Graffiti CMS Beta 2 Review
Posted By: syuhada on Jan 20, 2008
Yesterday I got an email from Scott Watermasysk with the download link to Graffiti CMS Beta 2 file as a response to my email regarding the pre-launched tester. I've downloaded it, installed it and now I'm playing with it.
Does it change much from Beta 1? Of course not. No big development can be done with only about a month (minus holidays for Christmas and New Year). And I think that Telligent will only focus on shipping Graffiti on time. But that's not stopping me from testing this Beta 2. Now let's see the enhancements (from my point of view of course).
Database
If Beta 1 came with MS Access as it's default database, on Beta 2 Telligent introduce VistaDB as their default database. MS Access and SQL Server support will still available and they are also added MySQL to the list. Cool...
VistaDB was chosen as the default because it has better support for multiple environments (Medium Trust, 64-bit, and Mono) compared to Microsoft Access and just like Access, VistaDB is 100% xcopy deployable.
Note: VistaDB is licensed by Telligent. To use it in Graffiti will not require you obtain your own license nor will it require any additional work by your ISP
Configuration
In Graffiti Beta 1, the config files are separated into several files for connectionstring, membership, and settings (which is stored on a folder called __config). Now this folder is removed and all configurations will be under the one and only web.config file.
Home Page
Good news for those who wants to be able to define manually their home page, Beta 2 has an amazing new functions for it. First is the ability to tell Graffiti what articles should be on the home page and what the order is (the default more recent articles on the home page will still be applied if we are not override this).
Second, Telligent introduce what they called Variables. With this, we can have a couple of areas on the home page where we have content that doesn't really fit very well in a post, but we still want to be able to edit it every once in a while (pictures taken from Graffiti website).
Themes
Still no new built-in themes on Beta 2 (I don't think it's a problem ;)) but still related with Variables, there is a new option link called Configure under each theme now.
Once you click configure we will be brought to a new screen which will let us make changes to our Variables.
Categories
Small enhancement on Category, it is now can be sorted as we like (just like we do on the home page).
Migrator
There are two types of migrator in Beta 2. First is the tool to migrate your blog (non-graffiti blog) to Graffiti. This tool originally created by Jayme Davis (see my post about my migration from CS2007 to graffiti), one of Telligent's employee but in Beta 2 it is already built-in.
Second is the DataMover.exe utility which can be used to migrate your Beta 1 database to or from any of the following platforms: VistaDB, Microsoft Access, SQL Server and MySQL.
