InstantASP Community Forums / Company Forums / Company News

InstantKB.NET 2.0 Final Now Available

Ryan Healey — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:53:02 GMT

Hi All,

We are very excited to announce the official final release of InstantKB.NET 2.0.

Existing customers can download the 2.0 update from within your My.InstantASP client area.

You can find more about this update via our product pages.

We intend to make,further information & complete documentation for this update over the forthcoming days & weeks. Looking ahead we also already have some great ideas for InstantKB.NET 2.1 and we intend to make more frequent smaller updates available for both our products.

As always i'd like to personally thank all our customers who provided feedback during the InstantKB.NET 2.0 development. Your feedback proved invaluable in ensuring a stable, robust initial release.

If you have any questions with regard to the final 2.0 update please don't hesitate to post within our InstantKB.NET 2.0 discussion forum or send your comments to ryan@instantasp.co.uk

------------------------------------------------------------

Fixed in 2.0 Final

Below are a list of fixes from RC2 with the final release. The majority of these issues were introduced in RC2 due to some code optimizations we performed around member & staff permissions.

- Fixed search attachments feature. InstantKB.NET 2.0 will now search .doc, .rtf, .xls, .htm & .html attachments correctly. This feature requires SQL Server 2005 with the full text search enabled, This feature will work on SQL Server 2000 but will require additional ifilters. PDF & other file types are also supported with 3rd party iFilters.

- Fixed problem with member group menu links when viewing member permissions.

- Member photos & member level images are now updated correctly from the Admin & staff CP when editing a members profile.

- Fixed issue when attempting to edit workflow steps.

- Fixed Manage Glossary Permissions issue.

- Fixed problem when updating a general members permission sets.

- Fixed search options in member permission sets not applying correctly.

- Fixed issue with anonymous users accessing content attachments.

- Fixed issue with member level image not uploading on add / edit member level page,

- Fixed comment count search options.

- Fixed issue with custom member level images not appearing correctly on member list.

- Category & troubleshooter title can now have spaces again. This was a problem introduced due to optimizations we performed to the client side script for RC2.

- Fixed several grammatical & spelling errors

- Add option to 1.3 upgrade script to import any existing custom article types and link these correctly. (thanks Phophet)

Added With the Final Update

- Added option to staff permission sets to provide the ability to restrict staff members so they may only edit, view & delete the content they have created within the staff control panel.

- Added option based on user feedback during the RC2 release (thanks Chris) to allow administrators to more easily debug any email problems you may encounter due to SMTP configuration or relaying permissions.

We hope your enjoy the update :)

InstantKB.NET 2.0 RC2 Now Available

Ryan Healey — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:44:00 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well. I'm delighted to announce InstantKB.NET 2.0 RC2 is now available for download within your My.InstantASP client area.

We've addressed a number of issues based on your feedback from RC1 and wanted to make another update available to ensure everyone is happy before the final release early next week.

I'm happy to say we are now 100% feature complete for 2.0 final. We have completed the outstanding work around staff permissions that existed in RC1.

How To Download

You can download the update at...

http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspx

You'll need to login using your My.InstantASP email address and password. If you've forgot your password you can click here have this sent via email or don't hesitate to contact us if you have any problems accessing the download.

Fixed with this Update

- All workflow steps are now displayed is you don't specify any next steps for a workflow.

- Fixed issue with add new data view taking you to homepage. (thanks Andrew)

- Tag & Upload textbox widths now corrected for FireFox.

- Attachment cache is now cleared correctly when adding, editing or deleting attachments.

- Fixed redirect issue when editing levels within the Admin CP.

- Fixed delete glossary term. They are now removed correctly.

- Fixed issue with dataview cache not clearing correctly. Tab permission set views will also now work correctly. (thanks Neal)

- Fixed issue with empty custom fields displaying even if they had no value within the article details pane.

- Resolved issue when propagating permissions to articles within sub categories when editing a new category (thanks Andrew)

- Manage staff is now displaying staff members correctly. (thanks Rob)

- Fixed sorting issue within member list control. Sorting & pagesize will now work correctly.

- Hidden member groups & members who have that group as there primary member group will no longer appear within the member list.

- Administrators will now see all members regardless of hidden groups.

- Total comment percentage fixed on profile page if a member had exactly one public comment (also fixed on control panel summary)

- Resolved an issue with full stops within article titles breaking the search engine friendly URLrewritting option (thanks James)

- Fixed issue with file upload custom fields when editing content causing a incorrect redirect if you attempted to upload a file that was not permitted..

Additions

- Added option to move content to a new tab when deleting tabs.

- Added ability to search for articles by article id.

Documentation & Further Resources

We'll be working to build up our own knowledgebase to act a resource for any questions regarding the 2.0 update.

You can stay upto date as articles are published by subscribing to the following RSS feed...

http://kb.instantasp.co.uk/TagRss/?Keywords=InstantKB.NET+2.0&SearchWithin=2

Or visiting...

http://kb.instantasp.co.uk/Tags/InstantKB.NET+2.0

We have limited documentation currently however you can expect installation and other documentation to be published over the next couple of days.

Finally

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback with the previous release. We would welcome any comments or questions. You can email myself directly on ryan@instantasp.co.uk

We hope you enjoy the update and we look forward to making the final full release available next week :)

InstantKB.NET 2.0 RC1 Now Available

Ryan Healey — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:30:37 GMT

Hi All,

We are delighted (and just a little excited) to announce InstantKB.NET 2.0 RC1 is now available for download. You can access the download from your My Licenses page within your My.InstantASP client area. You can login at...

http://my.instantasp.co.uk/

If you've forgot your password you can request this again by providing your account email at...

http://my.instantasp.co.uk/ForgotPassword.aspx

We will be working tirelessly to ensure we have complete documentation available. We will be using our own knowledgebase to host this documentation and you can expect to see documentation & other information published at http://kb.instantasp.co.uk/ over the coming days and weeks.

To install the RC1 update you will require the AJAX web extensions. You will find the database scripts within the "DatabaseScripts" folder including the upgrade script to now upgrade an existing 1.3 database to the 2.0 schema. I'll be posting much more detailed instructions within our knowledgebase. If you've installed the previous betas the process should be very familiar.

If you don't have the time to download and install the RC1 update you can browse our online demo at the link below...

http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/InstantKB20/Knowledgebase/Article/50000

We would of course welcome all comments. We would encourage any questions or comments be posted within our InstantKB.NET 2.0 community forums at...

http://community.instantasp.co.uk/Forum74-1.aspx

We will of course be reading these forums and feedback is always welcome.

I look forward to any comments I'll ensure we continue to post updates. Thank you sincerely as always for supporting InstantASP.

InstantKB.NET 2.0 RC1 Online Demo Available

Ryan Healey — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:00:46 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well.

I'm just a little excited to announce you can now view our online demo of the InstantKB.NET 2.0 RC1 update at the link below...

http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/InstantKB20/

We will be working to make the RC1 download available to customers over the next couple of days. If you've opted to receive updated within your My.InstantASP area you will receive an email once the download is available. I'll keep this post short for now. Please expect a more complete post with the RC1 download.

Thank you to everyone who has offered feedback & support through the previous releases. Thank you espically to Rob, Leon & Daniel.

For now i hope you enjoy playing with the RC1 demo. If you have any questions don't hesitate to post your question here within our forums. I look forward to posting a further update in the next few days.

I look forward to any feedback :)

Happy Christmas

Ryan Healey — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:27:33 GMT

Hi All,

I just wanted to wish you all a very happy and safe holidays.

We'll be working through to ensure a a stable release candidate for InstantKB.NET 2.0 is available early Jan. Also look forward to InstantForum.NET 4.2 first quarter of 2008.

Hope you all manage to get a little rest over the holidays. We will of course continue to provide support however we do have Carlos and James away so this may affect response times slightly. We will continue to offer live chat support so don't hesitate to prompt us there also. If we can help with anything over the holidays please do contact us.

Thank you as always to all our customers for your continued support & feedback. A special thank you to everyone who has helped with feedback for the InstantKB.NET 2.0 update. You allow us to work on products we love and offer invaluable feedback for that we are sincerely grateful.

On behalf of us all here have a very happy christmas & new year. Hope you all get to spend a little time with family and friends and of course we wish you the very best for 2008.

InstantKB.NET v2.0 BETA 4 Available For Download

Ryan Healey — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:47:17 GMT

Hope your all very well.

I'm delighted to announce InstantKB.NET 2.0 beta 4 is now available for download to existing customers.

You can download beta 4 from within your My.InstantASP area at the link below...

http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspx

Update Fri 7th

A online demo of beta 4 is now available at the link below...

http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/InstantKB20/

For Admin & Staff CP Access login with...

Email: admin@admin.com
Password: admin

I'm sorry for the delay with this update. We wanted to ensure this final beta was as complete as possible and ready for public use. We also wanted to ensure you will have to option to upgrade your data going forward from this beta to release candidate to final.

If you really need to get started with InstantKB.NET 2.0 as of this beta 4 we will be providing database upgrade scripts to ensure you can update to future updates and the final release.

We will have a migration script for 1.3 customers with the next update.

We received lots of feedback from you all (sry if i've not personally responded) and it's been a challenge to try and accommodate in the right timeframe we set ourselves. With many features nearing completion it's getting a little easier to plan and estimate the time it will take you can expect the RC1 & Final release dates to be more accurate.

Whats New in Beta 4

- Search is now working for both users & staff members. You can search tags, comments, articles. You can also search by user name & tab. Staff members can additionally search by workflow step, status, assigned to, priority etc.

- Glossary of terms is now in place. Staff members can add, edit and delete glossary terms.

- Staff members can now edit, approve & remove user submitted comments.

- All member management pages are complete. Member Levels are now working. Member Recognition Points are now working. You can now also activate members & update there email, username or password.

- A members Member Level will now increase as they add comments, rate content etc.

- All Custom Field types are now working (HTML Multiple Select, RadioButtonList).

- Article Attachments are now complete. With view count and ability to delete attachments. You can restrict the type of attachments that can be uploaded within each tab within the Admin CP.

- Article Related Links are now working. With ability to add, edit & delete links.

- All tab roles, category roles & article roles will now apply to content. This allows you to control what content is displayed to your members. It also allows you to departmentalize your staff members and allow them to only add content to certain tabs or categories within those tabs.

- social bookmarks within articles have now been moved to a Share drop down with option to send article via email.

- Comment submission improved with ability to see comment immediately after it's added.

- Rating content is now complete with checks to ensure you can't submit multiple ratings.

- Rating comments is now complete with check to ensure you can't submit multiple ratings

- Hot user submitted comments are now highlighted within articles.

- Option to propagate member groups to child categories now works as expected.

- Performance tweaks to both Staff CP and Admin CP homepages.

- Performance tweak to how caching is performed & how localized strings are obtained from the resource file.

- Column indexes are now provided within the .tsql script.

- Fixed issue with redirects & use content titles in URL option.

- Fixed issue when creating a new member group related to tab permissions for that member group.

- Fixed lots of small issues around viewstate & search. Reorganized some application and permission set options.

- As i posted previously we've also removed all reference to the ticketing system from this beta. The ticketing system really requires more time for the features we want and will be available in 2.1 early 2008.

- To complete before next update

- We still need ability to hotlink glossary terms automatically within articles.

- Workflows still needs work.

- RSS Engine (for search, latest articles, comments etc)

- We need to ensure custom fields can be displayed to users.

- Troubleshooter & Downloads Tab

- Allow members to update there profile.

- Provide option to relate articles. With optional feature to automatically related based on tags.

- Ensure email's are working correctly.

- Additional Reports

- Latest & Most Popular views

- Article & Category View Count

- Ensure all links on Staff CP & Admin CP homepage work correctly.

- Email queuing pages.

- Staff Preferences Page

- Print Article, Bookmark Article, Export As PDF links

Next Update

I don't have an exact date currently for the next release which will be RC1.

We are keen to complete InstantKB.NET 2.0 and move onto the other ideas we have for InstantKB.NET 2.1 and provide an update for InstantForum.NET. I'll post further information on when you can expect the next update which we are expecting will be RC 1 within the next couple of days.

BETA 4 Delay

I apologize for the small delay with beta 4. I did have James post an update early this week for you all. I'm sorry i've not posted anything myself but i've been 100% focused on beta 4.

I've spoke with a few of you recently and whilst i appreciate there is pressure for 2.0 a number of you have also indicated you would prefer we ensure the final beta is as complete & stable as possible. We took the decision to spend a couple of extra days to ensure you could use this final beta on a public web site and upgrade to future releases.

As always thank you to all who have supported us through the beta I've said this previously. I'm very passionate about our software and customers and sometimes get over eager to please with ambitious deadlines.

I realize the dates we provide are very important for some of customers planning around our products.

We've been working on software projects for several years now but only recently within the last several months has any type of selay become an issue. I just wanted to assure you we've been listening and have learnt many lesions from your feedback. We'veidentified areas we can improve upon to ensure a reliable schedule for future updates.

I can promise you all the recent delays with InstantKB.NET 2.0 won't be an issue with future releases.

Feedback, Questions?

As always if you have any questions please don't hesitate to post within our InstantKB.NET 2.0 forums or send an email to ryan@instantasp.co.uk or support@instantasp.co.uk

We'll have an online demo here of beta 4 online very soon.

Happy Holidays :)

I suspect i'll be posting an update again before Christmas however if some of you leave early for your holidays please have a very happy and safe time. We look forward to bring you some nice updates in 2008.

I hope you all enjoy beta 4. Any questions please don't hesitate to contact us,

Update after the server transfer

Ryan Healey — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:58:56 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well. I just wanted to post a quick update after the recent server transfer and site update.

Thank you to everyone for being so patient and understanding during our transfer. Three days is by far the longest we've ever been offline in 6 years but hopefully you'll all agree the improvements are well worth it.

So far your feedback has been very positive (thanks to all) and the majority of you seem to like the new design. I've had a number of comments with regard to the speed improvements and i'm very happy to see this is helping.

Unfortunately it's not all good news and the main reason for this post is to let you know we are away of a few issues ad working to resolve these as quickly as possible.

Online Order Problems (404 Page - DNS still updating / cached)

We've received several reports of problems with our online ordering. It appears a number of you are receiving a "404" page when trying to add items to your shopping cart.

Unfortunately this appears to be a DNS issue due to our server transfer. Most DNS clients cache the results of name resolution requests to speed up name resolution. Please try to clear this cache if you receive a 404 message when trying to add products to your cart...

- How to flush your DNS cache

You can use the command ipconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS resolver cache:

C:\>ipconfig /flushdns

If this fails it could be the DNS is still updating for your location.

Please contact don't hesitate to contact us. You can our our live chat feature on our homepage or our telephone number or email on the contact page if your having any order problems.

New SMTP Server

With the server transfer we are now using a new SMTP server to send email's. It appears this SMTP server is not as quick as our previous server due to the improved spam filtering and virus protection. If you don't receive a prompt response to your email please try our live chat feature available on the homepage, our telephone number on the contact page or open a ticket through My.InstantASP at http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyTickets.aspx

We are working to ensure this is resolved over the weekend and our normal prompt response to any email's can then be expected. If you've sent an email previously and are still awaiting a response please try sending the email again or contact us through the methods listed above.

I'm keen to ensure we can minimize any delay during our migration period. Please don't hesitate to contact us on the methods listed above if you don't receive a prompt email response.

My.InstantASP

We added some additional security to My.InstantASP during the site transfer. You may notice you are now redirected to the homepage if it's your first visit and you request any page other than the homepage. For example if you try to visit http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyTickets.aspx and you've selected the auto-login option but it's your first visit you will be redirected to http://my.instantasp.co.uk. This will be changed to work as before.

InstantKB.NET 1.3 Online Demo

Our 1.3 demo is not online currently. This will be back online today.

Also we need to...

- Address some CSS issues within the forum with our move to XHTML (these changes will b available in SP2)

- Get our own knowledgebase back online running the latest build of InstantKB.NET 2.0.

- Resolve an issue with our newsletter subscription option on the homepage (it's working but no confirmation is displayed)

I just really wanted to let you all know we are aware of these problems and working quickly to ensure everything is 100% again. I'm sincerely sorry if this has caused any inconvenience or delay.

As always if you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to email me directly on ryan@instantasp.co.uk, through our feedback form or post your comments here within the forums,

Oh i'm a little late but happy thanksgiving :)

General Update

Ryan Healey — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:02:17 GMT

Hi All,

First i'd like to apologize for not being very active here recently. I've been very busy over the last few weeks working towards getting the new site online, moving to our own servers and ensuring progress with InstantKB.NET 2.0. I trust James has been helping with any questions but i always feel guilty if i'm not active here.

New Site, New Servers

I'm delighted to announce we are finally live with our new site and servers. The previous site was looking a little old and lacked the standards compliance and accessibility support we are now working towards in our products. Our goal was to make the new site much more user friendly, hopefully more structed & dare i say it "web 2.0". The previous site was both a little link and table heavy.

It became clear to us after several hours of downtime a couple of months back we needed 24/7 direct access to our own servers. With the move to our own hardware we now have three brand new dell poweredge servers powering InstantASP.co.uk. We have now moved all our systems to .NET 2.0, Windows Server 2003 (IIS6) & SQL Server 2005. Previously we ran .NET 1.1 on a mix of OS with SQL Server 2000. Hopefully these improvements will ensure the best possible experience whilst browsing the forums, knowledge base, My.InstantASP and other areas of our site.

So far the feedback has been positive and thanks to all that have sent comments through me via live chat and email. We are still working through issues (mainly around CSS) with the XHTML move but would certainly appreciate any comments good or bad.

Sorry if the trasnfer did cause any problems. A few areas of our site including these forum have been offline for a few days. With the move now complete you'll hopefully notice things are much quicker. We do plan to continue to improve the site and I've listed a brief list of the things you'll see added over the coming weeks / months...

- Developer / Resource Center
At it's launch this will simply act as a resource for downloading and sharing skins, language packs, code snippets & modifications for our products.We are working to offer an extensibility model built directly into our products which will allow the development & integration of additional 3rd party modules / plugins. Our goal is to create an area of our site to allow developers using our software to freely download. discuss & rate ideas, modifications, add-ons & code to further extend and customize our software. We'll also be working to contribute to this area with our own code and feedback.
- Blogs
This has been requested several times recently. We'll be going live with our own blog soon to keep everyone more updated on product development and general day to day activities. We are hoping to use our own simple blogging tool for this.

- Enhanced My.InstantASP
Improvements to My.InstantASP will include a feature request / osculation system so we know exactly what you want to see in the next release or future updates. We also have a number of other ideas to improve our customer area you'll see in 2008.

- Single Sign-On
We'll be working to ensure you only have to login once to access your forum, knowledgebase or My.InstantASP. account.

We do of course have further ideas but i don't want to reveal to much at this stage :)

InstantKB.NET 2.0

- Why did we update the site when there is urgency for InstantKB.NET 2.0?

I was keen to hold off on our server transfer and site update until InstantKB.NET 2.0 final was available. However our previous servers didn't actually run .NET v2.0 (required for kb 2.0).

I attempted to install .NET v2.0 on our previous server a few weeks back for the InstantKB.NET 2.0 online demo and it basically brought the server to it's knees. This is the reason the kb 2.0 online demo was hosted at a separate IP address (on our new servers). We had to move to the new servers before we could start using InstantKB.NET 2.0 for our own knowledgebase which we've always done before release previously as a final test. As the server transfer was required we also updated the site with the new design we've been working on for the last couple of months.

- Beta 4 Download

With the server transfer and site update now complete you expect more regular updates from me on InstantKB.NET 2.0. I've ensured we've continued to make progress with 2.0 during the site update & transfer however i have been a little slow on updates here due to the move.

It's clear from feedback you want another download. We are working towards a forth and hopefully final beta for Weds Nov 28th. A release candidate or possibly the final release (depending on feedback) will be available a week or two after beta 4.

The forth beta will be 99% feature complete .With the forth beta we'll ensure you will have the ability to upgrade from the BETA to the RC and/or final release. This will ensure you can get started with the beta by the end of Nov and will have the option to upgrade to the final version once available a few weeks after.

One difficult decision i've made over the last week is to remove the ticketing system for the final InstantKB 2.0 release. The email integration we want to provide for the tickets won't be possible in our timeframe. We will of course continue to work on the ticketing system and you can expect to find this within a update shortly after the 2.0 final release.

We are working on a method to reliably poll a POP3 server to pull and parse email on that server into InstantKB.NET. We are working to provide a rules engine & UI to apply actions, escalations or workflow steps to any email content received by InstantKB.NET. We'll continue to develop this feature and i'll ensure i post regular updates on when to expect the ticketing system (i know some of you really wanted this for the 2.0 final release).

We'll also be going live over the next few days with our latest build of InstantKB.NET 2.0 at for our own knowledgebase at http://kb.instantasp.co.uk/

The site update and server transfer is something we've been planning for a while.

As you can see we've recently gone live with a new web site on our own co-located hardware. I've also been working to ensure we have InstantKB.NET 2.0 ready for the end of Nov.

InstantForum.NET 4.1.4 SP2

We'll be offering a small service pack for InstantForum.NET 4.1.4 to resolve some of the issues reported here within the forums and via email over the last couple of months. I don't have an exact date yet however i'll ensure i keep customers updated.

InstantForum.NET 4.2

Early next year we'll have the next version of InstantForum.NET available. I added a post a few weeks back on what you can expect to find however i've added this here again to ensure everyone is kept upto date. We would certainly consider requests at this stage for the next update. You can post and discuss any suggestions or requests here within the forums i do read them.

Our current goals for v4.2 based on user feedback and our own observations.

- Our Goals...

Similar to InstantKB.NET 2.0, InstantForum.NET4.2 will move to .NET v2.0 and will be provided as a file based (no IIS dependency) Visual Studio.NET 2005 solution by default. Although v4.1 will work in both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and 2005 under .NET v1.1 or .NET v2.0 there are a number of features we want to take advantage of in .NET v2.0 (SQL cache dependencies, ajax extensions, masterpages & themes to name a few).
v4.2 will move to 100% strict W3c valid XHTML for all client markup. We'll also be improving accessibility (508) and screen reader support. All layout will be archived via CSS using DIV layers and you'll see a move towards much more semantic markup. You can see an example of this by taking a look at the HTML for our forthcoming InstantKB.NET v2.0 update at http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/InstantKB20/

v4.2 will support virtual URL rewritting so we can finally have the topic titles and forum names within the URLs. Again an example of this can be seen within our InstantKB.NET v2.0 preview.

v4.2 will have an improved paging system (again currently used within InstantKB.NET v2.0) for further performance navigating massive record sets We'll also be offering the option to enable ajax based paging of all paged data.
Integration with InstantKB.NET v2.0. The ability to share users and roles across both the knowledge base and forum. We'll also be looking at other ideas for integration between the two products.
We want to introduce further downloadable skins and language packs. With v4.2 will be making an effort to consolidate all skins, language packs and addons into a single resource.

We'll be removing dependencies within our public business methods on the HttpContext object. This has puzzled many users taking advantage of our API and we'll be improving this area. For example the InsertPost method.

- Based on user feedback for v4.2 you can expect...
v4.2 will support 2 additional WYSIWYG editors out-the-box. The option to add further editors will be provided and we'll be working to offer support for additional editors after the v4.2 release.
v4.2 will contain an archive function for older posts. You'll have the ability to define rules and automatically archive messages when certain conditions are meet. This will work for posts and PMs.
We'll be extending the available RSS feeds and providing out the box controls to consume those feeds. For example if you wanted to display the latest 10 or 20 global posts on your home page or maybe only the most popular posts from the last week within a specific forum.
We'll be looking at offering the ability to store post attachments on the file system and not within the database. This will be configurable based on your situation. If SQL space is expensive you can use the file system.

Option to hide buttons which are not applicable to the current user.

Ability to split & merge topics
A ajax based quick reply feature
You'll also see various improvements within the UI with more use of Ajax for inline editing and moderation.

- Things we would like to include but i can't promise currently...

Tagging for posts with Tag Cloud and RSS feeds for each tag. Support for users to tag posts. This will be configurable via permission sets and could be disabled if desired.
Custom Fields for registration and forum posts. We've already developed this within our InstantASP.Common framework and will be porting this functionality over to the forum ASAP.
Payment gateway and subscription features for private forums.
Improved search with ability to link to search results and subscribe to RSS feeds for search results.
Ajax based autosave / draft functionality when composing posts or PMs. To prevent posts from getting lost due to session timeouts.
Support for integration with DDN.

Ensure support for Visual Studio.NET 2008 / .NET v3.5

Provide signed assemblies for GAC installations

- Bug Fixes

You can of course also expect us to resolve a number of minor issues we've learnt over the last few moths. There is a problem with post formatting when switching between FireFox & IE to edit posts. Also an access with attachments within private messages sometimes not working correctly if you choose to save a copy of the sent message. I also have a list within our defect tracking tool we'll be working through to ensure v4.2 is as stable as possible. We'll offer another service pack shortly after InstantKB.NET v2.0 to resolve some known issues whilst v4.2 is completed.

If you have any questions you can email me direct on ryan@instantasp.co.uk or post a topic here within the forum.

InstantKB.NET v2.0 BETA 3

Ryan Healey — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:54:50 GMT

Hi All,

I'm delighted to announce InstantKB.NET v2.0 beta 3 is now available for download from within your My.InstantASP account...

http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspx

Apologies for it being a little late in the day. We've literally been working non-stop to ensure this update is as complete as possible.

We've made some great progress and you'll find beta 3 is much more stable. I'd welcome any feedback with regard to the custom tab, custom field and field template functionality. We do still have features to complete and i expect these to quickly come together over the course of the next couple of weeks.

We've removed the various staff and admin control panel links to the ticketing features. This is still under development and was causing some confusion. I suspect we'll offer an additional beta with the ticketing functionality complete. I would estimate 10-12 days before this is complete.

I'm still hoping for the final release towards the end of this month (it will be close). This may be delayed until the first week in November to provide everyone an opportunity to submit feedback and ensure we can address as many issues as possible.

Don't hesitate to email me direct with any questions on ryan@instantasp.co.uk. I'll do my very best to respond ASAP.

I'm uploading a copy of beta 3 and will post a online demo link shortly.

Thank you all as always for all your feedback and support. I'm been overwhelmed with all the requests for access the betas and the positive comments and encouragement. Thank you

Looking forward to any further feedback :)

InstantKB.NET v2.0 BETA 2

Ryan Healey — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:45:39 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well.

I'm delighted to announce InstantKB.NET v2.0 BETA 2 is now available for download from within your My.InstantASP account.

You'll need your My.InstantASP account details to access the download. If you've forgot your password you can request this from http://my.instantasp.co.uk/ForgotPassword.aspx.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback during the previous beta. We resolved a number of issues based on your feedback. We would certainly welcome any further comments for beta 2.

Don't hesitate to send your questions, suggestions or general comments to me directly on ryan@instantasp.co.uk.

I'm still hoping to have a online demo available soon to allow customers to play with InstantKB.NET v2.0 without having to install locally. I expect our online demo will be available with beta 3.

As always thank you all for your support and feedback :)

InstantFKB.NET v2.0 BETA 1

Ryan Healey — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:33:36 GMT

Hi All,

I'm delighted to announce the availability of InstantKB.NET v2.0 BETA 1.

Existing customers can download this release via My.InstantASP...

http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspx

You'll need your My.InstantASP account details to access the download. If you've forgot your password you can request this from http://my.instantasp.co.uk/ForgotPassword.aspx

In order to install and run the beta locally you'll need...

.NET Framework Redist v2.0 (http://asp.net/downlods/essential/)
ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 Extensions (http://www.asp.net/ajax/)
SQL Server 2000 / 2005
A solution file is provided for Visual Studio.NET 2005

This first BETA is not feature complete. You'll also notice a few broken links. We are aware of a number of problems but wanted to make something available for your feedback. We will of course be addressing any incomplete / missing items with future betas.

We would love to hear your comments or suggestions, good or bad. Any feedback you can provide to help us improve the final release will be very welcome. This is the first of three releases before the final v2.0 release towards the end of October.

Please send any comments or suggestions directly to me on ryan@instantasp.co.uk. We look forward to your feedback and bringing further BETA releases (hopefully ahread of schedule) and the final v2.0 release in October.

We'll have a slightly more polished online demo available in the next couple of days. We still have lots to complete but feel this first release should offer a taste of what to expect within final.

Thank you as always for your support and patience :)

Downtime Yesterday / Quick Update

Ryan Healey — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:11:19 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well. I just wanted to apologize for the downtime we experienced yesterday. We noticed the site was unavailable within minutes and contacted our hosting company immediately. Unfortunately it took them several hours to resolve the problem.

I'm sincerely sorry for any inconvenience or delay this may have caused. This downtime did not effect our email's and you should have received a prompt response to any email enquiry.

This has happened a little to often recently. To ensure this does not happen again we've recently purchased our own hardwareand will be co-located shortly after the release of InstantKB.NET v2.0.

With regard to InstantKB.NET v2.0 this is still our primary focus and we'll have a downloadable beta very soon. We are making progress daily with InstantKB.NET v2.0 there is just much in this release it is taking time. We are very close now to offering a download.

We are also expecting a InstantForum.NET update in September shortly after the InstantKB.NET v2.0 final. James ihas been working on some new features for v4.2 aswell as pur work to move clean the forum markupm move towards strict xhtml and improve accessability (css layout etc). v4.2 will be provided as a Visual Studio.NET 2005 solution and will be compatiable with .NET 2.0 or 3.5. i'll be posting more information on what you expect to find within v4.2 very soon.

Although our downtime did not effect our email's. If our problems yesterday has delayed any support or sales request please don't hesitate to contact me via email on ryan@instantasp.co.uk pr via MSN messenger on sales@instantasp.co.uk.

You can also contact me directly through our web site livechat feature at www.instantasp.co.uk (top right-hand corner).

Many thanks as always for all your support. We look forward to bringing you some good news with regard to InstantKB.NET v2.0 and the next version of InstantForum.NET very soon.

Online Order System Problems (Now Fixed)

Ryan Healey — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 05:26:35 GMT

Hi All,

UPDATE: This problem is now resolved and the order process is fully functional. Again please accept our sincere apology if this has caused any inconvienance or delay. If you do still experience any problems or indeed just have any questions please don't hesitate to email sales@instantasp.co.uk and we'll respond ASAP.

--------------------

We are currently aware a issue with our online ordering system. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We are working quickly to resolve this problem.

If you experience any problems during the online order process please don't hesitate to contact us through our live chat system or via email on sales@instantasp.co.uk.

We expect things will be back to normal in the next few hours.

As always many thanks for your support,

Support Email

James Trott — Thu, 17 May 2007 03:38:13 GMT

Hi All,

Based on user feedback we have made some changes to how the support@instantasp.co.uk email is handled internally. Response times will be much quicker. Messages via our ticketing system will continue to receive a same day response Mon-Fri.

In same cases you may be requested to open a ticket within your My.InstantASP client area. If your ticketing period has expired we will of course continue to assist via email. Please don't hesitate to post your support questions here on the forums, and Ryan and I will be checking daily.

Also we offer the Live Chat feature available on from our homepage at http://www.instantasp.co.uk/ and will be happy to help with any support issues. If we are not online please leave a message and we'll respond promptly.

InstantKB.NET v2.0 Preview & Update

Ryan Healey — Tue, 15 May 2007 07:36:26 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well.

I'm delighted to finally bring you a small preview in the form of 40 screen shots of InstantKB.NET v2.0.

Unfortunately the screen grabs don't demonstrate the ajax functionality or performance available within InstantKB.NET. I'm hoping to have a online demo very soon for users to start playing with on our site and hopefully offering feedback. We still don't have everything we would like in place however i really didn't want to delay this update any longer.

Due to the number of screen grabs I'll simply setup the links now and will continue to update this post with information.

Also regardless of what stage we are at i'm confident before the end of this month we'll have a working version (only excluding the ticketing functionality) within My.InstantASP for customers to download and start using locally. I really don't want to officially release until we have our ticketing system complete and we've been through at the very minimum one full public beta.

I'll also be updating this topic with an exact list of the features you can expect to find within v2.0 once i've explained the screen grabs. I'm personally very excited about this release. It's been through so many revisions and it's been some very long hours but hopefully you'll all agree it's been well worth it.

One of my personal favorite features in v2.0 is the ability to create your own knowledgebase, troubleshooter or download tabs. Your custom tabs can act like standard tab and will work with custom fields, field templates or workflows. Your staff members will have the option to manage categories and content within your custom tabs. Custom tabs can also be linked to custom forms for collecting data.

We've worked to make virtually everything optional so if you don't want a feature for a specific member groups or just globally you easily disable this. For example you may not need the ticketing side of things or you may just want to InstantKB.NET to manage your knowledge base articles or track items. Or you may want to disable the knowledge base sde of things and use as a standalone ticketing system.

I've created a forum here to discuss this update.

We would of course certainly welcome any feedback good or bad. Sorry this version is not populated with real-data. Also please remember some pages are not complete and still need some work. Also we are still working to make some of the processes a little easier. For example setting up field templates or custom work flows to require a little thought currently.

InstantKB.NET v2.0 User Interface

Homepage

W3C validated 100% strict XHTML output. 95% compliant in Bobby for accessibility. We still have some work to do there. You'll notice ajax dotted throughout the application in useful places. For example when searching or paging datagrids. Search engines defined within the SearchEngineSpiders.config file will receive standard HTML output to ensure category and paging links can be followed.

InstantKB.NET has a very similar skinning model to InstantForum.NET and each skin can be completely customized. This includes not only the styling (fonts, colors etc) but also all the mark-up is separate for each skin allowing a completely different layout support between skins. This update also uses stamdard ASP.NET v2.0 master pages making integration into existing ASP.NET v2.0 sites a little easier.

We now also support localization of the UI and will be working to offer additional language packs for both InstantForum.NET and InstantKB.NET over the coming months.

Knowledgebase Home

Here you'll notice right away our new ajax based tree navigation. This allows you to browse your entire category structure with no post backs and a very quick initial load time.

The way data is presented by default within a category can be modified using the "Manage Views" feature within the admin area. This allows you to customize which columns appear (even custom field columns) and in what order and also how results are sorted. You can see the edit view options within the "Editing a DataView" screen grab further below. Dataviews can be applied to any datagrid within any tab allowing you to customize how data is presented within specific datagrids within specific tabs.

Standard Knowledgebase Category

Again the ajax based treeview control is used to present a list of categories. We are also working on a view for the final release which will allow you to also browse the entire knowledge base or just a specific tab by tags.

Here you also see some basic category search options. These again are displayed using ajax along with the results allowing you to very quickly search content. Again as with any grid within any tab you can customize the columns and the order the columns appear within the grid for knowledgebase categories.

Submitting Comments As a Staff Member

You can customize the options available to your users similar to InstantForum.NET using permission sets. This allows you to say present your staff members with a rich text box for comments and allows them to skip captcha verification. captcha is only intended to prevent anonymous spam and as such is not required for authenticated members. Also notice all the meta data we can see as a staff member to the right of the article.

Here you can see our staff member has permission to view all article meta data such as percent complete, workflow step, status and priority.

Submitting Comments As Anonymous

Whilst in the above screen grab we could see all article meta data here you'll notice as an anonymous user we only see a small number of fields to the right of the article. Using the member permission sets similar to the forum you can control which fields are displayed by member group or member. We are also hoping to have the option to customize these fields on a per article basis for final release.

Also notice as an anonymous user we are also forced to provide a valid captcha code.

You can choose to automatically approve user comments or choose to moderate the comments. All comments are added with no postbacks and if you set comments to appear right away it will appear immediately within the comments list again with no postbacks.

User Comments (an idea in progress)

Here you can see something we've been working on but i'm not to sure at this stage if this will make it into the final release. The idea behind marking comments or content as helpful to encourage and reward participation within InstantKB.NET. We've been playing with a few ideas for a user points / ranking system. We didn't want this just based off say the number of comments or visits but want others to determine the most helpful members.

Ajax Callout Extenders

We've implemented these little things all over. We actually created a composite control so you could fall back to the traditional validation controls if you wish. This is simply an application setting. The advantage of the callout extenders if we can provide server side validation with no postback and immediate feedback.

InstantKB.NET Admin Control Panel

This [age is not complete. This page has actually been through a number of revisions. Really to try and make it easy to get started if it's your first time using the software. We didn't want to scare admin's away with to much information so you'll need to dig a little before revealing some of the advanced metrics and/or functionality. We've took this approach throughout and tried to keep things simple with the more powerful options a few clicks away.

Manage Knowledgebase Article Types

Just a basic listing of article types. Shows the standard ajax sorting options. You can sort items within our datagrids with no postback's. Similar you can delete multiple items with no postback's.

Edit Knowledgebase Article Priority

Just shows some of the very basic options available when creating priorities.

Manage Knowledgebase Views

Views allow you to customize how data is presented within the various datagrids within InstantKB.NET tabs. For each tab you create you'll have the option to modify that tabs views. You could for example create a "Todo" list tab and wish to customize views to how due dates, priorities etc.

Each tab has four standard views. You can create additional public or private views. Public views are available to all your staff members whilst private views are only available to the creator.

Editing a DataView

Shows the options available when editing a view. You can see you can completely rearrange the grid columns and the default sort options. We are also hoping to extend this to integrate with our filters feature so you can apply filters and views simultaneously.

Managing Tabs

One of my personal favorite features of this update. The ability to customize the existing or create your completely new tabs. As you can see InstantKB.NET comes with 4 built-in tabs. Knowledgebase, Troubleshooter, Downloads and Tickets. You can rearrange these tabs or hide them completely based on member group.

You can create your own knowledgebase, troubleshooter or download tab. For example you may want a dedicated knowledge base to store specific product information or have separate twos available to two different member groups. If you choose to create a knowledgebase, troubleshooter or downloads tab all the default fields for that tab will be copied and you have the option within the staff control panel to manage that tab just like a built-in tab.

You can create categories within your custom tab, customize views, create filters & templates. Manage types, statuses, priorities, levels etc. You can add your own custom fields to your tab to customize the standard form further. You can even create workflow for your custom tab to ensure you can apply processes to the content within your custom tab. This make the idea of custom tabs quite powerful and you'll see use extend this over future releases. IT would be nice for example if you could create a ca lander tab or even a shared ca lander tab.

One other feature when creating custom tabs. You can also link custom forms directly to custom tabs for collecting any data you may required from your users. This could be a simple feedback form or a simple bug report form. You can turn content submitted through custom forms into content within any knowledgebase, troubleshooter or download tabs.

Our New Tab Added

Notice now we've added the feature requests tab with is a type of "Knowledgebase" we now have all the options within the admin area on the left to edit information for the "Feature Requests " tab. We can edit the default views (or add custom views), priorities, statuses, levels, types, attachment types and attachments.

Also as the feature requests tab is a "Knowledgebase" tab type your staff members will have new options appear within the staff CP to edit the categories, articles, article templates for the Feature Requests tab.

Custom Fields

Here you can see the standard page for managing custom fields. Custom fields can be applied to the registration process or any tab within InstantKB.NET v2.0. They can even be used to build custom forms for collecting data within a specific tab or for customizing an existing form at a specific workflow step.

Adding a Custom Field

Here you can see some of the field types available. We have all the standard field types supported (textbox, select list, radio button list, checkbox list, select multiple, Alongside the standard field types you'll also find rich text fields, datepicker field and numeric only fields. We'll be extending the types of fields you can use within InstantKB.NET with future releases. There are a number of controls within the AjaxControlToolKit it would be nice to offer as a custom field control. For example the slider control or the mutually exclusive checkbox.

Custom Field Details

Here you can see us adding a multiple select drop down list for products to our custom bug tracker tab. This will allow use to select a product a bug relates to when adding a article to the custom bug tracker tab.

Custom fields can be displayed alongside articles within the front-end and you can control which custom fields are presented to your users with permission sets.

Field Templates

Field templates are a very powerful feature of InstantKB.NET. They allow you to customize all the built-in forms for creating articles, guides or downloads within tabs. They also allow you to build your own custom forms for collecting data within tabs. You can apply specific field templates to workflow steps within any tab to customize how a form should appear at a specific workflow step.

For example if you setup a workflow for approval of knowledge base articles you may want to provide additional fields for reviewer comments and hide or even just disable other fields at say the "In Review" workflow step. Using field templates you can customize forms at any workflow step in any tab.

Once other very nice thing about this. When you do change the workflow step to lets say "In Review" when editing or creating articles within your Knowledgebase tab the form will update on the fly using Ajax and will completely change based on the field template you associated with the workflow step selected.

This really needs a video or a online demo to show this feature in action but it's very powerful and a neat use of ajax.

Edit Field Template

Here you can see how we edit a field template. You can re

Edit Workflow

Here you can see the default screen for a workflow within InstantKB.NET. A workflow typically consists of a series of steps. At each workflow step you can setup notifications, customize field templates, setup change actions for field values, tag content, set which next workflow steps are allowed and even run custom code from tasks.

You can associate workflows with departments so they are only available to the correct staff members.

New Workflow Step

Here you can see the workflow step wizard. This shows the options creating a workflow step.

Edit Workflow Step Change Actiions

Edit Workflow Step Field Template

Staff Permissions

As an administrator you organize your staff members into departments. Staff members must have a primary department and can have any number of secondary departments. The permission set associated with the staff members primary department is used by default. You can override this for specific staff members and associate a specific permission set with that staff member.

Staff members will only have access to workflows within the same departments they belong to. For example you could create separate approval workflows for your sales and support departments. Staff members within the sales department would only have access to the workflows associated with the sales department and similar for the support department.

Reports

Reports are available for all knowledgebase, troubleshooter, downloads and ticket tabs, even custom tabs.

We already have 6 standard reports for each tab amd we'll be working on more. For example the ability to export line-item list or detailed list as PDF and filter this for any tab by category or workflow step. Also support for custom comparison reports. Where you can manually compare the status of content any tab over a defined time frame. For example you could show all Open v Resolved in the last 30 days. Or all Suggested v Published in the last 6 months.

InstantKB.NET Staff Control Panel

A new dedicated staff control panel. Completely separate from the admin control panel. Administrators can now setup permissions for staff members within the Staff Control PAnel.

Manage Articles

All paging, sorting, mass-edits, filters & searching here is ajaxed based for any knowledge base tab.

Customizing View for Manage Articles

Based on permission set some staff members may have the ability to edit content outside of workflow. This is shown below...

Edit Article

Notice the options in the left navigation have updated to provide article specific editing options.

We now support tagging of any content within InstantKB.NET. This allows your users to browse content by tags and also helps rank the content within search results. You'll also notice new options such as History (optional audit log of changes) and revisions is available if you've enabled versioning of your content. This will maintain a each version of the content and increment the version number for content. The increment is configurable.

All the opens on the left here are Ajax based so when editing a article a postback never occurs until you save the article. Not only does this provide a very experience when editing content but it also allows our code to genuinely determine when you navigated away from editing the content to unlock the content for editing by others.

Add Article

This shows some of the new cross-browser WYSIWYG editor capabilities. We did look at developing our own WYSIWYG editor for InstantKB.NET v2.0 but in the end opted to use telerik radeditor. This is wonderful editor and offers some very nice features such as a Ajax based spell checking.

Manage Categories

This shows the default view for managing categories within a tab. The treeview provides a much clearer visual indication of your category structure. You can actually build your category structure all within treeview and add and remove nodes on the fly using Ajax. This makes building your category structure much quicker and simpler than in v1.3.

For a little more control you can edit the category information and other details such as specific permissions for the category from a useful little context menu. The options available within the context menu are determined by the permissions granted by the administrator.

Here you can see we are adding a category inline within the tree. No postbacks are required when building a tabs category structure. You can also do this from the front-end if you have sufficient permissions.

Hopefully these screen shots will give you some idea of the features we are looking to include within v2.0. I will have a complete final feature list as requested by several users here ASAP.

As always I sincerely appreciate all your all support. I'm really looking forward to making InstantKB.NET v2.0 available and focusing on frequent smaller updates and spending a little more time here within the forums.

We look forward to bringing you InstantKB.NET v2.0 :)

InstantForum.NET v4.1.4 SP1 (Update)

Ryan Healey — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:14:15 GMT

Hi All,

If you've downloaded and applied the SP1 update and have any issues posting messages please download the update again and re-apply. A problem has been found when posting to un moderated forums. This has been resolved and the download updated.

Sorry for any inconvienace this may have based. The update also addresses one other issues missed with this update with regard to the import / export XML control used within various admin pages generating exceptions in medium trust. This has now been resolved.

As always if you have any problems or comments don't hesitate to contact me on ryan@instantasp.co.uk or option a ticket at http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyTickets.aspx

We'll also be available on live chat or via MSN on sales@instantasp.co.uk to answer any questions immediately.As always your support is sincerely appreciated.

InstantForum.NET v4.1.4 SP1

Ryan Healey — Mon, 07 May 2007 02:36:40 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well. I'm pleased to announch we have a small update available for InstantForum.NET to resolve a number of common issues. You can now download the from within your My.InstantASP client area.

Fixed issues

Fixed issue with exception handler module not working in medium trust.
Fixed issue with RSS feeds not working in medium trust.
Added a configuration option to bypass the mail queue and send emails immediately.
Fixed issue with Expand/Collapse all feature breaking menus in the Admin Control Panel.
Fixed Issue which prevented users renaming private message folders.
Anonymous users can now download attachments.
Fixed an issue with URLS passed in IFCode not being formatted as links.
Fixed an issue with IFCode not being correctly interpreted within the body of PM's.
Fixed an issue with PM/Email ignore list not functioning correctly for some permission settings.
Fixed issue with tags rendering around entire pages.
InsertPost Method will now work when called from third party applications. Not so dependent on HttpContext.
Fixed issue with missing spacer image in RoundTableControl.
Added a configuration option to alleviate an issue with searches on some international character sets.
Fixed Issue with some users being incorrectly redirected after login

This update is a minor update to resolve the most commonly reported problems within InstantForum.NET v4.1.4.

Sorry we don't have any exciting new features with this update.

We wanted to address a number of issues before v4.2 and unfortunately as i don't expect that to be ready before June we are offering a small patch.

The v4.2 update will work with Visual Studio.NET 2005 & ASP.NET out-the-box. We'll also be taking advantage of master pages and other ASP.NET v2.0 specific features. We'll be improving cross-browser support for the WYSIWYG editor and ensuring all HTML is 100% strict XHTML. We'll be improving accessibility in terms of compliance support. You'll also see a key performance improvement to our paging & sorting system with v4.2.

v4.2 will also integrate nicely with InstantKB.NET v2.0 with the ability to share users and roles. We'll also be adding other sharable functionality such as a single search and our new common administration pages. We are also hoping to look at porting features we've developed for InstantKB.NET v2.0 over to InstantForum.NET. Custom profile / post fields, global and personal content tagging, metrics & reporting.

You'll also see us introduce much more optional ajax funtionality (as we've fone with InstantKB.NET v2.0) with the move to ASP.NET v2.0 and the ability to take advantage of the ASP.NET ajax extensions. We are also hoping to add archeiving capabilities We will of course keep moitoring feedback.

We have many ideas and additions in development for both InstantForum.NET and InstantKB.NET and hope to bring you more details very soon.

Questions / Assistance

If you've modified any of your files and are not sure if this update will impact your changes don't hesitate to contact us. You can reach us via email on support@instantasp.co.uk, open a ticket (login required) athttp://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyTickets.aspx, prompt us via our live chat feature available on the web site at http://www.instantasp.co.uk/.

You can also reach me directly on ryan@instantasp.co.uk or directly on MSN messenger by adding sales@instantasp.co.uk to your buddies list.

I also just want to apologize to everyone for any delay with this update. We've been so busy pushing to get the InstantKB.NET v2.0 update ready the update did slip. I'll be posting more information on InstantKB.NET v2,0 hopefully a little later today (if not certainly tomorrow).

Also i'll soon be pubishing a road-map for both products to give you all some idea of what you can expect with future updates and when (to some degree) they can be expected. The roadmap will be a little flexible based on feedback however it will serve as a good basis to keep everyone upto date.

I look forward to posting more information on InstantKB.NET v2.0 very very soon :)

In the meantime if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact us using the methods above.

Many thanks as always for your support,

Further Update

Ryan Healey — Fri, 04 May 2007 08:47:05 GMT

Hi All,

Hope your all very well. From reading the forums i can clearly see a number of you are frustrated with the InstantKB.NET v2.0. and v4.1.4 SP1 delay.

I just wanted to reassure you all i'll have something with you within the next few hours and to apologize for the delay and any frustration this has caused. I really can't blame you guys. The delay has simply been down to development time on InstantKB.NET v2.0 and trying to get this ready for beta ASAP with all the features, performance and scalability we want.

I'll be posting further information on InstantKB.NET v2.0 and making our InstantForum.NET v4.1.4 update available within My.InstantASP within the next few hours.

I've been so busy recently working towards getting our InstantKB.NET v2.0 beta ready the forum update has i'm afraid slipped. This won't happen again and i'll be publishing a clear road-map for both products with future release dates shortly after InstantKB.NET goes beta (which will be very soon). James will also be helping to ensure we can offer frequent updates for both products simultaneously.

You can also expect a small revamp of the site in general, a development blog (based on community feedback) and certainly just generally more updates in terms of new content (guides, info, tips etc), my personal forum participation (i do love you guys), add-ons, language packs, migration scripts, bug fixes, scheduled tasks, product releases etc.

Again i'm sincerely sorry for the delay this time. I know your all awaiting the updates because your passionate about our products and for that i'm sincerely grateful. Hopefully we can reward you very soon with some very nice updates.

Your support as is always sincerely appreciated. Looking forward to posting further information in the coming hours...

Updates

Carlos Muniz — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:04:57 GMT

Hi All,

We apologize for delaying the release of InstantKB.NET again. We have are working hard to ensure that the software has optimal quality. We are in the final weeks of formal quality assurance and load testing.

Ryan will update you this week with a more detailed status report.

Website Outage

James Trott — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:32:40 GMT

In the early hours of this morning (Friday 20th April GMT), we experienced a website outage which lasted until around 1300 GMT.

We detected the outage at the start of the day 0830 GMT and worked throughout up until full restoration of service. Unfortunately the downtime was caused by faults at our DNS provider, which in turn prevented resolution of the InstantASP domain.

Eventually a workaround was found and full service was restored. Whilst this was out of our hands, we would like to sincerely apologise to all clients who attempted to use the site during this period, as a result we will be making every effort to improve our DNS provision to try to ensure that such ocurrences are not possible in the future.

Regards,
The InstantASP Team

Shopping Cart Problems (April 5th 2007)

Ryan Healey — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:30:07 GMT

Hi All,

I'm sorry to say we are currently having a few issues with our shopping cart pages.

This should be resolved within the next hour or two. In the meantime don't hesitate to contact us or email me directly on ryan@instantasp.co.uk if you have any questions.

Update (6th April): Unfortunately we are still having a few issues. We are waiting for Comodo our SSL provider to resolve some issues. I'll keep this topic updated with developments.

I'm sincerely sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Happy Christmas

Ryan Healey — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 08:53:09 GMT

Hi All,

Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and all the very best for the New Year.

Thanks to everyone for your loyal support in 2006. We have big ideas for 2007 and you'll finally see some very interesting new products and updates we've been working on.

Information with regard to InstantKB.NET v2.0 beta will be posted very soon. We are working hard to ensure the beta is available before January. We'll be posting information within the forum and also sending a mail to all existing InstantKB.NET v1.3 customers offering the opportunity to participate in the beta. We appreciate everyone's patience.

All the very best from everyone here at InstantASP,

InstantKB.NET v2.0 Development Update

Ryan Healey — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:42:40 GMT

Hi All,

Just a quick update with regard to our InstantKB.NET v2.0 release.

We are currently working hard to make this release available as quickly as possible. We are currently aiming for a Christmas public BETA. This release has taken quite some time and we sincerely appreciate everyone’s loyal patience and support.

We welcome any existing InstantKB.NET customer to participate in the beta and welcome all feedback. If you would like to receive more information when the beta is available please tick the "Participate in product testing" checkbox within your My.InstantASP account profile page at http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyProfile.aspx

InstantKB.NET v2.0 will integrate with InstantForum.NET and the ability to share a single sign-on between all our existing and future products will be available. We are also looking at other ways to integrate the products such as offering the option to automatically create forum topics for knowledge base content or taking advantage of field templates within InstantForum.NET to provide custom fields.

InstantKB.NET v2.0 will be a free update for all customers who purchase InstantKB.NET v1.x 3 months prior to our InstantKB.NET v2.0 release.

I've provided below a brief list of new features you can expect to find in the forthcoming InstantKB.NET v2.0 release...

Features

Customizable Work-Flows

- Customizable work-flows allow you to create processes that mimic existing business processes. For example you could create work-flows for approval of knowledge base articles, trouble-shooting guides or downloads. Or work-flow rules for escalation, opening or closing support tickets.
- Organize work-flows or even work-flow steps by department to ensure only relevant work-flow is visible
- Create and manage notification lists for individual work-flow steps.
- Create and manage field templates for individual work-flow steps.

Custom Field Templates & Article Data

- Customizable form-fields allow you to create unique field templates that can be used through-out many of the default forms. For example you can ask additional questions during registration, or ask questions when a article comment is submitted
- Knowledge base articles, troubleshooter guides, tickets and downloads can all have their own unique set of custom fields or meta data associated with them. You can control which fields are displayed based on user role
- Control which fields are displayed at each work-flow stage. For example you could provide custom fields a reviewer must complete before they can move an article to the an approved work-flow step or fields a support technician must complete before they can close a ticket.

Knowledge Base Features

- Ajax based client-side tree-navigation. Post backs are no longer required to explore categories.
- Unlimited number of knowledge base categories, sub-categories & articles
- Only categories and articles within categories associated with the current user’s roles will be visible
- RSS feeds available for article categories, latest articles and most popular articles
- Customizable articles views, choose which columns are displayed and where

Knowledge Base Article Features

- Visitors can submit comments and rate articles
- Easily print, email, bookmark or link to articles
- Export articles as PDF for offline reading
- Article attachments, related articles and related external links
- Field level permissions provide control over visible article meta data (Created By, Assigned To, Priority, Custom Fields etc)
- Multiple article templates allow you quickly create consistent content across categories
- Create new knowledge base content directly from a support tickets
- Full audit trail for all knowledge base articles with version control

Troubleshooter Features

- Unlimited number of troubleshooter categories, sub-categories & guides
- Only categories and guides within categories associated with the current user’s roles will be visible
- RSS feeds available for troubleshooter categories, latest guides and most popular guides
- Customizable articles views, choose which columns are displayed and where

Troubleshooter Guide Features

- Create interactive questions for visitors that will allow them to work through a series of steps to find a specific solution to a problem
- Administrators or assigned staff can easily link questions to the next troubleshooting step or possible solution
- Field level permissions provide control over visible guide data
- Full audit trail for all troubleshooter guides with version control
- Troubleshooter guides also inherit many of the standard features available to articles (attachments, comments etc)

Ticket Features

- Users can submit tickets to a specific department. Custom field templates allow you to ask the questions you need when
raising a new ticket. Staff within the department will be notified when a ticket is raised and can respond accordingly via the staff control panel
- When user's submit a new ticket you can optionally display a list of relevant suggestions from within the knowledge base, troubleshooter or download sections
- Users can manage, search and respond to existing tickets

Download Features

- Unlimited number of download categories, sub-categories & downloads
- Only categories and downloads within categories associated with the current users roles will be visible
- RSS feeds available for download categories, latest downloads and most popular downloads
- Field level permissions provide control over visible download data
- Full audit trail for all downloads with version control
- Downloads also inherit many of the standard features available to articles (comments, rating etc)

Content Tags

- Every knowledge base article, troubleshooting guide, ticket or download can be assigned tags to improve search relevancy and overall discoverability of the content
- A central tag page allows you to view and search tags at a quick glace

Contact Page

- Customizable general contact form. Use field templates to quickly setup a unique feedback, questions or suggestions form to meet your specific requirements.

Staff Control Panel

- Dedicated staff control panel allowing assigned staff to manage categories, knowledge base articles, trouble shooting guides, tickets and/or downloads
- Manage and respond to support tickets, flag tickets, assign tickets, create customizable ticket views, manage ticket work-flow, add ticket notes, view ticket audit trials & much more.

Administrator Control Panel

- Comprehensive control over every aspect of the product
- Manage Categories, Articles, Guides, Tickets, Downloads, Staff, Departments, Members, Groups, Skins, Attachments, General Settings & much more
- Assign staff to manage categories, articles, trouble-shooting guides, tickets and/or downloads
- Create ticket escalation rules & custom work-flow processes
- Create pre-defined categorized replies for ticket questions
- Customize all the features that are visible to users. For example you may wish to simply use the knowledge base portion of the software or just the ticketing system or both but with no troubleshooting guides. You can configure the features you require,
- Comprehensive user tracking and usage statistics

Security & Roles

- Role based permissions provide control over which categories, articles, troubleshooting guides or downloads are visible
- Unique overrideable "Permission Sets" provide comprehensive control over available features
- Protection on all user input from malicious code (injection attacks, cross-site scripting)
- Ban abusive, problem members or limit their permissions within the knowledge base
- Ban problem IP addresses from any further new registrations or login attempts

Permission Sets

- Unique Permission Sets feature offers unrivaled control over application permissions & features
- Permission sets can be associated to any member group or overridden when associated to a specific member
- Permission sets can be assigned to member groups within a category, controlling what features a group can access within a specific category

High Performance

- Designed from the ground-up for massive performance & scalability
- Customizable data caching (greatly reducing database trips)
- SQL Server parameterized stored procedures, well designed tables, optimized indexes & fk constraints
- Strongly typed data objects & custom data collections (No heavy, slow System.Data.DataSet)
- Benchmarked paging algorithm supporting hundreds of thousands of pages & millions of records
- Email queuing system, emails are queued and polled in the background at set intervals
- ASP.NET Viewstate is disabled for 99.9% of pages (smaller pages, less serialization)
- 100% compiled, managed .NET assemblies (No COM or other dependences)

Highly Scalable

- Unique SQL Server based state management (no dependency on the session or application objects)
- Well defined architecture (separate presentation, application & data layers)
- Takes advantage of data caching to minimize database requests

Well Designed

- Object Orientated Architecture
- Implements many best practices (singleton objects, data factory, facade objects, custom data collections)
- Takes advantage of the InstantASP.Common base library and shared InstantASP authentication model
- Enhanced error handling, choose if you want to receive an email for errors or simply log exceptions
- URL Rewriting ensures addresses are search engine friendly and easier to remember & type

Developer Friendly

- Integrates with Microsoft® Visual Studio.NET 2003 (or above)
- Intuitive API with intellisense support within Microsoft® Visual Studio.NET
- Fully commented, clean structured code with class reference documentation
- Follows many familiar Microsoft patterns and practices examples

Multi-Lingual

- Localize every aspect of the forum (UI, Email Templates, Dictionary)
- Drag & Drop Language Packs (automatically detected, no configuration required)

Skinning & Template Driven

- Portable skinning model
- Each skin can have a completely unique layout and visual appearance
- Drag and Drop Skins (automatically detected, no configuration required)
- Easily create & edit skins within the admin area
- Wrappers can be used to easily wrap header and footer HTML around any skin

Search Features

- Optional SQL Server Full-Text Search (both FreeTextTable & ContainsTable are supported)
- Search article or troubleshooter guide attachments and downloads such as PDF files or office documents
- Keyword highlighting, highly optimized TSQL & full-text search queries
- Live RSS feed available for all search results

Member Features

- Comprehensive dedicated control panel for each member
- Members can customize language, skin, time zone, daylight saving time & many other options
- Assign members a primary group and multiple secondary groups (controlling which content is visible)
- Assign a dedicated permission set to any member to override any other permission set
- Define permission sets for member groups or a specific member (controlling which features are available)
- Members activity displayed throughout forum (optional anonymous login feature for members)
- Easily configure which member group new members or member awaiting activation should be placed into
- Easily activate any members awaiting approval within the admin area
- Fully searchable, sort-able members list with ability to restrict access

Login / Registration Features

- Easily configure registration mode (Automated, Confirmation Email or Admin Approval)
- Configure default member groups for new members or member awaiting activation
- Optional Terms & Conditions during registration
- Username or email-address can be specified as primary login detail
- Implements ASP.NET forms authentication with encrypted authentication ticket
- Well designed, documented reusable authentication model

Ease of Use

- Familiar InstallShield Installation Wizard
- Eloquent Intuitive Design
- Comprehensive Web Based Administration

I’ll ensure to keep the forums updated with our progress. Screenshots will be posted very soon within our private customer forums to gather any feedback early before the beta.

We are very excited about the new features and plan to ensure your patience will be rewarded.

Don't hesitate to send any questions or comments to ryan[AT]instantasp.co.uk

InstantForum.NET v4.1.4 Final Released

Ryan Healey — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 09:37:11 GMT

Hi All,

We are very pleased to announce the official release of InstantForum.NET v4.1.4 Final. Our main focus with this release was to resolve a number of know issues and further improve overall performance and scalability.

Although we have provided the change list below within our release candidate announcement we have resolved a few other key issues since then which have also been added to this list...

Performance & Scalability

Resolved issue with tracking read forums and topics if you had read lots of forums or topics this was limited by the SQL datatype nVarChar.
Completely revised the internals of how the InstantASP.InstantForum.Components.User / InstantASP.Common.Components.User objects are constructed for better performance and scalability.
You can now associate an unlimited number of member groups to a single user (previously we had a limit again based on the length of the SQL datatype nVarChar) this would generate exceptions if the delimited list of role identities exceeded 4000 characters. This has been completely reworked.
Resolved issue with events where they would not display if user has lots of role associations.
Error handling has been added to all data access code to improve scalability and ensure objects (SQLConnections/FileStreams etc) are always disposed of correctly in the event of any exception.
Greatly reduced overall string concatenation throughout. Reduced number of System.String() objects.
Reduced by half the number of in-memory objects required by the application (InstantASP.Common.Components.*, InstantASP.InstantForum.Components.*, etc)
Reduced the number of items held within the ASP.NET cache to minimize memory usage.
Improved overall performance for several key regular expression methods.
Improved general performance for key areas such as localization, search, synchronization and particularly how the forum / sub forum collection is constructed. This now provides much better performance for larger forums (100+ forums).
Application setting datatables are no longer cached as they are held within singleton objects and only initialized once.
Reworked page compression feature for better performance.
Performed work to ensure objects are promoted up the heap for quicker garbage collection.
General code refactoring and review.

New Features (Unfortunately not many)

We have now added a central moderation screen which will allow moderators to quickly see all posts awaiting approval in all forums they have been assigned to moderate. The moderation queue is searchable by keyword, username, member group & more.

General Updates

Updated the paging links to use the full absolute URL to pages as opposed to a doPostBack for each link. This ensures search engine spiders can now go from page to page within the application correctly.
Updated the application to now support medium trust ASP.NET environments. Previously exceptions would be raised due to security restrictions in medium trust hosting environments. This rendered the application virtually unusable in medium trust, this has been resolved.

Bug Fixes

Fixed issue with forum group links.
Fixed problem with member list where you could see hidden roles if you knew the identity.
Fixed security issue with attachments in private forums.
Fixed issue inline editing of subject where a problem would occur if the title tag was the same as the link text.
Fixed wrong text when deleting skins, also resolved an issue with skin cache not clearing correctly.
Resolved issue with GenericPrincipal not casting to RolePrincipal when integrated with .NET v2.0 login controls and membership API.
Fixed issue where anonymous users would not be tracked if forum activity panel was disabled for anonymous permission set.
Fixed client-side JavaScript issue with spell checker not working under .NET v2.0.
Fixed client-side JavaScript issue with IFCode panelbar on post.aspx when running under .NET v2.0.
Addressed issue with storing lots of user roles within the forms authentication ticket.
Fixed issue where RSS feed date stamp was not localized with current time zone offset and dst settings.
Fixed issue with spell checker not working when forum was hosted in a sub-directory of a web application.
Fixed issue with IFCode WYSIWYG buttons (Bold, Insert Images) not working in FireFox & Opera.
Fixed issue with Manage Member Groups page where it would generate an exception if a member group did not have a permission set associated.
Fixed issue with the ReturnURL after a login when a certain sequence of links are clicked.
Fixed IFCode [QUOTE] tag issue in Mozilla based browsers.
Fixed issue with "Override default date & time format?" option not saving within General Settings.
Fixed issues with menu's not closing correctly when hosted in a parent div layer.
Fixed two small grammatical errors in en-US\Resources.xml.

More information about this release can also be found in our release candidate post at http://support.instantasp.co.uk/FindPost11350.aspx

We have now removed the Release Candidate from your My.InstantASP accounts to avoid any confusion on which download you should use. As a result you may have some empty orders appear on your My Orders page within your My.InstantASP account. We are working to resolve this. It won't affect access to the v4.1.4 Final.

Upgrade instructions can be found within our online documentation at http://docs.instantasp.com/InstantForum/default.html?page=v413tov414guide.html

We have also updated our downloadable documentation to include the latest v4.1.4 class reference. This can be found at http://www.instantasp.co.uk/Products/Documentation/Default.aspx

Existing InstantForum.NET v4.x customers can download the v4.1.4 release from their My.InstantASP account at http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspx

Please remember you may need your My.InstantASP username and password to access the latest downloads. If you've lost your My.InstantASP password you can request this from http://my.instantasp.co.uk/ForgotPassword.aspx

If you do have any problems during the upgrade process, please don't hesitate to contact technical support or post your questions within our community forums.

For those who assisted with the BETA and release candidate stages we sincerely appreciate all your support and feedback. Mark, Bare, Cristiano, James, Goonie & Carlos a special thanks for all your feedback. Thanks to all our customers for your patience throughout this release.

We sincerely hope you all enjoy the update,