ASP.NET 2.0 and MCMS – Try it out now!

Even without MCMS SP2 being available you can already evaluate ASP.NET 2.0 with MCMS!

You cannot use it on a read-write website as webauthor does not yet work with ASP.NET 2.0 but you can configure a website that is configured with ASP.NET 2.0 as MCMS read-only website.

I just tried this and found that all out-of-the-box placeholder controls work fine in this scenario. With custom placeholder controls it depends on the generated client-side javascript code in presentation mode.

So for authoring you need to have a normal ASP.NET 1.0 or 1.1 web site with a template project created with VS.NET 2002 or VS.NET 2003.

To get this working you need to follow the steps below:

1. open VS.NET 2005 and choose the create new website option in Visual Studio 2005
2. enter the URL to point to the ASP.NET 2.0 website and ensure that the virtual path is identical as the one for your working template application on the ASP.NET 1.1 or 1.0 website.

   if your ASP.NET 2.0 site is configured on port 81 and your ASP.NET 1.1 site is configured on port 80 this would be http://localhost:81/templateproject vs. http://localhost/templateproject
    

3. open the web.config of the solution and add the following code to the system.web section:

   <!– + MCMS + —>
   <compilation debug=”true“>
      <assemblies> 
         <add assembly=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Common, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” />
         <add assembly=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Publishing, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” />
         <add assembly=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Publishing.Extensions.Placeholders, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” />
         <add assembly=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Publishing.Extensions.Placeholders.Office, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” /> 
         <add assembly=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Web, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” /> 
         <add assembly=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.WebAuthor, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” /> 
         <add assembly=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.WebControls, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” />
       </assemblies>
   </compilation>

   <httpModules>
       <add type=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Web.Security.CmsAuthorizationModule, Microsoft.ContentManagement.Web, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” name=”CmsAuthorizationModule” />
       <add type=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Web.CmsEndRequestModule, Microsoft.ContentManagement.Web, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” name=”CmsEndRequestModule” /> 
       <add type=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Publishing.Events.PostingEventsModule, Microsoft.ContentManagement.Publishing, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” name=”CmsPosting” />
       <add type=”Microsoft.ContentManagement.Web.Caching.CmsCacheModule, Microsoft.ContentManagement.Web, Version=5.0.1200.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35” name=”CmsCacheModule” />
   </httpModules>

   <globalization requestEncoding=”utf-8” responseEncoding=”utf-8” />
   <pages validateRequest=”false” />
   
   <!– – MCMS – —>
    

4. recreate the directory structure of your ASP.NET 1.1 template project in your new VS.NET 2005 ASP.NET 2.0 project.
5. Add a new tab to the VS.NET 2005 toolbar and add the following DLL to the new tab: Micrsosoft.ContentManagement.WebControls
   Only the three placeholder controls are required. Feel free to remove the other controls from the tab
6. For each template and channel rendering script add a new web form with identical name and location as in your ASP.NET 1.1 project.
   Feel free to use the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 on the new template files and channel rendering scripts
7. Finally drop the placeholder controls to the web forms which represent your template files. Don’t bother about the error messages on the controls. As the VS.NET 2005 integration is not available there is no designer support for the placeholder controls available.
8. Go to Html View and add the PlaceholderToBind property to the placeholder controls. As designer support is not available for VS.NET 2005 you need to do this manually.
9. If you followed the steps above carefully you should be able browse your channel structure using the ASP.NET 2.0 web site.

Important: You should not yet use ASP.NET 2.0 on a production site! ASP.NET 2.0 is not supported by Microsoft without MCMS SP2 installed. The steps above should only be used to evaluate the benefits of ASP.NET 2.0 for a MCMS site now. There is also no guarantee that code developed now for a site as configured above will run without changes after SP2 has been installed!