nopCommerce is an open source shopping cart software that is built with ASP.NET & uses MSSQL for storing the data.

It comes with a powerful backend & highly customizable frontend.

nopCommerce has all the features of a standard e-commerce websites & offers more like:

• support for kit products (e.g. build your own computer)
• real-time currency exchange rates
• multilingual interface
• compare selected products
• highly flexible shipping calculation (integrated providers, width/height/order total based & more)
• tax calculations by country/state/product & more
• built-in forum & polls
• wishlist

One of the most impressive parts of the software is the integrated marketing capabilities it has. You can customize the design of a product or category page, create any type of discounts & even activate an affiliate system.

nopCommerce supports most of the popular payment gateways & with its pluggable modular/layered architecture, new ones can be added with ease (some are already created).

Microblogging, with the wide usage of Twitter, is a hot subject in today’s web.

Using few words & spending less effort compared to the standard blogging, it becomes possible to share knowledge, feelings, etc. And, it keeps users connected to other users with the simple yet powerful community features.

While there are very popular microblogging services like Twitter, Tumblr or Plurk, being a rival may not be (or may be) the best idea. However, in order to create something unique, a community for a closed group or a microblog for a single user, there are still huge opportunities.

Here are 9 open source microblogging applications to create your own:

StatusNet (PHP)

StatusNet (previously Laconica) is the engine which runs the popular microblogging site Identi.ca.

It is built with PHP/MySQL & offers a smooth usage as it is a widely used, mature application.

P.S. The source can be found here.

Yonkly (Asp.Net)

Yonkly is an Asp.Net-powered Twitter-clone for creating your own microblogging community network.

Besides the open source version, it has a hosted & an advanced standalone version.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kentico CMS is a powerful, flexible & complete content management system that is built with ASP.NET.

It has various modules that make building any type of website possible from blogs to e-commerce or wikis to social networking.

The application comes with an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor for creating/editing the content.

One of the unique features Kentico offers is the worklow management. It allows you to control the process of content creation & modifications by creating custom approval steps (like proofreading, editing, approval, etc.).

Kentico is multilingual & can manage multiple websites from the same administrator panel.

It has an API that allows you to script any Kentico CMS operation (like creating a new document, user or even the whole web site) which is great for integrations with any 3rd party software. On the other hand, with the modules integrated, there is almost no extra function needed. Here are all the modules it offers:

• Blogs
• Booking system
• Content Rating
• Content Staging
• E-commerce
• Event calendar
• Forums
• Friends
• Geomapping
• Groups
• Image Gallery
• Media Library
• Message Boards
• Messaging
• Newsletter
• On-line Forms
• Polls
• Reporting
• Taxonomy
• Wiki
• Web Farm Support
• Web Analytics

which simply show what the application is capable of.

And, these are not all it has. Kentico generates SEO-friendly URLs, has full-text search support, a powerful role-based security system & much more..

Besides the paid versions, it offers a limited free version which is ideal for smaller websites. The free edition have no time limitation & can be used even for commercial purposes with no additional cost. It can be downloaded from here.

Kentico CMS is reliable and stable product & I didn’t came to any bug. But if that occurs, the company promises to fix it within 7 working days, furthermore they plant a tree in the name of the client who finds the bug. You can read more about this interesting initiative here.

The product can be evaluated by downloading the TRIAL or FREE editions. Other way is to use the Virtual Lab service which allows you to test-drive Kentico CMS on-line, without installing anything on your local PC.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

Forums are clearly one of the most standard ways of sharing knowledge on the net. With easy-to-use interfaces & strong community features, they are still very functional & popular.

They can be easily integrated into a website by customizing the look & feel or used as a framework which is sometimes a good idea considering the features they offer.

Here are 9 widely-used, open-source & free forum softwares, where most of them are built with PHP, that you may consider using:

phpBB (PHP)

phpBB is one of the oldest & widely used forum softwares around. It is being updated frequently with improvements in speed, security & features.

It comes with a powerful administrator panel where all aspects of the system can be managed & supports almost any database.

The software has a very crowded community which makes it easier to get support.

MyBB (PHP)

This free forum software works with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

MyBB has nice features like calendar/events, mass mailing to members, a built-in theme editor & more.

Besides an admin panel, a moderator panel helps managing the system by multiple users.

Read the rest of this entry »

FormFields is a very handy resource which makes it easier to produce more usable form entry fields with ASP.NET.

Rather than writing markup over and over for things like validation, regular expressions, dropdownlist databinding, etc., FormFields handles all the hassle for you.

Here is an example date input with a date picker & validation:

<formField:textBox ID="tb_SchoolDate" runat="server" Type="Date" Required="True"  Title="School Date" />

Yes, that easy & with a clean markup (the look & feel can be customized via CSS).

FormFields requires .Net Framework 3.5 & AjaxControlToolkit to run.

Behind almost every successful web application, there is an easy-to-use & feature-rich API as they simply help the main application to spread into others & reached by more users.

Also, an API-enabled application can be easily developed further using the API itself.

In order to create an API for your web application, here are 10 tutorials to get you started. But before that, you may want to checkout the video: How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters by Google.

PHP

Create a REST API with PHP

A very detailed yet easy-to-implement tutorial on creating a REST API with PHP.

And, there is a follow-up article: "Making RESTful Requests in PHP" by the same author which can guide you as well.

How to Add an API to your Web Service (PHP)

A detailed tutorial which describes the concepts like REST, SOAP & creates an API step-by-step with PHP.

Read the rest of this entry »

Besides anything we write on a website, we also create content on 3rd party services by:

• uploading images, videos (Flickr, Youtube..)
• saving bookmaks or voting (Delicious, Digg..)
• listening to music (Last.fm..)
• logging "what we are doing right now" (Twitter, Facebook..)
• & more..

AmpliFeeder is an open source lifestream application which can combine every activity we have on other services & present them.

The application is already integrated with many popular services & new ones can be added easily.

The look & feel can be totally customized with the theming support (there are 10+ ready-to-use themes).

AmpliFeeder is built with ASP.NET & uses MSSQL for storing the data.

P.S. The source code is not yet available for download but it can be downloaded in the next few weeks.

A web application or a software development process always has bugs which is very normal in a hundreds of lines of code. The important part is tracking & fixing them.

Whether you are a one-person-army or have teammates, it is a big time-saver to use a bug tracking software.

Besides having the bugs listed in a comprehensive way, most bug/issue tracking applications let end-users to submit bug-feature requests that will end up in a better product.

Here are 9 free & open source bug tracking softwares, both desktop & web-based, for a better development process:

WebIssues

WebIssues is an open source issue tracking & team collaboration application that has 2 parts:

• The server: a PHP-MySQL based server where the data is stored, notifications are sent
• The client: a desktop application for users to connect to the server (Windows & Linux supported)

A permission-based user system enables the ability of "multiple users working on different projects".

Issue types are flexible & customizable. Issues can be easily filtered & reports can be created for a snapshot. 

eTraxis

A PHP bug tracking software that works with MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL and Oracle.

Unlimited projects can be created with any number of users working on them. Users working on the project can easily see the bugs assigned to them or see the general status of the project.

eTraxis can notify users with e-mails & has a reminder system. The software has multilanguage support.

Read the rest of this entry »

EasyDiagram.NET is an open source ASP.NET diagram control.

Using AJAX, EasyDiagram.NET is very fast yet simple enough even for the beginners.

Some features of this free ASP.NET diagram control:

• Drag’n drop support
• Direct-draw and orthogonal modes
• Easy node adding
• Customizable lines & nodes
• Ability to react node clicks (via Ajax)

EasyDiagram.NET is definitely an amazing & professional-level control that is a must-have for every ASP.NET developer.

FusionCharts Free is a charting component for creating good looking, data-driven & free animated flash charts.

It can be used with PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, ColdFusion, simple HTML pages or even PowerPoint Presentations.

The component is the free version of FusionCharts & missing some features when compared with the paid one. But it is still powerful & supports:

• 2D / 3D column & bar charts
• 2D/3D pie & doughnut charts
• Line charts
• Area charts
• Stacked charts
• Gantt charts & more..

Another nice feature is the ability to combine different chart types in one chart.