DotNetNuke

Any DotNetNuke skinners out there?

Brian Scarbeau — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:53:45 GMT

Check out the skinning contest that is going on at the DotNetNuke site and you can win some great prizes too! Good luck!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Skinning

Need ideas for a DotNetNuke Christmas gift?

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:51:18 GMT

I thought I would give a list of DotNetNuke Christmas gifts you could possibly buy for a client, co-worker or yourself.

You can start with some Christmas skins that you could put on your site. The folks at All Dnn Skins has some skins for you to look at. Snowcovered has an array of Holiday skins as well. If you only want a Christmas skin for a period of time and want your skins to change automatically then you can take a look at PageChameleon which will do that for you. You can set the special day, the occurring frequency, skin and container. Then PageChameleon will change the skin and container in the special day and change back to normal skin after that day. And users of your web site can select their favorite skins.

Subscribe or renew to DNN Creative Magazine. There are many good tutorials listed here and what I like is that the information is very current.

There are several very good DotNetNuke books that you can get. Here’s a list:

Professional DotNetNuke 5: Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP.NET (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) by Shaun Walker, Brian Scarbeau, Darrell Hardy, and Stan Schultes

DotNetNuke 5 User's Guide: Get Your Website Up and Running (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) by Christopher J. Hammond, Patrick Renner, and Shaun Walker

Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming by Mitchel Sellers and Shaun Walker

Beginning DotNetNuke Skinning and Design (Programmer to Programmer) by Andrew Hay and Shaun Walker

You could consider a gift certificate to a co-worker with the words Come With Me to OpenForce 2010. You do have two options to consider for this gift. Will it be in Europe or Las Vegas? Gift certificates could also be used for consulting with top DotNetNuke professionals like Mitch Sellers, Michael Washington, SEO specialist Tom Kraak,or Skinning pro Ryan Morgan to name a few.

Finally, get out of the winter cold and come to an Orlando DotNetNuke User Group meeting. What a great gift to give. We have several good topics and some great speakers too! DotNetNuke Corp. Co-Founder/Technical Fellow, Joe Brinkman will be here in Orlando on January 12th.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke

Not sure if you need the Professional version of DotNetNuke?

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:14:23 GMT

The DotNetNuke web hosters at PowerDNN have put together a nice 3 minute survey to analyze your needs on what version of DotNetNuke that you might need to have.

The survey has 3 categories.

1. Website Size

2. Website Usage

3. Project Details

With an easy UI of drop down lists, you just answer the questions listed in each category and then submit them to the site.

After you submit, you'll get reasons why you should use either the Community or Professional Edition of DotNetNuke.

Here's an example of the results that I received based on my input:

You should use DotNetNuke Community Edition because:

DotNetNuke Community Edition is designed for Small Business Websites.

DotNetNuke Community Edition is recommended for websites using only 1GB or Less of disk space.

DotNetNuke Community Edition is recommended for websites using only 1GB or Less of database space.

DotNetNuke Community Edition is recommended for websites with only 1 Portal.

DotNetNuke Community Edition is designed for small websites with only 25 - 100 User Accounts.

DotNetNuke Community Edition does not contain content approval workflows because it would overburden 2 - 5 Content Editors.

DotNetNuke Community Edition is designed for websites with only 1 Web Server.

DotNetNuke Community Edition is free and will not impact a small budget of $0 - $3k.

DotNetNuke Community Edition is much simpler for an organization with only 1 - 15 Employees to adequately leverage.

DotNetNuke Community Edition does not include legal indemnification which may be acceptable because your organization is small.

You may consider DotNetNuke Professional Edition because:

DotNetNuke Professional Edition's content management is designed for websites that have 25 - 50 Pages or more.

DotNetNuke Professional Edition is optimized for heavy usage which includes 100 - 500 Concurrent Users or more.

DotNetNuke Professional Edition's advanced security model is recommended for high-security and VPN environments.

DotNetNuke Professional Edition's Unlimited Support and Guaranteed Issue Resolution will reduce maintainance costs once the outsourced project is complete.

The results were very honest and PowerDNN was not trying to sell me the Professional version of DotNetNuke. Great idea to have for those that really don't know what version they should get.

Check it out!

SOME MEMBERS OF THE DOTNETNUKE COMMUNITY HAVE INFORMED ME THAT THERE ARE SOME MISLEADINGS IN THE RESULTS THAT YOU GET FROM THIS SURVEY AND TONY VALENTI FROM POWER DNN IS LOOKING INTO THEM AND I AM SURE HE WILL FIX THE SURVEY TO GET BETTER RESULTS.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK IS MY ADVICE.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, PowerDNN

How to create easy DotNetNuke skins

Brian Scarbeau — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:04:51 GMT

I've been looking at this skinning creator program for $129.95 from Artisteer for a while now and sure enough DotNetNuke skinning rookies will be able to create their own skins and apply them on their own sites. It appears that the DotNetNuke community is starting to endorse this product as well.

The product has been out for a while now and its advertised as a way to change your theme using Joomia, Drupal and WordPress. Now, they have added support for DotNetNuke skins and DotNetNuke users have started to explore this product to use on their sites.

Every software product has it's pro's and con's. Quite frankly, professional skinners should not be worried about losing client business because there are some drawbacks at using the product. For example, it supports only horizontal menus and not vertical. It only has the skin created in the Content Pane and there are problems with containers with this version of the product. You still need to know skinning to be able to look at the created files and tweak them.

However, the folks at Artisteer seem to be listening to the DNN users because breadcrumbs was not added to the product at first and then the current version includes breadcrumbs. So, who knows what changes may be made on future releases of the product but it does appear that the company is listening to its users.

The product itself is very easy to use. In fact, you can keep clicking the Suggest Design Ideas to see various design schemes automatically

Here's an example:

What is nice about this product is that you don't need to use Photoshop to create anything. It's all here. For example, look at the menu buttons you can use:

When you are finished, you need to export the file to the DotNetNuke version you are using:

Export your DNN skin to your computer as a zip file. If you work with DotNetNuke 4, an additional ArtMenuSO.zip package (which is the menu module) will be generated along with the skin folder. To install the menu module in DotNetNuke 4, go to Module Definitions (Host -> Module Definitions) and select "Install New Module". You will then be prompted to find and select the ArtMenuSO.zip on your computer. Finally, click the "Install New Module" link.

This product is worth taking a look at and it should be interesting to see what gets updated in future versions.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, skins

What is something that is longer than a magazine article and shorter than a book chapter?

Brian Scarbeau — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:55:16 GMT

What is something that is longer than a magazine article and shorter than a book chapter? Give up?

It's a Wrox-Blox that Wiley has available online with some going for less than $10.00. Written by the best programmers in the their fields, Wrox Blox are short informational pieces and code that will help get you up-to-speed and keep you up-to-date. Build the knowledge you need quickly on a wide variety of topics.

In the DotNetNuke world, there are several of these available for you to review and stay current. Microsoft MVP, Antonio Chagoury has one available called Done in 60 Minutes: Building a Custom DotNetNuke Membership Provider. Here's some information on it: This Wrox Blox will give you a high-level overview of the core Membership Provider and its default implementation, (ASP.NET Membership), and demonstrate how to build and configure your own custom provider. The Provider Model is a design pattern introduced in .NET to provide a simple way to extend API functionality. DotNetNuke uses this architecture to allow some of its core functionality to be replaced without modifying core code.

Cuong Dang has is Wrox Blox on DotNetNuke and Web Standards.

This Wrox Blox demonstrates a web standards approach to building DotNetNuke skins by defining a flexible XHTML/CSS layout. This Wrox Blox also shows the differences between HTML and XHTML and provides recommendations to the module development process using web standards techniques.Professional web designers and developers are embracing web standards more than ever before. Many businesses are considering using the DotNetNuke framework for their next projects. The framework has great potential for worldwide adoption, from the small-business to the large-enterprise level. But when it comes to web standards, the framework is still lacking. DotNetNuke has already established its name as a robust system; it needs to be improved by using the latest technologies. This Wrox Blox encourages DotNetNuke developers to adopt the web standards approach.

I'm in the process of reading this Blox and will give a review of it in a future blog post. Finally, Joe Brinkman, aka, the accidental geek has a Blox on jQuery for ASP.NET Developers.

This Wrox Blox teaches you how to use jQuery with your ASP.NET-based websites. jQuery greatly simplifies JavaScript development and allows you to create highly interactive and responsive websites using the latest JavaScript and AJAX techniques. The author walks you through the jQuery API using a simple ASP.NET MVC application to highlight major topics, and shows how you can apply jQuery to your own applications. After learning the basics of using jQuery, you’ll discover how easy it is to use within your own ASP.NET projects. Whether you are using WebForms or the MVC framework, jQuery will greatly simplify your code. As you will quickly find out, jQuery really is the “write less, do more” framework.

These information just highlights some of the Wrox Blox that are available online. I suggest you check them out and learn more.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, Wrox, Wrox Blox, ASP.NET

Kudos ODUG

Brian Scarbeau — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:42:32 GMT

Today marks the day when the Orlando DotNetNuke User group officially has 200 members.

It was a year and half ago that I started this group with about 7 members who came and met on a Saturday morning to discuss issues relating to the best open source web portal, DotNetNuke. Will Strohl was there along with a co-worker. Will has been a great member and now great leader of the group.

More recently, Will was in charge of putting together the Day of DotNetNuke held last month at the Microsoft Office in Tampa, FL.

Many members are benefitting from this user group and I wish it continued grown and success.

Technorati Tags: ODUG,DotNetNuke

Is DotNetNuke getting female friendly?

Brian Scarbeau — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:21:10 GMT

So if you attended the Day of DotNetNuke in Tampa, FL last Saturday, you had to notice. There were many females in attendance. Some were there being good sports and attending with their husband/boyfriend. Some were web designers who wanted to learn about DotNetNuke. This was much different than past events that I’ve attended.

I have spoken at many code camps in Florida and you have the typical geek whose overweight like me and has face hair or hasn’t shaved yet toting their laptops from room to room. This event was different.

So to all the females who came out last Saturday, Welcome. I hope DotNetNuke is getting female friendly. Thanks for coming to my session.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke

Day of DotNetNuke a HUGE SUCCESS!

Brian Scarbeau — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:42:25 GMT

Kudos to Will Strohl for the countless hours he put in to organize the Day of DotNetNuke held in Tampa, FL today. Thanks to the sponsors, speakers and volunteers who made the day a huge success.

The official count for the day verified by Microsoft host Joe Healy was 138. Joe was a great host making everyone comfortable and he also was one of the speakers. Yes, Microsoft does love DotNetNuke! Joe would make a great WROX salesperson as he was trying to sell the WROX Professional DotNetNuke 5 book that I coauthored along with Floridians Darrel Hardy, Stan Schultes, Ryan Morgan, and Canadian Shaun Walker.

There was much to learn about DotNetNuke 5 and favorite 3rd party modules during the day. Gifford Watkins from Atlantic Webfitters traveled from Nova Scotia to speak at the event.

It was great to see everyone and a special thanks to DotNetNuke Corporation for sending Joe Brinkman to give the Official/Unofficial DotNetNuke State of the Union Address.

Look for some changes in DotNetNuke 5 builds

Brian Scarbeau — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:45:56 GMT

There have been a couple of builds already for the new version 5.1 of DotNetNuke. On the DotNetNuke site, there is even a thread for users to discuss any problems they are having with the builds and they are encouraged to log their problems or suggestions on their Gemini site.

The current build is 364 and there's already changes from the previous build. For example, here's the new Admin Settings:

One change from the previous build is that Google Analytics is now located here. You could find this setting under Admin> Site Settings and this new feature makes it easier to locate. This is primarily used to set up your site with Google Analytics and you need to sign up with google and get verified to do this.

When signing up with Google Webmaster Tools you will need to Verify your site ownership. Choose the "Upload an HTML file" method from the Google Verification screen. Enter the filename displayed ( ie. google53c0cef435b2b81e.html ) in the Verification textbox and click Create. Return to Google and select the Verify button.

Missing from the Control Panel is the Install Additional Modules link. To do this you will need to go to Host>Extensions and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and then click on Batch Install Extensions and then select the Available Modules that you want to install.

In version 5 of DotNetNuke, only the Host can install modules and skins. Once available to the site, the Admin can add new modules or skins to their site.

Taken off the Control Panel was the aligning of modules on the Pane. What was added was a drop down list of the modules that you have on a pane. On the right of the Control Panel is a link to Host or Admin Console. Here's what it looks like:

These are the same settings that you get in the drop down list and you can see them all on a single page if you want.

One thing for sure is that DotNetNuke will require the current Microsoft .NET framework to be installed on your site. You'll get a warning under Host >Settings if your not current.

I'm looking forward to the final build. Hope you are too!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke 04.09.04 Upgrade

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:57:45 GMT

In the past, after backing up my SQL database and DNN site, I'd hold my breath when I upgraded my sites hoping and praying that all will be well after the upgrade. Today, I did the same when I upgraded to version 04.09.04. Low and behold, all did go well with the upgrade and the site came back up after the upgrade.

Here's what the upgrade has to offer:

What's New in 04.09.04

Major Highlights

Fixed a major module caching issue which resulted in empty content for webcrawlers
Improved performance of FormatRemoveSQL method

Security Fixes

Low - Errorpage information leakage
Low - HTML/Script Code Injection Vulnerability

Updated Modules/Providers

The following modules and providers have been updated in the 4.9.4 packages. Please see the specific project pages for notes on what bugs or enhancements were corrected with each release.

Modules

Announcements 04.00.03

Providers

Removed the AD Provider so that it cannot be installed by the Install Wizard. It can still be manually installed.

I like to stay current with my version of DotNetNuke and I'd advise you to do the same. Check my Security posts in my blog as to why you should. Good luck with your upgrade.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, Upgrades