Karl Kopp

In my previous post I stepped through the process of upgrading your base Umbraco 4.0.x build to the latest 4.5.x build. At the bottom, I noted I would write a post about how to update your XSLT. I expected to write a big post with lots of examples. Turns out, there is only one thing you need to know to successfully move to Umbraco 4.5.x and that one thing is…

Blackpoint DK Umbraco XSLT conversion tool

That's all :) Its a great online tool that helps do the leg work of moving to the new XML schema, and the results I've had to date have been really solid. Try it, and let me know if you have any issues - keen to see what other people experiences are…

I have seen a few people ask for details on how to upgrade Umbraco 4.0.x to 4.5.x and since I was doing a site here at Next Digital, I thought I would document a quick 'how-to' on how to get this done.

1. Start by downloading the correct version of Umbraco 4.5.x (I used the .NET 3.5 version of 4.5.1). Note: If you extract the files using the Window's built in compression tool, you will need to 'UNBLOCK' the ZIP file from the zip files properties dialog before extracting, otherwise your installation may not include all the required files.
2. Backup your existing Umbraco site and database. I just did a dump of the database, and zipped up all the files in my webroot folder.
3. I then copied the App_Browsers, App_Data, bin, install, umbraco and umbraco_client folders over the existing folders (in my 4.0.x build, there was no existing App_Data folder).
4. Rename your existing web.config to web.config.old and copy over the new web.config
5. Open the new web.config and copy all the settings in <appSettings> from your old web.config file. Note: there is a new config setting for umbracoContentXMLUseLocalTemp that doesn't exist in the old config. Make sure to keep this setting. Also copy over the existing paths for the umbracoReservedUrls, umbracoReservedPaths, umbracoContentXML, umbracoStorageDirectory and umbracoPath as they now start with a tilda (~).
6. In the web.config, update the <mailSettings> settings if you use a custom SMTP server.
7. Modify the 2 membership providers (umbracoMembershipProvider and UsersMembershipProvider) in the web.config and remove the passwordFormat="Hashed" from both as the password in the existing database is not hashed.
8. From the /config directory, copy over the new config files (scripting.config, ClientDependency.config, Examine.config, ExamineSettings.config)
9. In the xsltExtensions.config file, remove the /bin/ directory from the assembly name, this is no longer required.
10. Now open the site homepage in a browser and Umbraco should take you to the installation screens. Step through the process and your Umbraco is now up to date with the 4.5.1 build!!

Update 1 (28/07/2010)

A few more updates that may be required are listed below:

1. In the umbracoSettings.config, you should add to your existing file the following keys under the content node: PreviewBadge (adds the new preview badge to pages that are previewed), UmbracoLibraryCacheDuration (will allow media and member data to be cached) and if you want to use some new packages you will need to add UseLegacyXmlSchema = false (you will need to update the XSLT if you do this). 
2. Also in umbracoSettings, you will need to add the <help> section to enable the new help.

This will update the core of your Umbraco build, but there will be a few final steps. You will need to:

• Update all your XSLT to the new format. I'll do another post with some examples later.
• Update any packages you may use to the latest version (wish there was an easy updater for Umbraco like WordPress ;).

We recently had a situation where we had a client site that was built in Umbraco perform very poorly. I was asked to take a look, and the first thing I did was to use the umbdebugshowtrace=true query string to see what controls or XSLT were performing badly. To my surprise, everything seemed normal, the the pages were generated within 200ms.

So I opened up Charles Web Proxy, and watched a few requests. I then noticed that the image requests were taking AGES when we were using ImageGen. Digging a bit deeper, I noticed that on the server, every time a request was made for an image that used ImageGen, the CPU would spike to 100% for a few seconds then drop. Strange.

I logged on to the server, and found the cached directory thinking that the cache files weren't being written due to a permission problem. Explorer waited. and waited. and crashed! So I jumped on to our.umbraco.org and found this post about a bug in ImageGen. It seems that the cache files weren't being deleted or reused, so we had millions of files written to the cached directory!

I jumped to a command prompt, ran 'rd /s cached', waited 45 minutes (!), updated the DLL and ASHX files from the patch available here, and everything seems to be back to normal with CPU load well below 10%.

Just realised some trolls have been posting a bunch of blog comment spam. Little script kiddies! Turned off comments and I'll look at a solution tonight. Unfortunately, Pers blog post is returning a 404 :( Some more options are listed on Darrens blog though so will read through those tonight.

Daily update #2.

• On my previous post regarding the ACMA blacklist, I in no way condone the materials hosted at ANY of the sites listed. I just honestly believe the whole concept of using a blacklist is absolutely pointless, cripples the web, and achieves NOTHING - content of that nature pops up faster than you can add the URLs to the blacklist, and those that want to get it will always be able to circumvent it. Today they even blacklisted a tuckshop and a dentist, which casts further doubt on its usefulness. I actually thought the Howard governments NetAlert program was much better, although under publicised.
• ASP.NET MVC has gone RTM.
• We released a new site for Ford Performance Racing today - nice work boys
• The upcoming Umbraco 4.0.1 release will include a sweet new XSLT visualiser - looks awesome! Still would love version control on the XSLT files just like the content :)
• Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is now out
• More details on Mac OS X / Safari hack in a good interview on ZDNet. And from this statement, maybe the SDL Microsoft implemented is working?

Why Safari?  Why didn't you go after IE or Safari?

It's really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit.  The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don't do.  Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don't have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you'd find in Windows.

It's more about the operating system than the (target) program.  Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too.  The underlying OS doesn't have anti-exploit stuff built into it.

I just saw on the Umbraco website that they are one of the first few apps available in the Microsoft Web Application Gallery. Here is the link to the Umbraco Web PI. This is a very nice platform that allows you to install Umbraco in one single click! This makes it very easy to kick the tires of Umbraco for those that haven't already! Nice work guys!

So if you haven't tried it yet, why not download and install now:

Just wanted to remind anyone thats interested that the Umbraco CodeGarden 2009 is comin up and you can register online. Unfortunately I can't make it, but I know Aaron is going, so any of you Oz peeps, make sure to ping him and say hi!

Made a few minor updates to the blog last night. Mostly cosmetic, but hopefully fixes a few bugs lying around:

• Removed the links in the footer that were wrong.
• Fixed the RSS feed so the date and time is correct. Originally I was getting the date time with:

umbraco.library:FormatDateTime(@createDate,'r')

• but that would show it as GMT (I live in Melbourne, hence GMT +10) so I changed this to

umbraco.library:FormatDateTime(@createDate,'g')

• which now gives the correct time
• Also fixed links in my RSS feed (removed extra /blog directory in the URL, thanks Az)

We often go out to client sites and walk them through a demo of the technology we have proposed in our responses. This allows the customer to get hands on experience with the product, as well as ask any technical or functional questions they may have.

For ease of setup and reuse, we use a 'canned' demo based on the many freely available packages for Umbraco, with the occasional customisation depending on the clients scenarios.

One item we use heavily is the Create Website Starter kit, which has now been release as version 2.0 on Codeplex. The new version is fantastic. Some of the highlights for me include:

• The new UI looks excellent, something clients are always critical of. Kudos to Sam Grady.
• The XSLT search is in the new search by Douglas Robar
• It now includes a URL Rewriting package action by Richard Soeteman
• The Contact Us form is improved and now has a nice admin interface
• And as always, it installs with a few simple clicks thanks to being an Umbraco Package.

Well done to all the guys involved. Something I have always been a strong advocate of is these type of usable, feature rich packages and modules, and this is a great example of what the community can achieve.

As iPhones become more and more popular client of the Interweb, more and more of our clients are looking to have content specifically rendered for the iPhone version of Safari.

Now, thanks to Tim Geyssens (who has done a tonne of nice work for Umbraco) this is very easy to achieve for our Umbraco clients.

Tim has created an iPhone template package that was easy to install (it comes as an installable Umbraco package) and use. The only tweaking I needed to do was to change some JavaScript for situations when the Umbraco install is using directory paths instead of file / .aspx paths. Here is what I changed:

<script language=javascript>

if((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i))||(navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i)))

{

var suffix = "/iphone";

var startPos = location.href.length - suffix.length;

if (location.href.lastIndexOf(suffix , startPos) != startPos)

{

document.location.href=location.href + "/iphone";

}

}

</script>

As you can see, only a small tweak of JavaScript for the master template and its working a treat :) Nice work Tim!