New Post: A few questions about understanding how Composite C1 works

I migrated data into a MSSQL database. What does it mean?

It means that all data schema and data that used to be handled by the default XmlDataProvider have now been moved to your SQL Server database and are handled by the SqlDataProvider. Queries for data (which are always expressed as LINQ statements) are now routed to the SQL provider instead.

Functionally you should not see a difference. The pros of moving your data to sql server is better write performance and the ability to handle much larger amounts of data.

The XmlDataProvider can go a long way though, most of our public facing websites run on that. Running on that allow for much easier backup and migration and read performance is quite excellent.

If I add a page, the page's content is stored in XML file or the MSSQL database?

The migration wizard will move the responsibility for storing data to the SqlDataProvider and you data now live in SQL Server.

Is there any online shopping package available? (This is not a crucial point).

Nope.

Can I create a block of content, then I specify a few pages and page regions for this block to show up?

Yes - we haven't published an easy to install package that does this (we really should), so here a the steps needed to create such a package. Step by step, how to build up such a feature in c1:

1. On the Data perspective, create a new Global Data type.
2. On the Settings tab, name it "Shared content". Give it the programmatic name "Shared" and the namespace "Content" (names are up to you)
3. On the Fields tab, create one field named "Title" and another field named "Content". Modify the last field in this way: make the length unlimited and (on the advanced tab) change the widget to Composite.Widgets.Text.VisualXhtmlEditor
4. Save the data type
   

This gives you a data layer - in your case a new sql table - and some simple ui for editing content. Your type will show up in the tree, add some test data. To create a rendering function, do the steps below. Here we do it using a C# Function:

1. On the Functions perspective create a new "Inline C# Function"
2. Name it "RenderSharedContent", in the namespace "Content". Again - you own the naming. Press Finish.
3. On the "Input Parameters" add new new parameter. Name it 'contentToShow' and make the parameter type "DataReference<Shared Content>"
4. On the Source tab, paste in the code below.
5. Save the function
   

To use the function do this: while editing a page, click Insert, Function, select Content.Shared and then select a content block.

using System;
using Composite.Data;
using Composite.Core.Xml;

namespace Content
{
    public static class InlineMethodFunction
    {
        public static XhtmlDocument RenderSharedContent(DataReference<Content.Shared> contentToShow)
        {
            return XhtmlDocument.Parse(contentToShow.Data.Content);
        }
    }
}