This time, you can see a proof-of-concept demo for an admin UI-based theme editor with AI integration by Márk Bartha from Lombiq.

But before that, let us quickly mention the newly available storage indicator for the Media Library by Sára El-Saig, which notifies the user of the free space on the local file system when storing media items.

And thanks to Manuel Tamayo Montero, the Orchard Core documentation has been updated with additional lines to help developers use the Anchor Tag Helper.

This week's topics include adding ShapeResult.Cache() docs, and migrating Media and Resources modules from Gulp to asset manager pipeline, and a demo of the AI Chat Interactions module! Let's just get right into the news!

This week is about Media Field improvements! Adding multi-drag, disabling the anchor button for non-image media items, and a demo about the Gallery editor for Media Field! We have also published a new survey that you can complete to help us improve the Orchard Core project start experience.

This time, you can see a demo about centralizing the Indexing process and having a unified UI for managing Indexes and the Search Settings! But first, let's look at our other topics, like removing Media files for a removed tenant when using Azure Blob Storage, and adding RouteEndpoint cache. Don't forget that you can still fill out our Orchard Core Admin UI experience renewal survey to help shape the future of Orchard Core!

This week's topics are migrating the OpenID module to OpenIddict 6, adding Recipe Roles permission behavior, and we will mention our latest Orchard Nuggets post, where you can learn how to add media management to an ASP.NET Core app. Without further ado, let's dive in!

Using media files, such as images, videos, and documents (like PDF files), is a common requirement for a modern website. Media can enhance user experience by making content more engaging, visually appealing, and/or easier to understand. Fortunately, Orchard Core has a built-in solution: the Orchard Core Media feature. As the description says in the official documentation:The Media module provides a UI to upload and organize binary files that can be used while creating content.Are you new to Orchard Core? It's a great open-source framework, and CMS built on ASP.NET Core. Check out the official getting started docs.Let's see Orchard Dojo and its blog for a real-life example of why you would use the media feature. At Orchard Dojo, we mainly use images for two things:Image of trainers: As you can see on the About page.Images for blog posts: For example, in this blog post.We have flexibility, and we can organize the media files using the media feature.Flexibility: Let's say a trainer got a new haircut and wants to update their image. Then, we can overwrite the old image with the same name in the media library, and that's it.Organization: We can have a “Trainers” media folder with the trainers' images, a “Blog Posts” folder with the images for blog posts broken down to years, and a folder for each individual blog post's images.Now, to turn on the feature, go to Configuration → Features and make sure the Media feature is enabled. You can additionally enable these media features: Media Cache: The feature caches remote media files locally, improving performance and reducing bandwidth usage for sites using external storage like Azure Blob or S3. For example, an online store with product images hosted on cloud storage can deliver images faster to users.Media Slugify: The feature ensures SEO-friendly URLs by automatically renaming new media folders and files to use slugs (e.g., “The team (2020).jpg” becomes “the-team-2020.jpg”). This is useful for improving search visibility, such as when uploading product images for an e-commerce site. The URLs are also just nicer.Secure Media: This feature allows administrators to control access to media folders based on user roles, ensuring only authorized users can view or manage specific files. For example, a company could restrict marketing files to the marketing team while allowing all staff to access shared resources, enhancing security and organization. If you are new to Orchard Core, you can check out user management (including adding permissions to roles) in one of our Dojo Course videos (to learn more about Dojo Course, click here).After enabling the Media feature, go to the Content menu, and you will see the Media Library menu item. Inside the Media Library, you will see one already existing folder named “_Users”. You can read about this here in detail. But in a nutshell, Orchard Core's Media Library includes a “_Users” folder with subfolders for each user, allowing them to manage their own media. New permissions like Manage All Media Folders and Manage Own Media let admins control access while restricting editors to their folders.A few buttons are not self-explanatory in the media library; we will go through them. With the plus button, you can add new folders to the media library. Just click on the folder and type its name. If you click on an existing folder, follow the same process; the new folder will be created as a subfolder of the current one.The invert button inverts the selection, so if you have image-1.jpg, image-2.jpg, and image-3.jpg, and you selected images 1 and 2, if you click on it, images 1 and 2 will be unselected, and 3 will be selected.With these buttons, you can change between list and grid view: This is the button for uploading files. You can select them from your computer, but you can also just drag them into the empty space in your folder in the media library.The delete button is also available, which is mainly for mass deleting files. If you want to do something with only one file, you can click on it, and three options will appear: rename, delete, and download. You can also filter by file name, that option is left to the upload button (4).Turning on different media features will also add new menu items to the Media menu under the Configuration menu. Media Cache: This menu item appears only if you turn on the Media Cache feature, which we discussed earlier. It contains options related to that feature, such as purging all the assets from the cache.Media Options: Here, you can see the configured media options. One option, for example, is Allowed file extensions, which tell you files with which extensions may be uploaded. You can configure these options from the appsettings.json file or other ASP.NET Core configuration providers. You can read more about it here. For example, if you want to allow only image uploads, you can specify extensions like .jpg, .png, or .gif. This ensures users can upload only images, preventing unauthorized file types like .exe or .zip.Media Profiles: In this menu item, you can define custom image transformations, such as resizing or cropping, to ensure consistent formatting across your site. For example, you can create a thumbnail profile that automatically resizes all product images to 200x200 pixels for a uniform storefront display.When you turn on the Media feature, you will also have a new content field, the media field. Returning to our example, we have trainers on the About page on Orchard Dojo. We already have a widget dedicated to trainers. A media field called image was added to the content type. You can see the media field's settings here: For example, when using the “Multiple” option, we can display multiple images in one media field. With the media field added, when we are creating a Trainer Widget, we can select an image: The plus button opens the media library, where you can select your image. After selecting the image, you will get a small preview of it: But let's see the blog post example. In our Blog Post content type, we have an HTML body (with the Trumbowyg editor). This supports adding an image with the image shortcode. Clicking on the “Insert Media” button, you can select the file from the media library. The result will be something like this: [], and the image will appear in the blog post after publishing it.In this blog post, we’ve seen Orchard Dojo's media library and how we use it, but let's look at another example: You have an e-commerce page where you sell tech products. With the Media feature, you can create product content items with media fields to display images of the products (even multiple with one media field). Let's say on the same site, you are also reviewing tech products in a blog-like format. When you are writing a review, you can use the image shortcode in the HTML body to display your photos of the product.To conclude, Orchard Core’s Media feature makes it easy and effective to manage media files across your site. With features like customizable media profiles, caching, and role-based access, it helps keep your media organized.Did you like this post? It's part of our Orchard Core Nuggets series where we answer common Orchard questions, be it about user-facing features or developer-level issues. Check out the other posts for more such bite-sized Orchard Core tips and let us know if you have another question!

We are thrilled to announce that Orchard Core 2.1 is now available! Check out this post to know everything about the latest release of Orchard Core. In the upcoming weeks, we will check out the newest features and additions of Orchard Core 2.1. Let's just get right into the news!

Consolidate admin required fields, add a way to hide ContentTypeDefinitionSettings, and a demo about the brand-new Secure Media feature! Let's see the details! Orchard Core updates Consolidate admin required fields Content fields and some parts added to a content type can be set as required, but there is no visualization before submitting changes. The validation error messages for required fields have inconsistent text messages (some contain a dot at the end, some don't, some are using '' for value, and some have explicit value names in the text. Also, validation error messages are included in the validation summary only, and not under the required field, but for example, in TitlePart everything is correct. All error messages should be written in the same format and text, for example: Please add value for '{0}'. At least some CSS class should be added on all required field labels to be able to identify required fields in the content item form and required validation messages should be displayed under each validated field. As you can see in the screen below, the community consolidated the admin required fields by making the following steps: Add star char for all required fields. Add validation message for required input field like in TitlePart. Consolidated color for start and validation error messages. Consolidated error message texts. Removed client validation from inputs because of inconsistent form behavior dependent on the used browser, selected locale, etc. Add a way to hide ContentTypeDefinitionSettings The intention behind this change was to add a configuration to show/hide the creatable, listable, draftable, versionable, and securable flags. We have a new ContentTypeDefinitionDriverOptions class which contains boolean values that you can use to show or hide the creatable, listable, draftable, versionable, and securable options when editing the content definition of a content type on the admin UI. The ContentTypeDefinitionOptions class offers a method for configuring content type definitions to either display or conceal global settings from appearing on the UI. In certain cases, like when creating CustomSettings or CustomUserSettings, these options are useless. So, it would be nice to hide them instead since they do nothing. So, to quickly demonstrate this change, we enabled the Custom User Settings feature under Configuration -> Features. After, we navigated to Content -> Content Definition -> Content Types and created a new content type called UserProfile. We added some fields to it and set the stereotype to CustomUserSettings to be able to use this content type as a custom user setting. As you can see, only the Securable checkbox is here, we can't set the other content type definitions like creatable, listable, etc. And the reason for that is in the Startup.cs file of the OrchardCore.Users module, we set up the boolean values of the ContentTypeDefinitionDriverOptions class where the stereotype is CustomUserSettings. But we haven't touched the value of the ShowSecurable, so it can be kept its true value. Demos Secure Media feature This demo is about the brand-new Secure Media feature for additional control over who can access media files. The key features include: Restricted Access to Media Folders: A view permission is created for the root media folder and each first-level folder within the media root, allowing administrators to restrict access based on user roles. Enhanced Viewing Permissions: Introduces permissions to view one's own media files and/or those of others, expanding upon the existing ManageOwnMedia permission. Consistent Access Rules for Media and Content Items: Media attached to content items will adhere to the ViewContent permission of the respective content item. This alignment ensures consistent access rules between media and content items. Protection for Temporary Attached Media Files: Secures temporary attached media files in a manner similar to personal user files. Improved Management Permissions in Admin: Refines the manage media permissions to allow media management only when viewing permissions are also granted. This prevents users from managing media they cannot view. Additionally, the creation and deletion buttons in the admin interface are disabled for folders that are not accessible post-creation or for special folders like "_Users" and "mediafields". Handling Unauthorized Access: Introduces a middleware that returns a 404 NotFound response for unauthenticated access attempts to secured media files. This approach not only restricts access but also conceals the existence of the file. Configurable Cache-Control for Secured Files: Sets the Cache-Control header of secured files to no-store by default, preventing their caching. This setting is configurable to suit different needs. Bearer Token Authentication for API Access: Enables bearer token authentication for media files, aligning with Orchard Core's API capabilities. This feature is particularly useful for headless CMS scenarios and external application integrations. We will not do a deep dive here but will try to demonstrate some of the mentioned features. First of all, you need to enable the feature itself by heading to Configuration -> Features where you will find the Secure Media feature. After enabling it, let's add a new folder to the root of the media library under Content -> Media Library. We named it secure and placed a file into this library. Now, let's navigate to Security -> Roles, and find a section called Secure Media. By default, everyone can see everything, so nothing will change if you enable the feature. It's currently only using the root folder and the first folder level; this means you can only have one tier of secured media folder. And as you can see here, you can define who can view media content in our newly created folder, called secure. Now let's play a little bit with the permissions and say that Anonymous users and Editor users don't have permission to view media content inside the secure folder. To test this out, we created a new user with the Editor role and logged in with this user. Head to the admin UI of Orchard Core and open up the Media Library. As you can see, this user can't see the folder called secure and can't access the files inside the folder. As always, if you want to see more about this new feature, head to YouTube for a recording! News from the community Orchard Dojo Newsletter Lombiq's Orchard Dojo Newsletter has 471 subscribers! We have started this newsletter to inform the community around Orchard of the latest news about the platform. By subscribing to this newsletter, you will get an e-mail whenever a new post is published to Orchard Dojo, including This week in Orchard of course. Do you know of other Orchard enthusiasts who would like to read our weekly articles? Tell them to subscribe here! If you are interested in more news about Orchard and the details of the topics above, don't forget to check out the recording of this Orchard meeting!

Add cache busting parameter to media thumbnails and links in Media Library, the log file path now based on the orchard_app_data environment variable, and the latest news about this year's Orchard Harvest conference! Check out our post for the details! Orchard Core updates Add cache busting parameter to media thumbnails and links in Media Library It's recommended to send long far-future client cache TTLs in HTTP response headers for static resources like images, documents, and CSS files, and this is what Orchard Core also does. However, in the Media Library admin, this causes an issue if you change files since thumbnails and View links will now load the old files. This is especially a problem with CDNs, since then it's not just your browser caching these files but the CDN too, which for an ordinary user is impossible to purge, and thus they won't see the updated files. The solution here is to make Media Library admin thumbnails and View links use the usual cache-busting parameter mechanism. Log file path based on orchard_app_data environment variable As described in the document here, setting the environment variable orchard_app_data doesn't change the log location, and logs are still placed under the App_Data folder. So, if you created an environment variable orchard_app_data with value C:\\orchard_data, and ran the application with the Default tenant, you noticed that the Sites folder created at C:\\orchard_data but logs are generated under App_Data. But because the orchard_app_data environment variable has a value C:\\orchard_data, logs should also be created under C:\\orchard_data. The goal of this change was to fix this behavior. News from the community Orchard Harvest 2024 We had the first online Orchard Harvest last year, and it was so great to see that we had 188 sign-ups for the conference! It was an excellent opportunity to share knowledge, talk about development plans and ideas, and foremost, meet the rest of the worldwide community. And of course, we recorded every session, which means they are available on YouTube! Click the link to rewatch all the inspiring talks and discussions! So, after last year, the Orchard Harvest Conference will be held again in 2024. Last year it was held online due to economic reasons. This year the organizing team has decided to finally organize the Orchard Harvest 2024 Conference in person. Each year, we try to attract as many people as possible, and a face-to-face event helps to build truly productive relationships. Last year, we started organizing the event in Las Vegas, so that's one of the reasons we're going to do it here again this year! Also, most of the active people in the community are either from the US or can reach the US. According to the questionnaire, most people wanted the event to take place in September. With the organizers, we agreed that a Thursday and Friday would be best, so it wouldn't take so many working days away from people. They could even stay for the weekend on an individual basis. Finally, we chose the 12th and 13th of September. It's not right after the summer holidays, people don't travel as much then. There are fewer things that could come up for potential participants that would prevent them from participating. Also important is that it does not interfere with any national holiday. We are currently working with the organizers on a contract with the venue. We are also thinking about what themes the event should be based on. Furthermore, we are trying to put together a set of goals that we will try to follow through. Do you have any ideas that you would like us to consider? Please tell us under this GitHub Discussion! There is a possibility of sponsoring the Orchard Harvest conference, and we are currently in the planning stage. We would be open to it if you would like to sponsor our event. If you are interested, you can contact us using [email protected] or the [email protected] email addresses, and you can also write under the mentioned GitHub Discussion page. If you would like to be kept informed about the events around the conference sign up here to receive our announcements about Orchard Harvest. As we move forward, we will keep community members informed of the details, and you will also find every detail in this newsletter too! Orchard Dojo Newsletter Lombiq's Orchard Dojo Newsletter has 471 subscribers! We have started this newsletter to inform the community around Orchard of the latest news about the platform. By subscribing to this newsletter, you will get an e-mail whenever a new post is published to Orchard Dojo, including This week in Orchard of course. Do you know of other Orchard enthusiasts who would like to read our weekly articles? Tell them to subscribe here! If you are interested in more news about Orchard and the details of the topics above, don't forget to check out the recording of this Orchard meeting!

Use the file name instead of the technical name in the Media Field, add Environment accessor in Liquid, a demo about our Login as Anybody module, and a survey about the upcoming Harvest conference! We have a lot to cover today, so let's get started! Orchard Core updates Use the file name instead of the technical name in the Media Field When selecting a file using the attached Media Field, it shows the technical name, which is not user-friendly. With this change, we use the uploaded file name if it exists. Let's try it out quickly! If you set up your site using the Blog recipe, it will create a predefined Blog Post content type. That content type has one Media Field called, Banner Image. We uploaded a new image to the Media Library (Content -> Media Library) and will use that for the predefined Blog Post content item. Once we select our file and click on it, you can see the Media Field displays the file name (Loki.jpg) instead of its technical name. Add Environment accessor in Liquid Currently, you can't check if you are in the Development or the Production environment in Liquid. This change introduces a new environment accessor in Liquid which represents the current hosting environment. The following properties are available on the Environment object as mentioned in the docs: IsDevelopment: Checks if the current hosting environment name is Development. IsStaging: Checks if the current hosting environment name is Staging. IsProduction: Checks if the current hosting environment name is Production. Name: Gets hosting environment name. Here, we have created a new template under Design -> Templates with the name Content__BlogPost. This template is called when displaying the Blog Post content item with the Detail display type, for instance, when accessed from its URL. We have one predefined Blog Post content item so we will use that one for testing purposes. The template itself is straightforward, we just print the name of the environment and two boolean values, as you can see in the screen below. Demos Lombiq Login as Anybody for Orchard Core This demo is about the Lombiq Login as Anybody module for administrators to be able to log in as any user. This feature is only available to site owners, thus it's no way to get around security. It's time to see this feature in action! The easiest way is to clone Lombiq's Open-Source Orchard Core Extensions solution. This Orchard Core Visual Studio solution contains most of Lombiq's open-source Orchard modules and themes, as well as related utilities and libraries, containing the Lombiq Login as Anybody module too. Let's run the Open-Source Orchard Core Extensions solution and head to Configuration -> Features to enable the Lombiq Login as Anybody feature. After enabling the module you'll see a new button on the Security -> Users page. You can log in as any registered user there. This is useful if you want to see how your Orchard Core app behaves for certain users. Here you can see that we are logged in with the admin user, and the Log in as user button appears near the two other users on the list. Once you hit that button, you will be logged in as the selected user and will be redirected to the homepage of the site with a notification "Successfully logged in as {UserName}." If you want to see a short demo of this feature, don't forget to head to YouTube for a recording! News from the community Orchard Harvest 2024 survey For those too young to remember, we had Orchard conferences, called Orchard Harvest. And the conference website was available under orchardharvest.org, but unfortunately, it's not anymore. The last in-person one was in 2017 in New York. So, having another get-together is very much overdue. If you would like to see or get a feeling of how this looked like before, we have a couple of mood videos on the Orchard YouTube channel, like this one from the first conference. The point is that we should think about organizing the next in-person one, and we at Lombiq can take part in that or provide an organizing role with anybody who wants to take part. After last year, the Orchard Harvest Conference will be held again in 2024. Last year it was held online due to economic reasons. But first, we would like to assess the potential interest and what would be needed. You can fill in the questionnaire here, which should take about 5 minutes. Share your thoughts with us in the survey. We are curious about who we will meet in 2024! :) Work with Lombiq! Do you like developing apps with Orchard Core? Would you like to apply your skills to some of the most challenging Orchard Core apps out there, working with other OC experts? Then come work with us at Lombiq, the biggest Orchard Core team in the world! We've been contributors, supporters, and users of Orchard Core and Orchard 1 for more than a decade (Benedek Farkas and Zoltán Lehóczky, the two founders, for even more), with a huge open-source portfolio. There you can also check out the code we write, and some of the projects you could take part in. We do a lot. Ready for keywords? Open-source, Orchard Core CMS, .NET software development, ASP.NET Core MVC, distributed team, cloud-first, Microsoft Azure, self-funded R&D, Vue.js, jQuery, Bootstrap, SASS, training, hosting and operations, GitHub Actions, TeamCity, support, SaaS (the only Orchard CMS SaaS, DotNest), Selenium UI testing, xUnit, university courses. And also, greenfield experimental projects like Hastlayer, turning software into computer chips. Write to us at [email protected], and let's talk! Orchard Dojo Newsletter Lombiq's Orchard Dojo Newsletter has 479 subscribers! We have started this newsletter to inform the community around Orchard of the latest news about the platform. By subscribing to this newsletter, you will get an e-mail whenever a new post is published to Orchard Dojo, including This week in Orchard of course. Do you know of other Orchard enthusiasts who would like to read our weekly articles? Tell them to subscribe here! If you are interested in more news about Orchard and the details of the topics above, don't forget to check out the recording of this Orchard meeting!