IgniteSG.OrchardCore.MspMarketingEdge 1.6.6

IgniteSG.OrchardCore.MspMarketingEdge

An Orchard Core module that automatically imports weekly blog posts from MSP Marketing Edge into your Orchard CMS site.

Features

• Scheduled import — A background task polls the MSP Marketing Edge content feed every 6 hours and imports new blog posts as AutoBlogPost content items.
• Deduplication — Each imported post is tracked by its upstream GUID in a dedicated index. A slug-based fallback lookup catches posts that may have been created manually or survived an index rebuild, and backfills the GUID automatically.
• Index reconciliation — On each run the module reconciles the GUID index against existing content, so database recovery or index rebuilds don't cause duplicate imports.
• Update detection — When the upstream service flags a post for update with a new version number, the module updates the existing content item in place.
• Featured images — Downloads and stores featured images in the Orchard media library under /autoblog/.
• Draft or publish — Choose whether imported posts go live immediately or are created as drafts for manual review.
• Scheduled publishing — Future-dated posts from the feed are created as drafts with a scheduled publish date via PublishLaterPart, so Orchard auto-publishes them when the date arrives.
• Full SEO metadata — Populates SeoMetaPart on every imported post: canonical URL (pointing to the original source), noindex, follow robots directive, Open Graph tags, Twitter Card tags, and optional Google JSON-LD structured data.
• HTML sanitization — All external HTML from the feed is sanitized before storage to prevent stored XSS attacks.
• Blog container support — Imported posts can be linked to a Blog container via ContainedPart, so they automatically appear in List-based blog pages.
• Estimated reading time — Templates calculate and display an estimated reading time (words / 200, minimum 1 minute).
• Video feed detection — Posts from video feeds automatically hide the featured image in the detail template, since the video is embedded in the body.
• Editable created date — The original publication date is preserved from the feed and exposed in the admin editor for manual adjustment.
• Email notifications — Sends a summary email when new posts are imported or updated.
• Sync status dashboard — The admin settings page displays the last sync time, success/failure status, and a summary of what was imported.
• Force refresh — An admin button triggers an immediate import outside of the background schedule.

Requirements

• Orchard Core 2.2.x
• .NET 8
• The following Orchard Core features must be enabled:
  • OrchardCore.Seo
  • OrchardCore.PublishLater
  • OrchardCore.Email (with SMTP configured)
  • OrchardCore.Media

Installation

NuGet (recommended)

dotnet add package IgniteSG.OrchardCore.MspMarketingEdge

Or via the Package Manager Console:

Install-Package IgniteSG.OrchardCore.MspMarketingEdge

Project reference

1. Add the IgniteSG.OrchardCore.MspMarketingEdge project to your Orchard Core solution.
2. Reference it from your web project.

Enable the feature

1. In the Orchard admin, go to Configuration → Features and enable MSP Marketing Edge AutoBlog.
2. Configure the module under Configuration → MSP Marketing Edge AutoBlog.
3. Use the Run Import Now button to verify the connection and trigger an initial import.

Permissions

The module registers a single permission:

Configuration

After enabling the module, navigate to Configuration → MSP Marketing Edge AutoBlog in the Orchard admin. The settings page provides:

Feed options

Recommended site configuration

For proper date and time display (localized format with AM/PM), enable OrchardCore.Localization and set a default culture (e.g. en-US, en-GB, or en-AU) under Configuration → Settings → Localization. Also verify your site timezone under Configuration → Settings → General. The module works without this, but dates will display in UTC with invariant formatting.

How It Works

1. The background task runs every 6 hours (configurable via Orchard's Background Tasks admin).
2. It validates the license email against the MSP Marketing Edge license API.
3. It fetches the content feed (the API returns ~6 posts: a mix of recent published and upcoming scheduled posts).
4. For each article, it checks for an existing AutoBlogPost by GUID index, falling back to a slug-based lookup if needed.
5. New posts are created with title, body, slug, featured image, and full SEO metadata. External HTML is sanitized before storage.
6. Existing posts are updated only when the upstream send_update flag is set and the update_version has changed.
7. A notification email is sent if any posts were created or updated.

Templates

The module includes default Liquid templates for rendering AutoBlogPost content items:

• Content-AutoBlogPost.liquid — Detail view (single article page). Renders the title, publish date, estimated reading time, featured image (hidden automatically for video feeds where the video is embedded in the body), full article body, and a link back to the original source.
• Content_Summary-AutoBlogPost.liquid — Summary view (article lists). Renders a Bootstrap card with featured image thumbnail, title, date, estimated reading time, excerpt, and a "Read more" link.

These templates use Bootstrap 5 classes and work out of the box. To customize them, copy the template file into your theme's Views/ folder and modify it there — Orchard's shape resolution will pick up your theme's version over the module's default.

Listing AutoBlog Posts

To display a list of imported posts on a page, you can use Orchard's built-in Liquid query support. For example, in a Liquid widget or template:

{% assign posts = ContentItem | query: type: 'AutoBlogPost', sort: 'PublishedUtc', order: 'desc', count: 10 %}
{% for post in posts %}
 {{ post | shape_build_display: 'Summary' | shape_render }}
{% endfor %}

Alternatively, create a List content item in the Orchard admin that queries the AutoBlogPost content type — this gives you pagination and filtering without any template changes.

Combining with existing Blog Posts

If your site already has a blog page that lists BlogPost items and you want imported AutoBlogPost items to appear alongside them, update your blog list template to query both content types.

Changelog

v1.6.0

• Added estimated reading time to blog post templates
• Exposed editable created date on AutoBlogPost content type
• Fixed MySQL syntax error in slug lookup and misleading error messages
• Fixed slug fallback to correctly match existing posts during import

v1.5.0

• Added slug-based fallback lookup for deduplication resilience
• Added GUID index reconciliation on each import run

v1.1.0

• Initial public release with scheduled import, SEO metadata, email notifications, and template support

Disclaimer

This is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by MSP Marketing Edge. MSP Marketing Edge is a trademark of its respective owner.

License

MIT