Roger Martin's Blog

I am surprised I didn’t notice this before or that no one reported it, but there is a small bug in 2.3.3512 on the Manage Users page in the Site admin area. To reduce information overload when user albums are enabled, only user-created roles are shown by default on the Roles tab of the Edit User dialog window, as seen here:

If you want to see ALL roles – including the ones created by GSP to manage security for user albums, then select the checkbox Show roles that support the album ownership and user album features. When you do, a little jQuery script runs that shows all of these roles. In this screen shot, two additional roles materialize out of thin air when the checkbox is selected:

Or at least it does in browsers other than Internet Explorer 8. When IE8 is in the default Standards Mode, selecting the checkbox does… nothing. Well, almost nothing. If the checkbox is selected and you close the dialog box and then make it reappear by editing the same user, the roles will correctly display. But that is hardly the desired behavior.

The first thing I did was download the new jQuery 1.4 release and try it out. As luck would have it, the problem is solved! Selecting the checkbox correctly toggles the visibility of the roles in all major browsers. Phew!

The next version of GSP will either include the latest version of jQuery or else it will link to the hosted one at Google. My current thinking is that it will default to the hosted version for performance reasons but you can always switch to a local copy if you want.

But you don’t have to wait for this fix. There are two ways to update your current installation of GSP to the latest jQuery library:

1. Download the latest minified version of jQuery and copy it to the gs\script directory in your GSP installation. As of today the file is named jquery-1.4.min.js. Then update the jQueryScriptPath setting in galleryserverpro.config to point to this file.

2. Even easier is to tell GSP to use the hosted version at Google. Open galleryserverpro.config and update the jQueryScriptPath setting to http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js.

jQuery is a powerful library that helps make web pages come alive with rich interactivity. Currently I only use it in a few places in the Site admin area, but I plan to start using it throughout GSP. It will let us do some really cool things that previously I considered far too difficult to even attempt. Stay tuned!

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The headline gives away the surprise at the end of this post, but first let me tell you what’s been going on.

I previously blogged about how I am taking a temporarily break from full-time work on GSP to restock the savings account through a programming contract. That started in August and looks like it will continue for a few more months. It has been a real bummer being away from GSP – it is so unsatisfying to have so many things I want to do but not enough time to do them.

Your support continues to amazes me. In the last couple weeks there were three $100 donations. I truly appreciate every gift and am doing my best to get into a position where GSP is self-sustaining. Ultimately I plan to bring developers on staff to speed up the pace of development.

Work on GSP continues, but at a little slower pace than when I was at it full-time. Each evening I have a go, beginning with catching up on forum threads. There are a couple things you can expect in the coming months.

SQLite support in the Web Platform Installer (WPI)

Microsoft included support for SQLite in Web Platform Installer 2.0, released a few weeks ago. I am working with them to create a new package that takes advantage of this. This will allow an even easier installation process for GSP because you can use the file-based, self-contained SQLite database engine rather than SQL Server.

As long as I am modifying the package, I am trying to add support for choosing the type of SQL authentication for SQL Server users. The current version requires that you use a SQL login account – support for Windows authentication is not supported. Sounds easy enough, but the Web Platform Installer does not appear to allow for this. I am waiting to hear back from Microsoft as to whether we can somehow shoehorn this in. If not, we’ll have to settle for SQL-only authentication for a while.

Bug fixes

There are a few bug fixes I’d like to get out, so I’ll probably refresh all the packages when the WPI version is released.

DotNetNuke module

Today I am publicly announcing that Gallery Server Pro will soon be released as a DotNetNuke module. You have probably heard of DotNetNuke – it’s the most popular Content Management System (CMS) for .NET. Below is a screenshot of a default DNN installation with the GSP module running in a page.

The module preserves all the features of GSP 2.3 while integrating with core DNN functionality such as user membership and site-wide searching. I am nearly done with the coding – just a handful of items left that I think will take about 40 hours or so to finish up. Finding those 40 hours is a real challenge, so I can’t provide a firm release date. I can tell you it won’t be within the next month, but I can also tell you that I want to get it out the door as soon as possible.

The module will be released as a commercial product, although no price has yet been set. The goal is that the revenue will pay the bills so that I can continue to offer the stand-alone version of GSP as a free open source product. Let me repeat – there are absolutely no plans to begin charging for the regular version of GSP. I adore the donation model and it is one of the things I am most proud of. That will not change.

If you are wondering why someone would pay for a module when they can have the regular app for free, I have thought of that, too. And I’m not worried. Developers who build DNN sites are accustomed to paying for modules that provide the desired functionality. They are typically building sites for customers who are paying good money and they don’t mind shelling out a few bucks to get what they need. Having access to the free regular version doesn’t really help them because it won’t integrate into DNN.

Stay tuned for more information.

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I am pleased to announce that I teamed up with Microsoft to create a greatly improved installation experience using their Web Platform Installer. Installing GSP is now as simple as clicking a few buttons and filling out a few textboxes. No more manually creating the web application or wrestling with NTFS permissions!

Plus, GSP is also being distributed by Microsoft through their Web Application Gallery. Web traffic doubled the day this went live, and it has only increased since then!

The Web Platform Installer has two requirements:

• You must have permission to run the program
• You must use SQL Server to store the data

Those of you who use hosting companies that restrict you from running applications on the server – or who want to use SQLite as your data store – should continue to use the existing installation process. Support for SQLite will be coming soon.

I will step through the installation process to show you how easy it is.

When you click the installation icon (above or on the download page), The Web Platform Installer starts. If you do not have it installed, you’ll be prompted to install it.

Gallery Server Pro is pre-selected, so click Install. The installer determines which dependencies are needed. You list could include more than shown here.

Note that the installer will want to install SQL Server Express. If you already have SQL Server available on your network, you can skip installing it by clicking the X next to it.

When you click I Accept, the installation begins.

After your requirements are installed, the installer asks where it should install Gallery Server Pro.

Then it will ask for some SQL connection info. Remember that the installer supports ONLY SQL Server. Support for SQLite will be coming soon.

The installation is finished. Woo hoo! Look Ma! No messing with IIS Manager, Network Service accounts, or NTFS!

Click the link to launch your new gallery:

Pretty sweet, huh? This is a significant step toward making GSP easier to install and use. Microsoft has been very helpful and they deserve our thanks for supporting open source projects like this. And I look forward to spending more time adding features to GSP and less time in the forums explaining how to give the Network Service account modify permission to a directory. Cheers!

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Ever since introducing the product key a little over a year ago, donations have gone from a trickle to a consistent several hundred dollars per month, with a few months hitting $1000. Your support keeps me from having to get a real job so I can focus on GSP full time.

At least, that is the goal. In reality, my expenses are quite a bit more than $1000 a month, and this summer my savings account hit rock bottom. I called up a few consulting companies, and a fine one named Beacon Technologies hooked me up with a contract at CUNA Mutual Group. I am now working for them full time for the next few months.

Fortunately, these lucrative contracts bring in more money than I can spend, so after a few months the savings will be stoked and I can get back to full time work on GSP. I can’t wait to work on all the cool new features that are swimming around in my head. I am passionate about keeping GSP the top .NET web gallery and expect that it will soon become the #1 web gallery. I will be publishing a roadmap of the next major features in the near future.

Your donations have a direct effect on how much time I spend on GSP. Keep them coming so I can get back to GSP development. Thanks!

During this time I will continue to answer your questions on the forums and provide advice and assistance on your installation and customization efforts. Note that I am not available for contract work at this time, but will be when my CUNA contract is over, which is expected to last through summer 2010.

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Today I posted the latest version of Gallery Server Pro. I added support for a few more media types, included a few new features, and fixed several bugs. Get it here.

Flash video and H.264

I blogged earlier about how to tweak your gallery to add support for Flash video and H.264 audio and video. Now it is included in the default installation. Note that you still have to enable the appropriate file extensions on the Media Object Types page in the Site admin area before you can add these media types. There are examples of videos in these formats in the video gallery.

Hidden directories ignored during synchronization

Starting with this version, any folders within the media objects directory will be ignored if it is marked as hidden. Use Windows Explorer to hide a directory, as seen here:

When a directory is hidden, it is ignored by GSP during the synchronization process.

Allow a membership or role provider to be specified by name

Prior to this release, GSP always assumed the default membership provider was the correct one. That is, GSP required the defaultProvider attribute for the membership, roles, and profile definitions in web.config to point to the the entry used by GSP. For example, by default GSP specifies the SQLiteMembershipProvider for membership in web.config:

<membership defaultProvider="SQLiteMembershipProvider">...</membership>

However, if you are integrating GSP into another application, this might create difficulty since your existing application may already have a default provider, and in some cases you want GSP to use a different one. Now you can go ahead and create the second provider definition in web.config.

<membership defaultProvider="YourMembershipProvider"> 
    <providers> 
        <clear /> 
        <add name="YourMembershipProvider" applicationName="Your application" ...additional stuff here... /> 
        <add name="SQLiteMembershipProvider" applicationName="Gallery Server Pro" ...additional stuff here... />   
    </providers> 
</membership>

Then, in galleryserverpro.config, you tell GSP the name of the membership provider in the new membershipProviderName attribute:

<galleryServerPro>
  <core ... membershipProviderName="SQLiteMembershipProvider" ... />
  ...
</galleryServerPro>

After this change, GSP will use SQLiteMembershipProvider for membership and your existing application is unaffected. You can do the same thing with roles using the roleProviderName attribute in galleryserverpro.config.

I could not figure out a way to programmatically access a non-default profile instance, so profile behavior is unchanged.

Perhaps the best use for this feature is to keep the roles used by GSP separate from the ones used in your application. You already know that you can create roles in the Site admin area to manage the security access your users have to albums. In addition, the user album and owner features automatically create roles behind the scenes. When you have a large number of users and especially when you have the user albums feature enabled, you can end up with a lot of roles. Normally, this isn't a problem - in fact, that is exactly why roles exist. However, if you are integrating GSP into an existing application, you may not want all the extra roles interfering with your "regular" roles.

The solution is to configure GSP to separate the roles into their own application space. A little primer: The ASP.NET membership system can use a single data store for one or more applications. An application is uniquely defined by the applicationName attribute in the membership, roles, and provider definitions in web.config. In the <membership> example above, there are two applications defined: "your application" and "Gallery Server Pro". If you peek in the aspnet_Applications table in your database, you will see one record for each. If you add a third provider with a new app name, ASP.NET will insert a third record into that table.

OK, hopefully that is enough background. Here is how to configure GSP to use the same membership (that is, list of users) but isolate the roles into its own application space. First, in web.config add a definition for the role provider to be used by GSP:

<roleManager defaultProvider="YafSqlRoleProvider" ...>
 <providers>
  <clear />
  <add applicationName="YAF" name="YafSqlRoleProvider" ... />
  <add applicationName="Gallery Server Pro" name="GspSqlRoleProvider" ... />
 </providers>
</roleManager>

In this example, GSP is not the default role provider, so we must tell GSP which one to use. We do this in galleryserverpro.config:

<galleryServerPro>
  <core ... roleProviderName="GspSqlRoleProvider" ... /> 
  ... 
</galleryServerPro>

SQLite users: If you use SQLite as your data store, there is one more step. Add the attribute membershipApplicationName to the role provider definition to tell the role provider the name of the membership provider that stores the list of users. So instead of the example above, it will look like this (replace "SQLiteMembershipProvider" with the correct name):

<roleManager defaultProvider="YafSqlRoleProvider" ...> 
<providers> 
  <clear /> 
  <add applicationName="YAF" name="YafSqlRoleProvider" ... /> 
  <add applicationName="Gallery Server Pro" membershipApplicationName="SQLiteMembershipProvider" name="GspSqlRoleProvider" ... /> 
</providers> 
</roleManager>

That is it. The roles needed by GSP are associated with GSP and the roles needed by the other application (in this case "YAF") are associated with it, and never the twain shall meet, even though they share the same list of users. As I said, I think this will be most useful when you do not want the roles used by GSP to clutter up the rest of your web application. Note that you may need to re-run the install wizard after making this change so that the admin account is correctly associated with the automatically created System Administrator role.

Bug fixes

There were a few bug fixes as well. You can view a detailed report of them on the Release History page.

Install and upgrade info

I have not yet updated the Admin Guide for this version, but the install and upgrade procedure is identical to previous versions, except for one small detail when upgrading. Before you upgrade, open gs\config\galleryserverpro.config and add the .m4a and .mp4 file extensions to the silverlightFileTypes configuration setting. That is, it should be ".mp3,.wma,.wmv,.asf,.asx,.mp4,.m4a". Then upgrade as normal. Later you will rename this file to galleryserverpro_old.config and run the Upgrade Wizard (see the Admin Guide for details). If you didn't make this change, the wizard would import the original value for this setting and you would find that Silverlight may not play your .m4a and mp4 files.

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