Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Once your website is up and running, your content contributors can add and edit content on their own, without the need to work with developers or the IT department. First time developers of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 face a relatively steep learning curve. Not only are they expected to be conversant in the Microsoft .NET Framework, they are also required to be familiar with the concepts of MCMS 2002. Many beginners to MCMS start out by looking at the example site that ships with the product; tweaking it, dissecting it and turning it inside out using the obscure code comments as markers. However, when it comes to starting their own website from scratch, many are baffled ? where do they begin? This book exists to answer that question; teaching the essential concepts of MCMS 2002 in a clear, straightforward and practical manner. Containing answers to some of the most asked questions in developer newsgroups, this book is a treasure trove of tricks and tips for solving the problems faced by MCMS developers. This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn?t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It?s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server
Credits
About the Authors
Introduction

Channel Rendering Scripts


A channel rendering script is so named because it is the page that gets displayed (or rendered) when the URL matches that of a channel.

The beauty of channel rendering scripts is that they work even though the channel has no postings. Using a channel rendering script, you cut two steps from the process—creating the template gallery item and creating the posting.

Channel rendering scripts are usually used to display a page that shows how the channel is positioned in the web hierarchy when no postings exist for the user to peruse. Another popular use of channel rendering scripts is in the implementation of framed sites as we shall see later.

Creating a Channel Rendering Script

Channel rendering scripts provide an alternative to assigning a default posting to the channel. Let's use this technique to create the summary page.

Normally, you would simply create a new web form and build the channel rendering script from scratch. Since we have already built a working script...