Slowly I am getting a nervous breackdown searching and reading the topics of this forum concerning "Problems of converting from VS2003 to VS2005", solving one problem  and after a while getting the next error ...

Although I love CSK, am about to forget about it and start with DNN or something else. Just want to ask you experts, especially jody and Billkrat:
You spend so much time and energy and answer all the questions carefully and precise. Why don't you put a working version of CSK/GCN (compatible with VS2005 and .NET 2.x) for the people to download and save yourself and the other user? It would be the most "GREAT HELP" for the csk user.

Best regards and thanks,
SaintX

I'll address it from my end.  I do not have a version that will work out of the box for most people.  Most folks have customized versions and my mods go a bit to the extreme (paypal integration, revamps of comments, a forum module etc)...  I simply do not care to support upgrading and install issues for those whom have existing installs.  In teory it would be nice but there are three different CSK 2.0 projects - and personally my own version when it is released will not be a straight upgrade for the CSK 1.1 version.  It takes a lot of effort and coding and myself - being the power of only one - simply do not want to have to deal with the added responsibility as I do this as a hobby and not for a living.

 

While I am happy to help others with 1.1 and conversion issues - it would do most people absolutely no good to use my 2.0 version as I have so many mods and tweaks to it - and no actual SQL conversion scripts - it would just be too much of a hassle.

 

Thats my reason why I do not post a 2.0 version - until I have Cavalia finished - and I can readily admit it will not be a straight up conversion process - although try as I might from working with a stock release - its just not going to happen and be able to leverage the 2.0 features..

 

 

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-- jody
My Blogs on .Net 2.0 and Ajax
http://csk.wbcb.com
http://ArtbyJody.com

I used the one posted on Redd's site and was up and running in VS2005 in a handfull of minutes, plus another half an hour or so to add the changes to the image handling code posted by Bill etc. As a base set of code to work from it appears fine.

 

 

I am also about to forget about CSK/GCN, .NET and Microsoft Technology at all. VS2005 gives you no possibility to choose and FORCES you to convert your projects to it's format. Whereas it (still?) can't success to convert the projects in an ordinary way and the developer gets error message after error message and has to spend hours to find the exact reason out and fix the problem.  It's a real doom loop ...

Thomas:  The  and other web centric projects can be difficult in some instances to convert the 'web project' and still have the same look and feel  that VS 2002 supported.  You may want to try the new addin for VS 2005 - more info here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/05/442032.aspx  - it supports the old style and handles some of the conversion issues a bit more gracefully.

 

 

 

 

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-- jody
My Blogs on .Net 2.0 and Ajax
http://csk.wbcb.com
http://ArtbyJody.com

Yes, this is typically "Microsoft"! It has been always the same: It releases software with some bugs or improvement requirements and then other people, companies or developer have to fix them!!!

BTW, thanks a lot Jody for the tip, it seems agaain like a bit hard work.

Regards

saintX:

Slowly I am getting a nervous breackdown searching and reading the topics of this forum concerning "Problems of converting from VS2003 to VS2005", solving one problem  and after a while getting the next error ...

You spend so much time and energy and answer all the questions carefully and precise. Why don't you put a working version of CSK/GCN (compatible with VS2005 and .NET 2.x) for the people to download and save yourself and the other user? It would be the most "GREAT HELP" for the csk user.

Best regards and thanks,
SaintX

Hi saintX,

http://www.global-webnet.net/CSKDotNet/default.aspx is my attempt to get a "2.0" next to our Starter Kit in the ASP.NET forum list in the upcoming months.   My motivation is certification; I am currently on a six month contract for a .NET 1.1 project.   I'm going to utilize my time away from my family, and platform of preference (.NET 2.0), to learn and apply best practices for architecture and development by Microsoft standards.  At the end of this six months I plan to take my exams (MCPD) and have a Starter Kit to present for an official 2.0 CSK stamp of approval.

Currently, I have to setup the CSK for an old client  that I'm writing a Season Ticket Renewal module for so I'm temporarily delaying the architecture work so that I can fix some basic issues like community image location - when you setup a community there should be one place (that community folder) where "all" images should be available to include the admin page logo, advertisements and uploads.  I also have their template page setup to be a WYSIWYG design time experience with the code-behind and javascript fixing links during runtime.

The site will offer more (if it isn't to late to change your mind) but I'll share some of my current work:

1. Document, document, document - go to where developers "expect" to find information, i.e. the default.aspx page, and give clear instructions and paths to complete basic tasks.
   
2. I have all of the source code (Engine folder) pulled out into a separate assembly.  It not only speeds up compile time but is readily supported by NDoc under VS2005 so I can easily create the CSK20.CHM file (available for download from the above link).   The source code comments will de-mystify many of the more technical processes.
   
3. For the above mentioned client I am creating a CHAT and RSS Subscription service module.  When I get to this point I want to research DNN modules and see if I can adopt their standard and/or create an interface and adapter for the CSK;  my plan is to make it easier for developers to add downloadable modules to their system.
   
4. I'm creating integrated mobile support (once again for the above mentioned client).   Each section will have a new checkbox to designate it a mobile page - I will have a mobile page template similiar to the existing pages but designed for mobile devices.

These are but a few of the "basic" features that I will be integrating into the starter kit. 

Hate to lose you saintX, perhaps you'll reconsider?  I think we have the potential to be as big as DNN in time. 

 

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Get the Community Advanced Starter Kit
http://www.CaskDotnet.com

Psss, I think it's not difficult at all to update CSK to .net 2.0. However, I agree that the future success of the CSK depends of the availability of a supported version together with the other new starter kits ( that of course are inferior to CSK :-))) )

I think Microsoft/Superexpert.com don't do the step due to the effort to convert the security model to the new membership/role provider model, or for the imposibility to use master pages in this project.
But the architecture of the CSK remains great and for years to come !!!

And with good forum and blog modules the success would be huge of course, if there were any way to integrate the modules from communityserver...

[songless] I think Microsoft/Superexpert.com don't do the step due to the effort to convert the security model to the new membership/role provider model, or for the imposibility to use master pages in this project.

Hmmm, you bring up some very good points that I didn't consider....   Now that I've considered them I'll have to figure a way to integrate them and make it work!   I agree with you that the CSK is a superior design - we just have to get it back on the map.....

I'll look into the communityserver's module interface and see if there is enough commonality between them to create an adapter/interface for the CSK. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Get the Community Advanced Starter Kit
http://www.CaskDotnet.com

If you appreciate the ease-of-use and content management features of CSK, I would advise you to avoid DNN.  Not knowing which was a better framework, I installed CSK to manage a couple of web sites, and DNN to manage a third.  I found that DNN was very painful to use.  The content management features out of the box are very weak and I spent a lot of time and money evaluating and buying third-party modules to get it to do things CSK does out of the box.  Perhaps there is a module I didn't find (or was too cheap to buy) that does everything I wanted, but I got frustrated and eventually decided to convert the DNN site over to CSK.  A month ago, I spent a long weekend transferring it's content and I'm glad I did. 

If you are determined to dump CSK, you might want to consider Community Server http://communityserver.org, which powers this site (see the cute icon on the bottom of the page).  It's a commercial product, but they offer a very functional version for free.  I downloaded it and tinkered with it for a day, it does some things very well but other things not very well, but perhaps I just didn't spend enough time with it to figure out how to do it? 

Jon

At the beginning I was looking for some very customizable CMS.
Before getting into CSK I tried DNN first and then CommunityServer. 
My experience with DNN was... poor. I think it was something bigger for the fame.
Then came CommunityServer, interesting but I didn't feel comfortable at all with the way it was coded.

Then tried CSK and at least I find what I was looking for, the code is clear at the first look ( with the exception of the horrible ImageHandler and the terrible skins for the discussion and comments modules ).

Anyway, for disgrace, I think the asp.net portal frameworks avaliable are inferior to PHP ones, but the CSK is very easy to extend and totally free.

For blogs I like DasBlog, free and very good. And well, we have to admit that with Asp.Net 2.0 is pretty easy to develop a portal in few hours

saintX:

Slowly I am getting a nervous breackdown searching and reading the topics of this forum concerning "Problems of converting from VS2003 to VS2005", solving one problem  and after a while getting the next error ...

Although I love CSK, am about to forget about it and start with DNN or something else. Just want to ask you experts, especially jody and Billkrat:
You spend so much time and energy and answer all the questions carefully and precise. Why don't you put a working version of CSK/GCN (compatible with VS2005 and .NET 2.x) for the people to download and save yourself and the other user? It would be the most "GREAT HELP" for the csk user.

Best regards and thanks,
SaintX

Perhaps you have enough to give the new Community Advanced Starter Kit (CASK) for ASP.NET 2.0 C# a chance?   It has a nice GUI Install application that will create the database, tables, stored procedures and functions within 40 seconds.  If you keep all of the defaults the CASK will be a plug and play.   Note: The CASKInstall versions the scripts (if you examine them once installed you'll find they have a -- CASK Ver 0.0.0.0 at the bottom of each script.   I plan to have a system where the scripts are under source control and installed via the CASK Install; for those that use the built in versioning future updates will be automatic even if folks miss versions (it will know what to do).

BTW,  the CASK compiles with no warnings or errors even with XML (NDoc support) turned on - yes, I had to manually document every header - started with over 1000 warnings....

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=CASKDotNet

 

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Get the Community Advanced Starter Kit
http://www.CaskDotnet.com

Thanks dude

Vince Warnock
www.vdub.co.nz

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Vince Warnock - Web Administrator
www.vdub.co.nz
www.wirednz.co.nz
www.kiwitrade.net.nz