New and Improved Dropthings – the Open Source Web 2.0 AJAX portal

I have made some significant improvements and bug fixes on the latest 2.5.4 release of Dropthings, my open source Web 2.0-style AJAX Portal built on ASP.NET 3.5, Linq to SQL, Linq to Xml, Silverlight, Enterprise Library, Unity, Velocity, and what not. All the cool production quality techs you want to see in action are there in Dropthings – in a production quality open source project that powers critical portals around the world.

You can get the latest code from here:

http://code.google.com/p/dropthings/

I have uploaded some how to video tutorials to help you get started with Dropthings easily and troubleshoot common problems.

Here’s a list of new stuffs that were added and stabilized in this new release:

  • Run Dropthings under a virtual directory.
  • Widget drag & drop, add/remove improvements and many bug fixes on some not-so-common use cases.
  • Velocity Caching support. Dropthings can now be run in web farm and/or web garden mode and use Velocity for the distributed cache. This gives you more scalability and you can deploy on a large web farm and run a heavy traffic website. I have done enough load test to prove Velocity does make Dropthings scale. You can turn on/off Velocity from web.config. Just create a cache store named “Dropthings”, turn on the config and you are good to go.
  • AspectF implementation to put sensitive operations under transaction, retry, logging and error handling. Error logging is more streamlined. There are two log files where one log contains information and the other contains exceptions. They are both in App_Data folder.
  • Rich set of xUnit tests in Behavior Driven Development style. Important operations like First Visit, Revisit are now covered under automated tests.
  • Addition of “admin” role and “admin” user in database, who can Manage widgets and assign/revoke roles to widgets. You can setup admin user and admin role in your existing database using the ASP.NET Configuration tool.
  • A new page /Admin/ManageWidgets.aspx which is a one stop shop for managing widgets and permissions. Add widgets very conveniently. See the video tutorials on how to get a new widget coded and deployed in less than 5 mins.
  • More web.config settings to allow customization of key behaviors of the project.

Enjoy the new version. Those who have purchased the old version, I strongly recommend you take the time to upgrade. There’s no DB schema change. But there’s some good amount of code change. Check out the code commit history and the details of the changes are there.

13 thoughts on “New and Improved Dropthings – the Open Source Web 2.0 AJAX portal”

  1. The Uframe is not working in PHP…Please get available the working version of Uframe for PHP.

    It is saying UFrame is working with PHP in your website. But it is not working with any version of Jquery files in php.

    Hope a quick action for this issue.

  2. Where is the Workflow code?
    I have installed and running the latest dropthings code??

    I see comments like this in the code:
    // — Workflow way. Obselete.

    I’m thinking about using workflows in a new project and like to know why it is removed.

  3. I want exactly same thing to be work in my PHP Zend Application. But does this support PHP. As I am went through google code for this it is written it supports only asp .net .

    Please help me.

  4. hello
    I want buidl E-commerce and CMS .
    Can help me how Can I use your project or those.?
    do you use JQuery in your applicaions?
    I want too use EF+EL+CSLA .what’s your opinion?
    is CSLA good architecure for web application?
    ,…
    thanks.
    Continue …..

  5. aha , thank you so much i just watch your video in here :http://www.vimeo.com/11046358 and problem is solved !
    But my widget have no appearace in default page. it’s only appearance when i click in add stuff

    I research method “public List LoadWidgets(EventBrokerService eventBroker)” in WidgetInstanceZone.ascx.cs but that pretty difficult to understand.

    can you give me a advice?

  6. In order to make a new widget appear somewhere on the page, you need to change the page template of the anonymous user which is cloned for each new user. Login using the anon_user@dropthings.com/changeme (see web.config for username and password) and add the widget somewhere. Then logout and you will see every new user gets the widget where you had put it.

  7. Thank you . I see username and password in database. Now , everything is ok !

    I am continuing research you code , It’s pretty difficult but interesting. wishing you happiness and lucky in your job.

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