DotNetNuke (DNN)

The downfall of DNN

Tim Huffam — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 04:33:00 GMT

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

This once ok system has finally gone just one step too far - in the direction of the smelly stuff.

What used to be a stroll in the park to install is now walk through a mine field. The latest version 4.3.4 promises to be great - but infortunately it shoots you down before entering the building. They may as well put a bunch of viruses in their downloads area.

Finding answers to the many many different errors is a rewardless task. After finally resorting to their forums (I say finally because their main site, www.dotnetnuke.com is so goddamn slow it's painful - so it's a last resort) only be be confronted by:
A critical error has occurred. Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

Again I say what a fucking pile of stinking shit! I guess they're not helped by MS's hell bent quest on changing they way they do everything from db connection strings to CAS.

The documentation that's not very easy to find is like a patchwork of notes - so if you can honestly be shagged in reading it all - then you might even make a tiny bit of head way - but I seriously doubt it.

I was about to post an entry showing notes for a quick install - but this is definately not possible with this sack of shit. It's a real shame because I would have suggested DNN to someone wanting a flexible CMS. And it appears that their age-old problem of performance has not been looked at (man it's been years and it still performs like a sleepy snail).

I've just tried to install the source version of v4.3.4 so I can do some development.. and I've had endless hassles - firstly with the connection strings (the default format in the web.config's do not work for SQLExpress - I've had to resort to the old SQL Server2000 format - although that's really a MS problem no DNN).

Next the permissions and CAS - largely because I wanted to use development.config - in the end I had to give up with this (how on earth are people supposed to use this???).

And finally - after about 6 attempts of deleting everything and starting again... the last couple of install looked remotely like completing ok but both errored out.

What makes me laugh is that I've encountered 3 different styles of error screen - far out - it's like errors are encouraged.

Think it's time I starting looking at a php or ruby CMS.

I must admit - 2 days part time to install DNN is definately a great way to put people off the product - you just need to see the long list of hassles in their forums to know that there must be something fundamentally wrong with the installation process.

I remeber the good old days when dnn installed within minutes for downloading - what went wrong?

I'm sure I'll eventually get it sorted out - but what's the bloody point - wasting that much time is a definate warning that you're dealing with something somewhat dangerous and smelly.

Rant, moan, groan, bitch... and again.. what a fucking pile of stinking shit!

How to convert special characters to HTML encoded equivalents using C#.NET

Tim Huffam — Thu, 25 May 2006 00:31:00 GMT

public string HTMLEncodeSpecialChars(string text)
{
System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
  foreach (char c in text){
    if(c>127) // special chars
      sb.Append(String.Format("&#{0};",(int)c));
    else
      sb.Append(c);
  }
  return sb.ToString();
}

IIS error: The parameter is incorrect

Tim Huffam — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 00:20:00 GMT

This error occurs within IIS 6 when you try to start your web site and it has not been assigned to a valid application pool.

This usually happens when the default app pool has been deleted.

HTH

Tim

CodeSmith templates for DNN module development, BLL, DAL, etc

Tim Huffam — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:21:00 GMT

Check out these babies. Bloody marvellous!

Resetting DNN or asp.net membership password and password salt

Tim Huffam — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 07:31:00 GMT

If you're a plonker like me and have forgotten a password, you have 2 options:

Call the 'aspnet_Membership_ResetPassword' sproc.
Simply update the aspnet_membership table manually by copying the password and passwordSalt column values from another user (whose password you know). Here's some code I used:

declare @u uniqueidentifier
set @u = (select userid from aspnet_users where username = 'userwhosepswdyouknow')

UPDATE aspnet_Membership
SET
[Password] = (select password from aspnet_membership where userid = @u),
[PasswordSalt] = (select passwordsalt from aspnet_membership where userid = @u)
WHERE userid = (select userid from aspnet_users where username = 'userwhosepswdyoudontknow')

select password, passwordsalt from aspnet_membership m

HTH

Tim