DotNetNuke Blogs On DNN, For DNN

How do you migrate a large, static HTML site to DotNetNuke?

Engage — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:35:00 GMT

How do you migrate a large, static HTML site to DotNetNuke? NACADA asked Engage that very question and we were happy to oblige them with an answer.

Securing your DotNetNuke site in 5 simple steps

erikvanballegoij.com — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:05:00 GMT

Securing the login of your DotNetNuke site is very important, but often neglected for the wrong reasons. It shouldn’t be because SSL adds a performance overhead to your site. It shouldn’t be because SSL certificates are expensive either. But most of all, it should not be because it is hard!

Interesting stats on enterprise social

Engage — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:13:00 GMT

The folks at DNN Social competitor NewsGator have released the results of a survey of 200 of their existing clients at Fortune 1000 companies. The results, while biased, are intriguing.

DNN7 Styling issues: z-index of Module Actions

40Fingers Blog — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:34:00 GMT

I am currently testing some client skins for the upgrade to DNN 7 as both default.css and the Module action icons have changed since DNN 6. I have some z-index issues and here's what I found out and how I fixed it.

The 10 Commandments of DotNetNuke

ChrisHammond.com — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:38:57 GMT

I started this list a while back, and decided I would go ahead and finish it, and post it online. Thanks to Oliver Hine for #9 As someone who runs, edits or develops for a DotNetNuke website, these are 10 things you should always stick to.

Southern Fried DNN 2013 Recap

The Mighty Blog — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:53:11 GMT

You should already be aware, but there is an incredibly active and vibrant user group in Charlotte, North Carolina called Queen City DotNetNuke User Group or QCDUG. These folks were also the masterminds behind the Day of DotNetNuke Charlotte last year. When they agreed to do another event this year, I couldn’t even tell you how excited I was because last year was so awesome! These gentlemen sure did not disappoint when they organized and held their second event, this time branded in a fun way as Southern Fried DNN! What a great way to participate in our community!

Before I get through any of the run-down, I want to first thank the organizers for their amazing super-human efforts at making sure Southern Fried DNN was a success. Allen Foster, Robb Bryn, Fred Ellise, Ryan Moore, and Clint Patterson all worked day and night when their day jobs weren’t in the way. Their families need to be thanked too, because these gentlemen had plenty of family hours dedicated to organizing the event and all of its details.

Also to be thanked are the event sponsors. We need speakers (who deserved to be thanked as well since they pay their own way and donate their time and expertise) and attendees, but there would be no place to hold the event, nothing to eat, and none of the fun or cool things to be had if it were not for the sponsors. Please take a moment and visit and thank each of the sponsors if you can.

Another special thanks goes to the folks that travelled from far and wide… We had attendees from as far as Australia and Peru!

Training

If organizing a full-day event wasn’t enough, the organizers decide to throw in a full day of community based training that focused onboarding people that are new to DotNetNuke. Robb Bryn appeared to lead the charge in doing all of the logistics, including creating and managing over 50 virtual machines in Windows Azure! A staggering achievement of participation that is nothing short of impressive!

Training appeared to go off without a hitch, with a group of excellent seasoned DNN instructors that included: Cassidi Brickner of 10 Pound Gorilla, Scott Wilkinson of DotNetNuclear, Mitchel Sellers of Iowa Computer Gurus, Ralph Williams of Arrow Consulting & Design, and Joseph Craig of Patapsco Research Group. Each of these instructors really have become pillars in the DNN community through their participation and subject matter experts, so it is no wonder that all of the 50+ training attendees unanimously loved the training event!

If you missed training, not only did you miss leapfrogging yourself into a new state of DNN knowledge, but you also missed the chance of winning a free year of unlimited online training. The lucky winner of this prize was Clark Ruhland of the City of Salem – who happens to be a Professional Edition subscriber.

Keynote

The keynote speech was given by yours truly… Something that I had never before done. For some very odd reason, I didn’t get nervous about it at all. It is several days later now and I still don’t know how to feel about it just yet. I have seen numerous keynotes at this point of my life and they all have been different and had their own spin and style on this kind of prestigious presentation. Being a self-proclaimed presentation expert myself, I took this responsibility seriously from day one. So much so that it did rob me of some community networking time that I normally enjoy at this kind of events.

I decided to re-focus the keynote towards the community. You see, we have literally over a million people in the DotNetNuke community. This is awesome, but where’s all of the activity? There are more than enough downloads for example, but it seems that the only time most people pop-up is when they want support. But where’s their new forge projects, new skins, blogs, forum posts, user groups, and other activity? Probably about 98-99% of the ecosystem use and benefit from the Community Edition of DNN – which is perfectly fine. However, if we are to thrive as a community and ecosystem, we need more than just downloads and a commercial product. We need the community to participate.

In the keynote, I gave numerous examples of how participate can take place, including: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums, blog, create videos, create projects, join/run a user group, speak at user groups & code camps, update the wiki, or recruit another community member. You don’t need to be a programmer to participate. You just need to find out where you can help. It can be to help an open source DNN project get documentation or make it pretty. Find your niche and participate how ever much you can – even if it’s 10 minutes here and there. Heck, you could just be taking pictures at events for everyone if that’s what you like to do. :)

Sessions

There were 25 sessions in total by 18 speakers. The sessions ranged from simple administration and general web practices to some very advanced topics, but there were also some fun ones such as Chris Paterra’s Sharks with Laser Beams where he demonstrated how he built an interactive game on DNN Social that allows website visitors to participate in the game to earn points and achievements such as badged using the Gaming Mechanics API. He even took it a step further and wrote a quick game that emulated the whack a mole concept using DotNetNuke founder Shaun Walker as the mole!

Lunch

What can I say about lunch, but that it was delicious! I was told by some people that the meal was better than some of the area restaurants. We had some delicious fried chicken, corn, corn bread, green beans, cole slaw, and hot sauce! And who can forget the sweet tea (or was it syrup)? Hehehe…

Ignite Sessions

Ever since the organizers introduced Ignite to the DNN community last year, it has become an incredible hit… And something I hope to become a staple at all DNN events in the future. Ignite sessions are 5 minute presentations where the speaker needs to be concise and quick to get an idea across to the audience. Like last year, Ignite was hosted again by Gifford Watkins and the speakers that participated in Ignite this year included: Cara Pluff of Applied Innovations, Dan Thyer of Logical Advantage, and Jeff Hardy of PowerDNN.

DNN MVP’s

When it comes to participation in the DNN community, one of the ways you can get rewarded is by being nominated and voted in as a DNN MVP. There were 11 new MVP’s announced by DNN Corp Community Director and co-founder, Scott Willhite. Those that were in attendance include: Allen Foster, Gifford Watkins, Robb Bryn, and Chris Hammond. While two of these folks are co-organizers of this event, all inductees are more than deserving of this prestigious title and I thank all of you for your participation in the DNN community. Congrats to all of the MVP’s!

DNN After Dark

I’ve said it many times before, the DNN community is my family and this family loves to party! Er, I mean network. Hahaha…

The best things I have seen come from any community event seem to all come from the networking aspect of the event, and DNN After Dark is all about networking. There’s a ton of connections and opportunities that seem to spring up over a beverage and plate of food. This year the organizers figured, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So DNN After Dark was held at Whiskey River again where we enjoyed Carolina style BBQ, drinks, and mechanical bull riding, all sponsored by PowerDNN.

Whether you’re a trainer, organizer, speaker, or attendee, I can think of no better picture to sum up the event… Here’s Clint Patterson enjoying a nap at the after party… Until next time! See my next blog post to find out about the next event!

Additional Southern Fried Articles

Here are some other re-caps and information about the event that I saw while writing my own. Check them out!

New Brand SunBlogNuke 5.8 with Subscription

Ultimate DNN Modules — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:07:00 GMT

We are excited to announce the final release of SunBlogNuke 5.8.0. This release brings a totally new design feature with subscription, which will allow visitors to subscribe blog newsletter in handy. As a result, the optional widget called "Subscription" now included in the core package and you can add it in any page to build target blog newsletter sign up form. Yes, that is initial version so welcome any feedback/advices about this feature after your trying. And, we refactored core theme "Simplicity" to support built-in post thumbnail since there are lots of questions/requests raised in the forum and asked why their thumbnail not expected to show in the post list. As DotNetNuke focus more attentions on social share and online community, we also followed the trend and enhanced all the social features on our DNN blogging module, including fixes with social issues. We’d like to thank the community, sponsors and most of all the amazing feedback that have supported and guided this unique #dn ...

DotNetNuke Best Practices by Tony Valenti

PowerDNN Blog — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:42:39 GMT

The Topic and Slide Deck from Southern Fried DNN in Charlotte – 2012 Tony Valenti’s presentation was well received in Charlotte this year at Southern Fried DNN. The team at Queen City DotNetNuke User Group (QCDUG) did a great job of putting the whole thing together and we were honored to be a part [...]

DotNetNuke gets Southern Fried (again)

Engage — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:41:00 GMT

The Southern Fried Day of DotNetNuke was a very well put-together conference hosted by QCDUG in Charlotte, NC. I spoke for a couple of sessions, and enjoyed the time with the community, seeing what others are doing with DNN, and enjoying some great southern hospitality.

Southern (Re-)Fried DNN, and insight on the DNN Store

Engage — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Brian Dukes and I have returned, fully recovered from the clanging of cowbells, shouts of "yee-haw!" and shots of moonshine from yet another successful Day of DNN, Charlotte's Southern Fried DNN weekend.

“C” is for Cookie but that’s not what it means to me!

DotNetNukeFool — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:23:00 GMT

Yes, if you can’t tell… I’m a Cookie Monster fan – and while working on this event you might hear me sing a lil diddy “C is for Community, that’s what it means to me… C is for Community, that’s what it means to me…Ohhhh Community, Community, Community starts with C!”. Normally this post would be done *AFTER* the event is over… but this year – being different, I decided it’s better to be done now.

Kudos to CHADD on the successful re-launch of CHADD.org!

Engage — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 06:00:00 GMT

CHADD approached Engage with a simple question about our DNN training programs and wound up with a long-term development partner. We have worked closely with CHADD to relaunch an aging website that had become too cumbersome and dated for its members to use effectively. If the increase in traffic is any indication, the new site is a hit. Congratulations CHADD!

Tags: CHADD,client,AMS,ProTech

New DotNetNuke Module Development Templates V2.2

ChrisHammond.com — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 03:55:51 GMT

I have released version 2.2 of my open source DotNetNuke Module Development Templates. Version 2.2 is really just a minor update for the release, with a couple of fixes, one big, and the rest fairly small.

Preparing for Southern Fried DNN – Mastering the drawl

DotNetNukeFool — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:01:00 GMT

So you are comin’ to the “event” on April 12^th and 13^th in Charlotte and you need to prepare? Well, make sure you get all your language straight before you get there… we won’t understand a word your sayin unless you use your proper Southern English. It’s not because us southerners are slow or backwards. It’s quite the opposite… we combine words and eliminate syllables so that we can speak and get ideas out quicker… it just sounds slower ;)

10 Reasons to Attend Southern Fried DNN

DotNetNukeFool — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:23:13 GMT

Last year we did this little thing in June 2012 called “Day of DotNetNuke” - the Queen City DNN User Group (which I am a member of) put it on and it was a an absolute blast… This year – we decided to do it “Southern Style” and we’re Deep Fry’in the whole thang! You can run on over yonder to www.southernfrieddnn.com to find out more… but let’s start ya’ll off right with 10 reasons you gotta get your skinny little but over there!

No DNN World 2013? No Worries. Get Southern Fried!

Engage — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:43:00 GMT

Partners and past attendees to DotNetNuke Worlds were sent a note recently announcing the next DNN World has been slightly postponed. We've been assured this is good news, and that the 2014 event "will be nothing short of stellar and worth waiting for." In the interim, Engage is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of the upcoming Southern Fried DNN event in Charlotte, NC, April 12-13, 2013.

Tags: events

Making DotNetNuke (DNN) Messaging Usable, that’s a stretch

ChrisHammond.com — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 04:24:18 GMT

I’ll start this post off by stating a few things. One, I don’t work for DotNetNuke Corporation anymore, but I still love this project and will continue to work with it for the foreseeable future. That being said, expect tough love from me going forward.

The messaging feature was added in DotNetNuke 6.2, and since then it might have seen a bug fix or two, but it like most other features added to DotNetNuke over the past 4 years, has remained stagnant and seen no additional enhancements.

Now, how can you go about trying to improve the Messaging in DotNetNuke right now?

One of the biggest problems with the messaging module is the message that actually gets sent to the email address of the person receiving the message. It contains absolutely NO information on WHERE the message came from, other than the username of the person who sent it, in the SUBJECT of the email.

Using SignalR with DotNetNuke Modules

ChrisHammond.com — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:58:47 GMT

This post will provide you with a basic tutorial for utilizing SignalR with custom DotNetNuke Modules. If you want to bypass the blog post go check out the source on GitHub, you can Fork my Repository. The module created here will be very simple, if you want a full blown module with more features be sure to check out the open source DotNetNuke Module SignalRChat, and see it in action at http://dnnCHAT.com/

SignalR is an ASP.NET library for using websockets and long polling in your applications. Basically what this means, is that you can have your web pages (or apps) maintain an open connection with a webserver, passing data back and forth, without having to do standard posts and gets for the content and functions. SignalR is a free library that you can get from www.signalr.net and you can DL from nuget.org right into your Visual Studio projects.

DotNetNuke's Big Move into Enterprise 2.0

Engage — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:52:00 GMT

Companies pay substantial license fees to use Enterprise 2.0 software, building their own communities on platforms like Jive, Yammer, Telligent and Mango Apps, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that DotNetNuke, the leading ASP.NET CMS has made a foray into social business software -- a $1 billion arena.

Tags: social,Enterprise 2.0,DNN Social,Product Launch

Razor Templates with DDR Menu in DNN 7

Engage — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:49:00 GMT

At Engage, we've really enjoyed using DDR menu for our skins. It gives us a lot more control than we had before with the DNN menu (or SolPart before it). One of the great features that we enjoyed was the ability to define a menu template using the Razor template language. This gives us full access to C# code within the menu template, making it simple to do whatever we want the menu to do. However, we ran into a snag when we started trying to update our sites to DNN 7.

DDRMenu Razor Templates

erikvanballegoij.com — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:22:00 GMT

One of the lesser known, but very powerful template options of the DotNetNuke DDR Menu, originally created by Mark Allan, is Razor. A while back, Joe Brinkman had a very interesting blog post, combining razor templating with taxonomy to come to very advanced menu layouts. Sadly, DotNetNuke 7.0 introduced a breaking change in the way Razor was supported that specifically impacted the DDR Menu implementation of it. Although the issue had been on our radar for some time, it was not a very easy one to fix… Well.. the wait is over, in DotNetNuke 7.0.4, this is finally fixed.

DDRMenu Razor Templates in DotNetNuke 7.x

erikvanballegoij.com — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:22:00 GMT

Two New Module Kits Released: Timeline History and Tablesorter

DNNDev_Blog — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:49:00 GMT

All of us here at DNNDev have been working diligently in the new year to bring you more XMod Pro Module Kit goodness.

There are now 2 additional new FREE XMod Pro Module Kits available for download.

Read on for more of the details...

Tags: XMP,XMOD PRO,DNN,DotNetNuke,Event,Tablesorting,Sorting,module kit

Single Sign-on (SSO) and Modulesharing in DotNetNuke CE 06.01.00 and above

bitboxx — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:24:00 GMT

One problem that is facing you from time to time as a dotnetnuke professional is the burning desire of customers to have a single sign-on solution for their multi-portal system. Often they have different portals for their company departments or separate intranet and internet portals or some other multiportal needs. But none of these customers understand the necessity of logging seperatly into every single portal! And for the system administrators it is a nightmare to keep all these user accounts in sync! A lot of commercial and open source modules and providers helped to solve this problem in the past.

Another annoyance is the impossibility to share content between portals. Think of a desktop browser website and his mobile companion (realized as two portals). If you write an article in the desktop portal and you want to show this special article on the mobile portal too, what did you have to do ? Yes, copy and paste! Possible, but not very elegant!

Since Version 6.1 of DotNetNuke there is a solution for this in the Proffessional Version (PE). Unfortunately this is supposed to be not included in the community edition of DNN. But you should know that the functionality is implemented in the core and only the administration module is lacking in the CE version! So you are able to use this, even in CE, with minimal changes directly in the database. This blog shows you how to do so!

Upgrading Your Website to DotNetNuke 7

PowerDNN Blog — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:43:43 GMT

DotNetNuke 7 … A Worthy Upgrade - Tony Valenti As everybody knows, DotNetNuke 7.0 was released on November 28th and is a great new upgrade to DotNetNuke. If you haven’t … Continue Reading →