Like wizard control.
Check out this Wizard control in Codeplex.
Here are some links found with this Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=C%23+Wizard+Component&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-au:IE-Address&ie=&oe=
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/DesignTimeWizard.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/windowsaerostylewizard.aspx
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/community/aspnet/2/10010548/how-to-make-a-wizard-application.aspx
There's heaps of info on this and the controls you can find online are pretty good. But I've always found that if you want complete control it's easier to roll your own.
why not use online free ones? i would better consider doing it as Web/Online to make it easily distributable to wider audience, also gathering feedback will be easier as well.

Architecture of a CMS

I am building a custom Content Management System for my client, using C#2008, ASP.Net technology. I am looking for advice regarding the architecture (application layout, database layout etc) of such a system.
Anyone here have any experience design / developing such a system? Any websites that I can get more information from?
Any open source CMS out there?
Thanks in advance.
Any open source CMS out there?
Check out Umbraco, its very good, not suitable for everything (depends on your sites content really) but you get so much for free that it would be silly to not give it a look over, its not a small bedroom hack up job.
Regarding creating your own CMS, I'd probably try to steer you away from it, its not for the faint of heart unless your content demands are very niche. Even then its better to build on top of something else if at all possible.
ASP.net MVC would be worth a look too if you are going down that code your own route, would save you some headaches.
DotNetNuke is a good open source CMS is specifically for ASP.NET development. Definitely worth a look.
I've written a blog post about content modeling and data stores for content management systems. I think it could be useful: Blog post: Get more out of your content: content modeling and data stores

Asp.net webparts or portlet like functionality

What is the best way to let other parties use your website as their own content using their own style ?
We have build a small website for a customer, asp.net, .net framework 3.0. Now the customer wants other parties to be aple to use our website in their own websites while maintaining the styling of the costumers website.
I have done nothing like this before and don't even know what to google, so any help is appriciated.
I know you can do this with sharepoint, but to use sharepoint for such a small site seems like a lot of overkill
it sounds that portlets is a good name for what they want. but googling portlets draws me in the world of java and doesn't give me a lot of info on what the other parties would have to do to make it work.
a simple Iframe would probably take me a long way, but how can you get the styling done within an Iframe
webparts also sound interesting , but they seem more for in project sharing then letting people use them in their own site.
It is a small website and the logic and backend communication is pretty good contained, so a complete rework of the frond-end is not a big problem.
Once again, any help is appreciated !
Omar Al Zabir has a book on how to build a Portal in ASP.NET- here is a link to his Website.
You might want to look at his Dropthings portal.
Yes, portlets are pretty much Java-only, despite any talk of standards.
If you can encapsulate your pages in web parts or user controls, that would make it easy to style them, and even to parameterize them: a web part can be configured.
You can use Kalitte Dynamic Dashboards for creating professional dashboards and portlets.
More information can be found at www.dynamicdashboards.net

Contextualization in ASP.NET C# or Javascript

Wondering if anyone knows of any open source code about contextualization via JS (javascript) or ASP.NET ? That is, contextualization of content - determining "what" content is?
Its an interesting area and I cant seem to find any previous projects on it ?
Really appreciate any help ?
Presumably you are looking to build something like a search engine that can find a relevant document in a sea of nondescript documents which do not contain any metadata, only their textual content.
Computers are notoriously bad at this kind of categorization, for the same reasons that they can identify spelling, but not grammar errors. It's a pattern matching problem that relies on human context to determine the correct solution.
Google is good at this because it relies on human behaviors to create relevance (like how many links from other sites a page has).
The closest thing I can think of that will do what you want (without actually attaching genuine metadata to each document by hand) is full text search. The Wikipedia article has several references to software that does this.
Depending on what you want to do, it may be easier to mine your page for context after the conent has been rendered. That way you are ensured that you have the context that the user is viewing the page. Here is a post to a jQuery plugin that highlights target words on a html page.
Here are some other plugins you might want to review:
quickSearch plugin
QuickSilver Search plugin

Generate dynamic flow-chart

We are looking for some code/component that can create a flow-chart (image) dynamically, preferably in .NET/C# (although a Silverlight/Flash-component that takes a XML/JSON-feed will also be fine).
For example we have a (business) quote that goes through te following steps before it becomes final:
Requested -> Pending -> Ready for revision -> Under revision -> Final
And as an extra step there is the possibility to go from 'Under revision' back to 'Pending'.
So the component/code should draw something like this (where 'Under revision' would be the active status for this quote):
Example chart http://www.wowtah.nl/flowchart-example.gif
The reason that we are not just creating static GIF-images (and load the correct one on demand) is that these steps can vary per customer implementation of our product. So we're looking for a way of dynamically show the user the workflow steps that are configured for them.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Take a look at Microsoft MSAGL
I built a workflow solution a while back and evaluated a number of diagramming controls, including the MindFusion control. I settled on the Syncfusion diagram control, primarily for its ease of use for an end user (especially when drawing connections).
I'm using the WPF edition, but they make editions for ASP.Net and WinForms. It has methods for exporting to images.
These are some of the components that I can remember evaluating; I'd recommend giving them a shot and seeing which you like best.
Syncfusion,
NWoods,
yWorks,
Nevron,
EasyDiagram
MindFusion looks like they have some good diagramming controls that may work for you:
http://www.mindfusion.eu/diagramming.html
In the meantime there are also open source diagramming libraries that you can find on Codeplex and Google code.
A very deep one with many features and very flexible is
http://nshape.codeplex.com/
Perhaps easier to program but more limited in scope
http://www.dalssoft.com/diagram/

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