Umbdashboard which can be found on codeplex is a collection of handy umbraco dashboard controls (some info on dashboard). But it’s an old project developed for a previous version of umbraco. So I’ve started porting these to umbraco v4. First up is zip upload.

Basicly zip upload is a small dashboard control that allows you to upload a zip file to the media section of umbraco. All files in the zip get created as media items and it also respects folder structure.

Once it’s installed you can find it on the dashboard of the media section.

So you can pick a media folder (if no folder is selected it creates a new folder based on the zip filename).

And you just need to choose the zip file and hit ‘upload zip file’.

Afterwards you’ll get a summary of the files that have been uploaded.

If you refresh the media tree, files and folders should be in place

Zip upload has a small configuration file (/config/zipupload.config) that looks like this:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?> 

<zipUpload>

    <fileNodeTypeId>1033</fileNodeTypeId>

    <imageNodeTypeId>1032</imageNodeTypeId>

    <folderNodeTypeId>1031</folderNodeTypeId>

    <imageFileExtensions>jpeg,jpg,gif,bmp,png,tiff,tif</imageFileExtensions>

</zipUpload>

It contains the id’s of the media types that will be used and the file extensions that will be considered as image.

In case it doesn’t show up on the dashboard this is the snipped that needs to be inserted in the /config/dashboard.config file:

<section>

        <areas>

          <area>media</area>

        </areas>

        <tab caption=”Zip Upload”>

          <control>/usercontrols/zipupload.ascx</control>

        </tab>

</section>

Credits to the original developer of umbdashboard (think it was Niels), I only did some small modifications.

To continue the why umbraco rocks posts, just look at the diversity of sites running umbraco. One of the great things of umbraco is that you have complete control over what is ouputted. You start with an empty ‘template’ and can add any html you want. You are not forced into skinning (like many other cms systems) but can just mold umbraco around your (x)html templates.