Stork – New Website is launched

I received a lovely email this morning thanking me for my input and hard work on the development of the new Stork website.

“The brand is 90 years old this year and as part of the birthday celebrations we wanted to create a site which the new generation of bakers, inspired by the likes of Jamie Oliver and Nigella, could engage with and use as hub of knowledge for all things cake.”

You can visit the site at www.bakewithstork.co.uk

EpiServer – Page List Sort by Creation Date

I had the delightful task today of sorting an EPiServer PageList control by creation date.

The EPiServer documentation was of little help except in pointing out the SortOrder property. After some more searching around, I found that this property can be populated by the EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder enum.

Here’s a quick example:

epiPageList.SortOrder = EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.CreatedAscending;
epiPageList.DataBind();

Here’s the full list of enum options available for sorting by SortOrder:

EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.Alphabetical
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.ChangedDescending
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.CreatedAscending
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.CreatedDescending
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.Index
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.None
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.PublishedAscending
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.PublishedDescending
EPiServer.Filters.FilterSortOrder.Rank

EPiServer – Unpublished page custom properties

One of the things I recently discovered about our EPiServer configuration is that quite often we have pages associated with our current page, that haven’t yet been published.

An example of this is when we have a Press Release and other associated press releases that show up in a side bar.

For live, this is fine because we don’t want unpublished items showing up in the list however in edit mode, our content team need to see that the items they’ve associated, work as expected.

The error that we’ve encountered is in edit mode, for each associated press release, if the press release was unpublished we weren’t getting the custom properties for that page (in code), even though the rest of the page object was as expected.

The reason for this is that EPiServer only seems to bring back the custom properties for pages that have been published.

So how do we go about obtaining a full page object for pages which are yet to be published?

This is how we did it:

// If the page is not yet published.
if (page.PendingPublish)
{
    // Check if we're in edit mode
    SystemPageBase basePage = Page as SystemPageBase;
    if (basePage != null)
    {
         PageReference reference = new PageReference(pageId);
 
         // Get the individual Master Language Branch based on the reference above.
         PageVersion pageVersion =  PageVersion.List(reference)
                         .Where(m => m.IsMasterLanguageBranch).FirstOrDefault();
         if (pageVersion != null)
         {
              page = DataFactory.Instance.GetPage(pageVersion.ID);
         }
    }
}

As a side-note, this also alerted us to the fact that page IDs in EPiServer are not always of type Int32. Usually when an Id comes back from EPiServer we can parse it as an int however the IDs that come back from page versions, actually include an underscore (i.e. they’re strings).

Mmm…Mattessons

Today is the day… Two fast (and sausages filled) weeks later and we’re ready for the launch of the new Mattessons website.

Our deadline for this project was determined by a new TV ad that’s coming out today and so the flexibility in timings was somewhat limited.

We decided to use Wordpress for this project which means this is also my first commercial project on the WAMP stack. The decision to go with Wordpress was based on a few different criteria, the first being…time.

Anyone who’s been working with Wordpress for any period of time will know how fast it can be to get a site up and running in no time at all. The time investment comes when you’re developing a complete custom template…enter Mattessons!

As the lead developer on the Mattessons project I had to make some calls as to what amount of content management we were going to be offering to our client. The more they were able to manage, the longer it’d take in the development process. My decisions mostly revolved around the idea of “Lets do what we can to give them control over all content items”.

We did this by employing some nice use of custom fields, the creation of a very basic custom markup language for inserting custom property values into page copy and by creating a system where pages themselves can be pulled into other pages and displayed as promos/previews.

You’ll notice on the homepage of the new website that there are currently two promos being displayed. These promos are pages in themselves, just as are the products in the Our Range section and the footer items.

Wordpress makes it really easy to get information about the current page and it’s child pages which enabled us to create a basic yet powerful hierarchy of products and product ranges. We’re also using a great plugin for relating pages to one another in a more lateral way. This again is being used in a slightly different way than standard by pulling out information on related pages and then obtaining those page details through the standard Wordpress API.

All-in-all this has been a really fun project to work on. It’s been fast paced with a quick turn around and it’s been a joy working with a talented team of managers, designers, QAs and front end developers.

What can I say… “It’s a Primal Thing”.

1000 Reputation on StackOverflow

Today I hit the 1000 reputation points mark on StackOverflow.

Reputation points are given by other users of StackOverflow for giving good answers to other peoples questions and for asking good questions yourself.

I’m a big fan of peer review and reaching the 1000 reputation points mark is a real milestone in my own quest to help other programmers and to ask good questions.

Here’s to the next 1000 !

Shower? That’ll be £30 please!

When was the last time you paid your hard earned money to take a shower? (do we even call it ‘taking’ a shower in this country? Should I say ‘have’ a shower?)

The journey to and from work has been part and parcel of working away from home since the beginning of mankind.

Ever since my second real job, I’ve taken either public transport or driven. I think there comes a time in every persons life when they realise they’re not quite as fit as they’d like to be and for me, that time is now.

As a result of this I made a decision to start cycling to work. Boris would be proud!

I set out and bought myself a new bicycle, helmet, bike lock, new snap proof pedals (since the plastic ones on the bike snapped off after I ‘tested’ the bike at the weekend) and various bits and bobs including a pump and mudguard (this got very expensive, very quickly!).

My route to work takes me through some lovely parts of London including Putney, Wimbledon, and across the River Thames over a distance of 8.9 miles.

18 miles a day, that’s bound to help increase my fitness and keep the old endorphins flowing. Right?

The only problem is, there are no showering facilities at work! I hear your cries, agast with the anguish of having to sit at work all day smelling like a 4 day dead hedgehog lying by the side of a summers road during a heat wave. So what’s a guy to do?

My first thought was that a quick wash in the sink would suffice. This may indeed be the answer and I’ve certainly not ruled it out.

I had this conversation with another potential cyclist at work and I presented my ideas of the sink wash to an unenthusiastic “yeah, you could do that, I guess”.

My second idea involved scouting out other local businesses and finding one with showering facilities. I figured I could just walk into an office each day, greet them with the usual “Good morning, nice to see you again, love what you’ve done with your hair today”, and proceed to shower and scoot.

It was at this point I was presented with a third option by my new cycling friend. “Why don’t we join the gym over the road so we can use their showers? It’s only £30 a month so you’d only have to cycle 10 days each month to have earned that back in saved transport costs.”

I like the idea of being able to have a nice warm shower each morning after a lengthy ride to work, but £30 a month to shower? That seems just a little backwards to me.

Instantly I responded with “What a great idea! Do you think we can convince them to let us just use the showers for free?”. Those who know me wont be surprised that this was my initial reaction. “Payment you say? How about a lifetimes free trial? yes? yes?”.

Usually when I sugest anything that involves negotiating or being a bit cheeky I’m met with groans and smug looks that sugest “You sunny, don’t know the system like the rest of us do, such innocence”. Yes, indeed.

So what would you do in this situation? Would you pay £30 a month to shower? Try to negotiate a fair rate to use the gym’s showers in the morning? Infiltrate other local businesses? or go for the old strip wash in the sink?

Answers on a postcard…(By ‘answers’ I mean comments and by ‘postcard’ i mean in the little box below).

A new project begins – StatPro

Good news! Good for me anyway. During my recent search for a new project and team to work with, I’ve been invited to join the team at StatPro in Wimbledon, working as their SaaS Web Developer.

The role looks very interesting and I’ve been told I’ll be working on a new greenfield project using ASP.NET MVC (C# 3.5+).

Here’s a little bit about StatPro from their website:

StatPro is a leading provider of portfolio analytics and data solutions for the global asset management industry. Having grown from a one-product company StatPro now offers our clients eight core products including data and enterprise reporting solutions. This range of products enables StatPro to provide a unique integrated product offering with a strong competitive advantage.

One of the most important things to me in any company I work with is their passion and desire to firstly, allow the business and it’s staff run in an adaptive and progressive manner, and secondly for them to embrace new technologies as they arise.

StatPro are one of the first companies I’ve seen to be commercially utilising ASP.NET MVC and as someone passionate about new technology and innovation, this really hits my hot buttons. The company have also embraced many of the agile processes and are actively bringing in more Unit Testing and TDD methodologies. Working in iterative cycles also ticks at least one of the boxes and having worked this way before, it comes as a real pleasure to be involved with a company who know what works well.

Finding out what works from both the companies perspective (what value is offered to the business) and also the staff’s perspective (what can I realistically achieve in any given period of time) is a great place to start from and keeps the whole inner workings of the development and business processes transparent.

Throughout my time at StatPro I’ll be blogging about my continued learning’s of ASP.NET MVC, C# 3.5, Web Development and general musings into the life of the nine-to-five London worker.

Luckily I’ll be able to cycle to work from now on and avoid the tube which will be a nice change and might even help get me back to being fit once again. Hey, who knows, perhaps soon I’ll be blogging about keeping trim and attending lunch time yoga classes (It’s a nice idea huh? :p ).

Twitter 101 – Open for business

Over the past couple of years we’ve seen a huge uptake in people using Twitter. Now the company has decided to release a new page on their website called Twitter 101 for Business – A Special Guide.

The aim of the new information seems to be to educate businesses on how Twitter can work for them. This is probably a good thing since most people I talk to about Twitter, who don’t use it, usually reply with “I just don’t get it. Why would anyone care what I’m doing?” and it’s a fair point too.

Now there’s a place business owners can go to find out exactly what Twitter is for and why people might care. All in all I think Twitter have made a good decision doing this. Let’s see how it affects the way more businesses do business in the future.

Ever wondered what the Twitter Admin looks like?

I know I have…

French Blog NoWhereElse is claiming that the Twitter admin panel was recently hacked and they’ve got a bunch of screenshots as proof. I first read about this at Mashable.com where they’re showing just a few of the screenshots.

I’ve decided (for now and for as long as too many people don’t complain) to post all of the screenshots here including the ones many people aren’t willing to show at this time.

The screenshots could be fakes and noone at Twitter has yet confirmed if these are indeed the real McCoy but fake or real, they’re certainly very interesting. If they are real they offer a unique peek at the inside workings of the Twitter mothership as never-seen-before. Enjoy…

[View with PicLens]

Algorithmic Thinking

al⋅go⋅rithm [al-guh-rith-uhm]

–noun
a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, as for finding the greatest common divisor.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

One of the greatest things I’ve found about the work I do is that concepts from one field often tend to automatically map over to work I do in other contexts. When I first learned about Object Orientated Programming, I started to see the world in terms of objects. I’d look at the TV and think “hmm, the TV has XY and Z properties and these methods exist for doing those things and if event q happens, method k gets fired”.

These things tend to mellow out after a short period of time but it’s hard to learn anything without it becoming part of what you do and how you operate. The more things you learn the more choices you have about what behaviours you exhibit and this leads me to the idea of Algorithmic Thinking.

As programmers, we all know about algorithms and their importance in software engineering but what about in the rest of the world. Since the idea of algorithms isn’t one from programming but one from mathematics, and mathematics being the way in which we model the world around us, it makes sense for us to take our knowledge of algorithms and to begin thinking about other things in a similar way.

One of the great things I love about algorithms is that they’re implementation neutral. That is, the algorithm defines the finite series of steps to follow to get result x but it doesn’t tell you how you should implement those steps. That’s part of being creative and artistic and the more of each of those you are, the more exciting it becomes to figure out new ways of doing lots of different things.

Every now and then I spend a little bit of time thinking completely algorithmically so that I can more easily build up that part of my brain that deals with problem solving. If I have the cook dinner, what algorithm am I going to use? Maybe I’ll come up with three or four different ones and then pick that one that best suits what I want.

Then I get to implement that algorithm and figure out different ways I’m going to go about that. If step one is to get the ingredients out of ther cupboard how am I going to implement that behaviour? Will I simply walk up and get them out? Maybe I’ll climb up a small step ladder to reach? Perhaps I’m going to put some music on and dance my way over to the kitchen? The beauty in this part is that you get to be as creative as you can imagine.

I tend to think of things in terms of puzzles, whether it’s cooking a meal, writing a computer program or simply figuring out what’s going to come next in a movie. Part of my love for being on this planet is our ability as humans to solve puzzles and problems and to always be creating new ways of doing things.

I’m interested in what kinds of fun algorithms people can come up with for every day tasks. Whatcha got?