Blog

Build Your Own Knowledge Base Website
Apr 09, 2023

Build Your Own Knowledge Base Website

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroMany businesses and organizations underestimate the value of a dedicated knowledge base website. Utilizing a generic Wordpress template or wiki may seem like a quick fix, but it often results in a lackluster learning or onboarding experience. These templates are not typic...

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Release of v1.0.5
Apr 08, 2023

Release of v1.0.5

Written by Zack Schwartz

Hello everyone, v1.0.5 is now released with the key highlights being:New features:New liquid function to retrieve details for a ContentType (#113)New liquid filter attachment_public_url to render the direct url to the file storage provider of a file attachment field (#87).Brea...

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Release of v1.0.4
Apr 01, 2023

Release of v1.0.4

Written by Zack Schwartz

Hello everyone, v1.0.4 is now released with the key highlights being:New liquid functions that let you call the database to get content items! (#97)Fixed crash on Dockerfile build (#101)Integrated DocFx for full blown documentation at https://docs.raytha.com (#40)Thank you!

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Modern open source .NET alternative to Umbraco CMS
Mar 27, 2023

Modern open source .NET alternative to Umbraco CMS

Written by Zack Schwartz

Umbraco CMS is a flexible open-source content management system built on the latest .NET (ASP.NET Core) technology. It offers a user-friendly editing experience, freedom for developers, and seamless integrations with other tools. Umbraco CMS can also handle multilingual and mu...

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Why Raytha is the best CMS for a nonprofit association
Mar 27, 2023

Why Raytha is the best CMS for a nonprofit association

Written by Zack Schwartz

Why Raytha is the best CMS for a nonprofit associationIf you are looking for a CMS platform that can handle all the important aspects of a nonprofit association website, such as content restriction, event calendar, news and blog posts, conference agenda and speakers, job board...

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Resolving SAML error: Unexpected error occurred: ASN1 corrupted data.
Mar 25, 2023

Resolving SAML error: Unexpected error occurred: ASN1 corrupted data.

Written by Zack Schwartz

Recently, I had an infuriating experience implementing SAML in .NET 6+ while trying to load an x509 Certificate via the string method. We store the x509 cert in the database instead of a file on the file system, so we wanted to load the string value.However, we kept getting an...

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Implementing `groupby` custom liquid filter for .NET Fluid
Mar 25, 2023

Implementing `groupby` custom liquid filter for .NET Fluid

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroLiquid is a popular template engine used in web development. Fluid, an implementation of Liquid in .NET, is used in Raytha, our open-source .NET CMS platform. However, there is no implementation of the groupby operation in the Liquid templating language. This blog post de...

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Release of v1.0.3
Mar 25, 2023

Release of v1.0.3

Written by Zack Schwartz

Hello everyone, v1.0.3 is now released with the key highlights being:New json liquid filter (See #89)New groupby liquid filter (See #92)Fixed crash when setting a favorite view (See #91)Hopefully you find these new liquid filters helpful!Thank you!

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How to Create a Successful Conference Website for Your Association
Mar 19, 2023

How to Create a Successful Conference Website for Your Association

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroAssociations play a critical role in organizing conferences, which often serve as a platform for continuing education credits or presenting papers and research. However, managing conferences can be a chaotic affair, particularly when there are multiple sessions, speakers,...

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Everything .NET Devs Need to Know About Authenticating With SAML2
Mar 13, 2023

Everything .NET Devs Need to Know About Authenticating With SAML2

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroIn this post, we will dive into the world of SAML2. With over 12 years of experience building SSOs of various types, I have gained a wealth of knowledge on the subject. From popular standards like OAuth, JWT, and SAML to custom-built and sometimes quirky SSOs, I have like...

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Integrating Maps into Your Directory Website
Mar 12, 2023

Integrating Maps into Your Directory Website

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroIn this post we are going to explore creating a restaurant directory website that includes the locations of restaurants on a map via latitude and longitude coordinates. Restaurants are just an excuse to create the website, but the techniques learned in this tutorial will ...

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Create a members only website with a CMS with low-code
Mar 05, 2023

Create a members only website with a CMS with low-code

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroOne of the outstanding capabilities of the Raytha content management is the ability to effortlessly set up a website that includes user and account management. With Raytha, users can create their own accounts, or administrators can create accounts on their behalf, making ...

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Release of v1.0.2
Mar 05, 2023

Release of v1.0.2

Written by Zack Schwartz

Hi everyone,Excited to announce the release of 1.0.2.The key features in this release include:New field type available: wysiwyg field, which uses the MIT open sourced and awesome TinyMCE editor. This will allow you to have much more control over the content you write if you wa...

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The First 30 Days as a CTO or VP of Engineering for SaaS: What You Need to Know
Mar 01, 2023

The First 30 Days as a CTO or VP of Engineering for SaaS: What You Need to Know

Written by Zack Schwartz

Starting a new leadership position can be both exciting and daunting, especially if you're taking over a product or team that you know little about. The first 30 days are critical for setting the tone and direction of your leadership and establishing credibility with your team...

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Migrate a static HTML site to a CMS
Feb 25, 2023

Migrate a static HTML site to a CMS

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroIf you're a web developer who has built a static HTML website, you've probably experienced the scenario where your client wants to make updates to their site but you don't have an easy way to facilitate that. You could have them email you the changes or give them access t...

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Release of v1.0.1
Feb 25, 2023

Release of v1.0.1

Written by Zack Schwartz

Hi everyone,Excited to announce the release of 1.0.1.The key features in this release include:Built in liquid filter to convert content item time to the organization's time zone in strtotime formatRun Raytha at a different PathBase, meaning if you run behind a reverse proxy, y...

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Best Open Source .NET CMS alternative to Sitefinity for Nonprofit Associations
Feb 23, 2023

Best Open Source .NET CMS alternative to Sitefinity for Nonprofit Associations

Written by Zack Schwartz

In 2011, I joined a web design company called NonprofitCMS. Our primary focus was creating websites for non-profit organizations and membership associations using platforms such as Wordpress, Drupal, and Sitefinity. Over time, we honed our skills in building large-scale websit...

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Lightweight alternative to aspnetboilerplate
Feb 19, 2023

Lightweight alternative to aspnetboilerplate

Written by Zack Schwartz

What is aspnetboilerplate?ASP.NET Boilerplate (aspnetboilerplate.com) is a web application framework that is built on top of the popular ASP.NET Core framework. It provides a set of pre-built tools and components to help developers quickly build scalable and maintainable appli...

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Recreating 'Reddit Live' with .NET and SignalR
Feb 18, 2023

Recreating 'Reddit Live' with .NET and SignalR

Written by Zack Schwartz

IntroReddit Live is a unique feature of reddit.com that comes into play during serious ongoing news events with rapidly evolving information. Essentially, volunteers create a Live Thread where they constantly provide updates to visitors who are eagerly following the event. One...

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Setup a headless CMS in five minutes
Feb 13, 2023

Setup a headless CMS in five minutes

Written by Zack Schwartz

Welcome to the exciting world of Raytha, the open-source .NET CMS. With its latest version 1.0.0, Raytha now offers a powerful and versatile Headless CMS mode. In this article, we'll take a closer look at this exciting new feature and guide you through the process of getting s...

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Release of v1.0.0
Feb 12, 2023

Release of v1.0.0

Written by Zack Schwartz

Hi everyone,This is the major 1.0.0 release.The headline features in this release include:Headless REST API with Swagger / OpenAPI specAdditional List View pagination controlsAble to set a List View as the home pageSupport for running in Scaled Out instanced, for example on Az...

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Setup custom domain on Azure Blob Storage behind reverse proxy
Feb 07, 2023

Setup custom domain on Azure Blob Storage behind reverse proxy

Written by Zack Schwartz

Hey there! If you're reading this, you're probably wondering about the nitty-gritty details of how we run our website here at https://raytha.com. Well, let us tell you - we've got the Raytha platform all set up and running smoothly on an Azure Web App, with all our files safel...

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Ensure users remain logged in on Azure Kubernetes Service with AddDataProtection()
Feb 07, 2023

Ensure users remain logged in on Azure Kubernetes Service with AddDataProtection()

Written by Zack Schwartz

Logged in sessions are lostHave you ever deployed a .NET application that allows users to log in, only to run into issues when scaling it out? It can be frustrating when everything seems to be working fine, but then users randomly get logged out or have inconsistent login stat...

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Using Cloudflare Workers and D1 to build a Twitter Clone
Feb 06, 2023

Using Cloudflare Workers and D1 to build a Twitter Clone

Written by Zack Schwartz

I dedicate my weekends to discovering new technologies and expanding my skill set. This curiosity led me to explore Cloudflare Workers and their recently launched D1 service - a serverless SQLite database. D1 is still in its alpha phase and documentation is sparse and frequent...

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The ultimate guide to hiring a software developer
Jan 31, 2023

The ultimate guide to hiring a software developer

Written by Zack Schwartz

A few years ago, I received a call from an acquaintance of an acquaintance, who had heard of my background as a software developer. They shared with me their idea for a complex app that would combine features of a social network, location-based services, real-time live video s...

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