Turning ASPLD Into A Simple Umbraco Package

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I started a little project to help me learn ASP.NET C# in more depth, I called it ASPLD (ASP.NET Link Directory) and my vision was to grow it to become a direct .NET competitor to PHPLD.  But reality hit me, and I just didn’t have the time to invest in it (Ok, ok I got bored with it) and I got more interested in other things like PPC & Umbraco.

While clearing out my computer today I stumbled on my old project, which I had started to port into using Subsonic a few months back…  So with my new love of Umbraco in mind, I thought instead of laying it to rest in the ‘Bin De Recycle Of Never Return’ I would turn it into a simplified Umbraco Package for people to use and hopefully adapt and make better then I ever could.  Well I’m half a day in and I’m amazed how much I have done in that short amount of time, the only stumbled block (Well not so much of a stumbling block) is having lots of nested nodes - due to the amount of categories and businesses people could potentially add.

Anyway, I thought I would show a couple of progress screenshots – And just say to everyone, if you have old projects/ideas you started and never finished (I have loads)… Pull the gloves back on, dust off the project folder and have a whirl at porting into Umbraco.  Even if you scale it down to begin with like I have, at least its a start and maybe something useful can come of that thought to be dead idea. [more]

In half a day I have listings in with paging in XSLT (Thanks Tim), category structure sorted, and submission form almost done – Not bad for 1/2 a days work I’d say, especially as this is my first go at a real project :)

Here is an old live version of ASPLD (http://directory.n3o.co.uk/) – And here are some screen shots of my Umbraco Package attempt so far, once finished I’ll give the front end a long needed facelift ;)

umbraco - localhost_1254941427465

Business Directory For Umbraco - By Lee Messenger_1254941457692

Business Directory For Umbraco - By Lee Messenger_1254941504230

4 comments for “Turning ASPLD Into A Simple Umbraco Package”

  1. Posted Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 10:25:07 AM

    I like to call the shortened development effort as "umbraco time"... it's addictive! :)

    Nice job with this, Lee. Looking forward to its continued evolution.

    cheers,
    doug.

  2. Posted Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 11:44:32 AM

    Looking forward to see the result!

    I was wondering about the same ideas, of a open source umbraco link directory, I got a few self programmed, with standard .NET version. But an Umbraco edition would be great.

  3. Posted Monday, January 18, 2010 at 7:57:19 PM

    Looks good. Any progress been made? Would be nice to have it as a package on our.umbraco.org.

  4. Posted Monday, January 18, 2010 at 8:01:29 PM

    Hey Aaron - I actually completed a Beta, and packaged it up. then changed laptops and deleted the file by mistake on the other laptop!!!

    I am going to revisit this at the end of the month though :)

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