Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET : Community News

Are You Building Cool Solutions with Vista & Office?

interscape — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:33:00 GMT

I'm helping Microsoft coordinate some launch efforts in the Southwest US. So if you live and work in one of the following areas:

Las Vegas
Utah
Colorado
Arizona
New Mexico

... and are building cool solutions on Office 2007, Windows Vista, or .NET 3.0, please read this post.

Microsoft, Yahoo Adopt Google Sitemaps

interscape — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:04:19 GMT

News.com is reporting that later today, Microsoft and Yahoo will announce that they are adopting the Sitemaps 0.90 format, formerly known as Google Sitemaps. Now, Community Server users can submit their existing Google Sitemaps feeds to be indexed by the other two top search engine players as well.

This is definitely the best thing to happen to search since OpenSearch.

Adding OpenSearch for your CommunityServer Site

interscape — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:45:00 GMT

So last night, I had this really random idea to create an OpenSearch Provider for LonghornBlogs.com. That way I could search my site from IE7's search box. In the process, I discovered that my search is broken there, so I decided to create them for several of the main Microsoft community sites instead:

Maybe Telligent will create an OpenSearch directory for all the CS communities out there. We'll have to wait and see. Anyways, if you want to write your own, I'll show you how!

Writing Your Own Provider:

Here's what a CS 2.0 OpenSearch provider looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Your Name Here</ShortName>
<Description>Your Description Here</Description>
<Url type="text/html" template="http://www.yoursitehere.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?q={searchTerms}&o=Relevance" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

When you form your URLs, make sure they are UrlEncoded first, or they'll throw an error.

Installing Your OpenSearch Provider:

You'll have to add a hyperlink to the provider on your website. Just use the following syntax for your link: <a href="#" onClick="window.external.AddSearchProvider("http://www.yoursitehere.com/yoursearchprovider.xml");">

That's it! It's really very simple. Of course, you can add a lot more information to your OpenSearch provider. Amazon's A9 has all the details.

E-mail Address Change

interscape — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:29:00 GMT

My HomentumRealty.com e-mail address no longer works. If anyone's trying to contact me, please use my InterscapeUSA.com e-mail address instead. Thanks guys!

Posting to weblogs.asp.net From Word 2007

interscape — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:04:00 GMT

Ever since Telligent updated weblogs.asp.net to CommunityServer 2.1, I’ve been anxious to try blogging from Word 2007. But the directions in the “Help” link in Word 2007 are incorrect. Fortunately, Chris Garrett already found the solution: the correct MetaBlog API URL is http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/metablog.ashx. Woo hoo!