You have implemented your MyAwesomePart but you cannot attach it to your content type using the dashboard because it's not showing in the Content Parts list (Content -> Content Definition -> Content Parts)?The most possible reason for this that you haven't registered your implementation in the service container. To register your class in the service container head to the Startup.cs file of your module and in the ConfigureServices method add the following line: services.AddSingleton<ContentPart, MyAwesomePart>();But if you are using the RC1 version of Orchard Core or newer you can use the AddContentPart extension method, where you just only need to provide your content part: services.AddContentPart<MyAwesomePart>();. The AddContentPart and the AddContentField (that you can use to register your fields) can be found in the OrchardCore.ContentManagement namespace.Another recommendation is to use the Part suffix when naming your class or cs file that contains your custom part. Don't forget to put it in a Models folder to follow the recommendation of the MVC (model-view-controller) software design pattern.For more information about registering your Part check out the Startup.cs file of our Orchard Core Training Demo module, where we registered the PersonPart in the service container. We also mentioned the new way of registering ContentParts and ContentFields in this post of our This week in Orchard series. Did you like this post? It's part of our Orchard Core Nuggets series where we answer common Orchard questions, be it about user-facing features or developer-level issues. Check out the other posts for more such bite-sized Orchard Core tips and let us know if you have another question!

Many using Orchard's multi-tenancy feature sooner or later want to share data between tenants or generally, execute some operations on other tenants from one tenant. This is possible! Let's see how. First some core Orchard fundamentals: Orchard creates so called shells for tenants. These shells describe that sub-application what a tenant is, among others the shell also has its own Autofac IoC container. This container deals with all the dependencies that are injected or otherwise requested. The interesting thing is that you can access the shell - the shell context - of all running tenants and through it also their IoC container. Now if you have the container you can make dependency resolution calls on it - what means that you can resolve services from that shell, i.e. that tenant. public class TenantAccessDemo { // ShellSettingsManager lets you access the shell settings of all the tenants. private readonly IShellSettingsManager _shellSettingsManager; // OrchardHost is the very core Orchard service running the environment. private readonly IOrchardHost _orchardHost; public TenantAccessDemo(IShellSettingsManager shellSettingsManager, IOrchardHost orchardHost) { _shellSettingsManager = shellSettingsManager; _orchardHost = orchardHost; } public void UseServicesFromTenant() { // Fetching the shell settings for a tenant. This is more efficient if you have many tenants with the Lombiq Hosting Suite, // see below. var tenantShellSettings = _shellSettingsManager.LoadSettings().Where(settings => settings.Name == "TenantName").Single(); var shellContext = _orchardHost.GetShellContext(tenantShellSettings); // Creating a new work context to run our code. Resolve() needs using Autofac; using (var wc = shellContext.LifetimeScope.Resolve<IWorkContextAccessor>().CreateWorkContextScope()) { // You can resolve services from the tenant that you would normally inject through the constructor. var tenantSiteName = wc.Resolve<ISiteService>().GetSiteSettings().SiteName; // ... } } } If you're operating a multi-tenant environment you may also want to look at the Lombiq Hosting Suite: among others it has a Maintenance feature that you can use to run code in the context of tenants in a safe and scheduled way. Also it has an extended ShellSettingsManager that stores shell settings in the database: this means you can have any number of tenants, you can even fetch their settings by name or you can page when listing them and you don't have to take care about all the Settings.txt files in App_Data.

So you'd like to begin exploring Orchard because somebody sold Orchard to you. This is great! Now probably your next question is: how should I start, how can I try Orchard in action? Glad you asked. There are several simple and less simple ways, all free, so let's see. We'll start with the easy ways and build up the tension so you end up with the most complicated one if you want to become an Orchard developer. Going on a test drive with "Try Orchard!" No registration, no setup, nothing required, you can just go to Try Orchard!, open one of the continuously re-installed demo sites and play with it. This is the simplest way of taking the first steps with Orchard. Be aware though that Try Orchard! is really just for testing: since the demo sites are wiped out hourly you don't try to publish your blog there! Creating an Orchard site on DotNest DotNest is the Orchard SaaS provider: this means that you can simply register and create Orchard websites that run in the cloud without any hassle. Your website will just work: you don't have to deploy and later upgrade it, you can just use it. With DotNest you can try out Orchard very simply, very quickly and since your website is already hosted for you you can also show it to everybody. Apart from getting used to the user interface and features of Orchard you can also get into the basics of Orchard theme development with it and style and customize your Orchard website in a lot of ways. Convenience does come with disadvantages: due to the architecture of DotNest you can't install custom modules, so you have to use what is already available (that however should be enough for a big part of websites). Creating an Orchard website on Azure Web Sites Still not very complicated but a bit more advanced than using DotNest is going with Azure Websites. On MAWS after a free registration you can create websites from the Azure Gallery where you can select Orchard to deploy in one click too. Your Orchard site on MAWS will be completely under your control: you can install any module and theme you want too. However this also comes with responsibilities: you have to maintain your website yourself, upgrade and fix it as necessary. Installing Orchard locally via WebMatrix The first two options showed you the quickest ways of beginning to use Orchard that don't require you to install anything on your computer. Now we're getting into the realm of running Orchard on your local computer! WebMatrix is a simple development toolbox that you can also use to install and run Orchard on your box, as explained in the Orchard documentation. This gives you even more control but also more work to do: you can do what you want with your local Orchard instance, you can even start writing code for your custom Orchard theme or module and run those too. From WebMatrix it's also relatively easy to deploy your Orchard site to a public host. However with this option you have to maintain your site, fix any issues that third-party modules you install may cause and you have to keep Orchard up-to-date yourself. Running Orchard locally from the full source This is the real hardcore option, but you'll need to do this if you want to be a black-belt Orchard developer. You can download the full Orchard source either as a zip file from under the Releases section of the project site or you can even clone the repository via git from https://github.com/OrchardCMS/Orchard.git. You'll need Visual Studio to open, build and run the source: but since you're an aspiring developer this shouldn't be a big deal. By using the full source you can browse through Orchard's internals to get to know it better. If you need examples you'll have all the built-in modules at hand. Running Orchard locally and deploying it is the same as with any other web application. You can simply run Orchard by hitting (Ctrl +) F5 and it will spin up through IIS Express. If you want to get away from the simple SQL CE database option and want to use a proper database you'll have to install and configure SQL Server too. You can even use the full power of IIS and run Orchard as you would on a naked Windows Server. Getting Orchard running with IIS and SQL Server is something not trivial though. If you're working in a team or you just want to store your code in source control things get a bit even more complicated but there are established practices that you can use. Good luck with getting up and running with Orchard!

UPDATE (2017-11-22): Dojo Course 2 is released with new, updated videos! This week on Dojo Course we move on to some frontend-related development and see how to use static resources and other important features provided by MVC and Orchard. After that we return to the server-side to learn something new. How to add your static resources to your templates? Script/Style.Include/Require. Some userful helpers to customize your templates. Dynamically creating and displaying a shape. How to protect yourself against cross-site request forgery attacks? Posting forms and using the MVC model binder to check if the entered data in our editor is valid or not. Some debugging and bug hunting (restarting the system solved the mystery). And now, for something completely different: file management in Orchard using the IStorageProvider. Remember: if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them by creating a new issue in the Orchard issue tracker with the "discussion" label. Make sure to prefix your thread's title with "Dojo Course - "! We keep an eye on these issues. Also follow us on Twitter to get notified about the latest Dojo Course news, including when a new tutorial is posted. Do you have some feedback about the course? Please send it in.

UPDATE (2017-11-22): Dojo Course 2 is released with new, updated videos! This week on Dojo Course we dive into the Orchard API, use some of the build-in services and extending the capabilities of our module to make it even better! Using LazyField<T> to load data lazily so they are only loaded when we really need them. Using Work<T> to load dependencies lazily so they are only resolved when we really need them. Applying the [Admin] attribute for admin-related Getting to know an other Orchard service: IAuthorizer. Creating our own permissions by implementing the IPermissionProvider. Using the ContentManager so we can finally work with content items! Generating ad-hoc shapes and matching them to an actual template. Implementing the IResourceManifestProvider interface for managing static resources. Remember: if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them by creating a new issue in the Orchard issue tracker with the "discussion" label. Make sure to prefix your thread's title with "Dojo Course - "! We keep an eye on these issues. Also follow us on Twitter to get notified about the latest Dojo Course news, including when a new tutorial is posted. Do you have some feedback about the course? Please send it in. Haven't you enrolled yet? Why not do it some time in the near future like right now?

UPDATE (2017-11-22): Dojo Course 2 is released with new, updated videos! This week on Dojo Course we are giving life to our content part by adding several Orchard-y code pieces to it, though the result is far from being Frankenstein-like. While doing that, we also discover some interesting and useful pieces of the Orchard API. Creating a migration for our Contents feature. Difference between ContentPartRecord and ContentPartVersionRecord: versioning content parts. Making your content part attachable to content types (on the Admin UI). Creating a content type using migrations and attaching parts to it. Creating a handler for our content part to do some plumbing (e.g. StorageFilter). Creating a driver for our content part to cover server-side part of the the user interface interaction. How displaying a shape works, what is DisplayType? Shape templates (also editors) and using Placement. Using InfosetPart to store a part's data in the content item's XML infoset document. This eliminates content part record lazy loading, providing a significant performance gain. The importance of driver shape factories. How to make your content part support importing and exporting? Remember: if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them by creating a new issue in the Orchard issue tracker with the "discussion" label. Make sure to prefix your thread's title with "Dojo Course - "! We keep an eye on these issues. Also follow us on Twitter to get notified about the latest Dojo Course news, including when a new tutorial is posted. Do you have some feedback about the course? Please send it in. Haven't you enrolled yet? Why not do it some time in the near future like right now?

UPDATE (2017-11-22): Dojo Course 2 is released with new, updated videos! How to upgrade my table schema? How to store and retrieve records from my tables? How do I upgrade from using a plain set of records to using a content part? This week on Dojo Course we are moving on to uncover the mysteries of content parts. Making modifications to your Migrations classes: how to use the update methods. Quick recap on Dependency Injection and creating a service class to handle our records. Benedek has problems with typing when he knows he's being watched (actually, Zoltán as well) :). Difference between requiring a single and list of dependencies. How to (and how not to) use IRepository<T> to store and retreive records. Based on what we learned about records, we are starting to develop our first content part. Dividing your module into features (subset of functionalities) and declaring dependencies between them. Assigning pieces of code to specific features using the OrchardFeature attribute. Remember: if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them by creating a new issue in the Orchard issue tracker with the "discussion" label. Make sure to prefix your thread's title with "Dojo Course - "! We keep an eye on these issues. Also follow us on Twitter to get notified about the latest Dojo Course news, including when a new tutorial is posted. Do you have some feedback about the course? Please send it in. Haven't you enrolled yet? Why not do it some time in the near future like right now?

UPDATE (2017-11-22): Dojo Course 2 is released with new, updated videos! The fifth lesson of Dojo Course will teach you more about module development: how to build your own logic that is able to store data and what are the basic services that aid you in your work. A quick recap of the last lesson: command line scaffolding, creating a controller and a view, dependency injection Using the IWorkContextAccessor and exploring the WorkContext (and the HttpContext inside) object: content parts and items everywhere! Attaching the debugger to the IIS Express worker process How to display CLRExceptions in VS to see the exceptions that otherwise would be swallowed somewhere in the stack: Ctrl+D,E and check the "Thrown" checkbox Using the INotifier service Property injection: Localizer and Logger How to properly structure your T-strings to make them bulletproof agains translations: String.Format Routing in MVC and defining custom parameters Basic data storage: creating a record class (which is the OO representation of our data) and a migration class to define the table schema Looking at the DB after the migration to see what our code did there Remember: if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them by creating a new issue in the Orchard issue tracker with the "discussion" label. Make sure to prefix your thread's title with "Dojo Course - "! We keep an eye on these issues. Also follow us on Twitter to get notified about the latest Dojo Course news, including when a new tutorial is posted. Do you have some feedback about the course? Please send it in. Haven't you enrolled yet? Why not do it some time in the near future like right now?

UPDATE (2017-11-22): Dojo Course 2 is released with new, updated videos! Our fourth Dojo Course tutorial wraps up theme development by explaining shapes and alternates. We also start with module development and write some interesting code that actually works. Shapes are the dynamic objects organized into a tree that defines the layout Exploring this tree of shapes using the Shape Tracer module, a bigger building block is a zone Explaining the relation between the Razor templates and shapes, view engines Overriding active templates: alternates Localizing templates: T-Strings (please ignore the ASPX format :) ) and how they work Exploring the naming conventions of templates for targeting the override The resulting output is affected by OutputCache for unauthenticated users Editing the settings for the Orchard.OutputCache module Adding styles and scripts to your templates, difference between AtHead and AtFoot for scripts Taking a look at the Layout shape template, which is the spine of the final layout Generating a module skeleton with the command line tool and adding it to our custom solution folder Introducing the Orchard Training Demo module, specifically developed to aid you in learning about Orchard development Looking at the basic settings of your module: Module.txt Diving modules into subsets of functionality: features Modules are strongly depending on the MVC paradigm Let's see C: writing our first Controller with an action for a start Let's see V: writing a view that represents the result of our controller actions The first and most basic element of the Orchard API: the [Themed] attribute Getting to know Dependency Injection Using our first Orchard service: IWorkContextAccessor How to debug an Orchard application running with IIS Express Remember: if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them by creating a new issue in the Orchard issue tracker with the "discussion" label. Make sure to prefix your thread's title with "Dojo Course - "! We keep an eye on these issues. Do you have some feedback about the course? Please send it in. Haven't you enrolled yet? Why not do it some time in the near future like right now?

UPDATE (2017-11-22): Dojo Course 2 is released with new, updated videos! Forms, tokens, projections? Command line scaffolding for themes and shapes? This is what the third Dojo Course tutorial is about. Continuously updated source code for the Course (you can upload the latest source in a zip from here) Using Custom Forms: Creating a content type for using as a form, with fields Creating a custom form with the newly created content type Using Workflows to run custom activities like sending an e-mail when a form is submitted Using tokens to create dynamic texts Using the Projector module to list content items: Creating queries to define which content items to list, in what order and how to display them Creating Projection Pages or Projection Widgets to display the result of the query Using Query Links in Navigation Starting with developing extensions: themes Using the command line tool, help Command line scaffolding: generating a theme with a separate project and adding it to our custom solution Basic settings for your theme with Theme.txt: Name, BaseTheme (inheritance) Using the Shape Tracing feature to reveal how the layout is built up, notion of shapes Remember: if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them by creating a new issue in the Orchard issue tracker with the "discussion" label. Make sure to prefix your thread's title with "Dojo Course - "! We keep an eye on these issues. Haven't you enrolled yet? Why not do it some time in the near future like right now?