Visual Studio 2010 was released last week and I’ve wanted to get my hands dirty with it for a few months now.  So far, I like what I see.  My first application will be a conversion of the Graffiti CMS latest 1.3 branch to the new .Net framework.  I’m doing a custom version that integrates the extras I am using into the project more completely and upgrades the entire set to .Net 4.0.  I’ll make the code available on this site when I am complete.

One of the things that I don’t like about the current 1.3 branch is that it seems like code is everywhere.  There are themes at various web sites, some of which work while others are just broken.  Plugins are scattered everywhere and it took me some time to track down the set of plugins that I wanted to use.  Then there’s this huge Graffiti Extras package to tackle.  The package states that you can rebuild it using a tool that is not in the source for Graffiti CMS.  As a result, I’m working through all of the plugins, widgets and extensions to create embedded resources for each and I’m separating each plugin out into it’s own project.  My custom implementation will contain:

  • Graffiti.Core
  • Graffiti.Core.API
  • BlogExtensions remapped to Graffiti.Extensions.BlogExtensions
  • ThemeExplorer remapped to Graffiti.Widgets.ThemeExplorer and Graffiti.Plugins.ThemeExplorer
  • PollManager remapped to Graffiti.Widgets.PollManager
  • SocialWidget remapped to Graffiti.Widgets.SocialWidget
  • SiteMap remapped to Graffiti.Plugins.SiteMap
  • … (too many to list)

Each of the above will have a project and a corresponding dll.  I opted for this change so that it made it easier to uninstall and install various components of the system.  I didn’t have a need for everything in GraffitiExtras and as such I found it would be better if I didn’t have to upgrade an entire set of plugins and widgets just to upgrade one widget.  Again, the source will be made available once I am done with it.