DotNetNuke Blogs On DNN, For DNN

Participate In DNN Through Social Media

The Mighty Blog — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:02:31 GMT

This is going to be the first of a series of blog posts introducing you to ways that you can participate in some way with DNN. You don’t need to be technical, a programmer, or a graphic designer to participate. You can be ANYONE. Participation is the cornerstone to any community and our community is larger than most. Our community is also geared around open source software, giving us numerous ways to participate. Since the ways to participate have become so broad even over the last couple of years, I thought it might be worth pointing them all out for those of you that might like to do so.

Open source only benefits you and everyone else if someone participates. If you have ever read, downloaded, shared, or otherwise interacted with any DotNetNuke content before don’t forget the most important thing… Someone before you participated in the community to help you answer that question, learn about an issue, or figure out how to create something. Without your participation, the community will never be as great as it could be!

Finally, it’s worth noting that participation in an open source community is incredibly rewarding. You will undoubtedly meet people that you never thought you would. You will build long lasting relationships with people across various borders and bodies of water. Many of these relationships will end up being lucrative for you at some point as well. I wouldn’t be able to write this blog post and you most certainly wouldn’t be reading it had I not been a direct recipient of those rewards due to my participation. This is why I made this the topic of my keynote speech in the last Southern Fried DNN conference.

Participate. It’s simple. Easy. Fun.

Participate is a great word. It simply means to “take part.” At least that’s what Google told me when I did a search for the term. Take part is itself pretty ambiguous. We take part in all kinds of things everyday. We tell our co-workers about the latest movie. We bring friends to our favorite restaurants or bars. We throw weekend gatherings with food (and hopefully delicious BBQ). We put together baby showers, bachelor(ette), and birthday parties. We might even make a dessert for the office. There are all kinds of things that require anything from minimal effort to a full blown loss of productivity. Remember that last retweet or the last time you updated your resume? Sometimes we can participate in something simply by clicking.

Social Media

The first method of participation that I want to focus on is social media. No matter who you are, it’s in your face and even if you run away from it – you just can’t seem to avoid it. It’s everywhere. You see it in commercials, videos, flyers, conferences, your drink cups, billboards, and it’s even built in to pretty much every smart phone these days. It’s now deeply woven into the society that most of us live in. #Hashtags are even being used in messenger apps, emails, and text messages, even though they have no function or other use being there. It’s become just one more way that we communicate – another form of communication if you will. It’s our new “LOL.”

Participate Through Social Media

There’s numerous social networks and most of us use them for varying purposes and have different audiences on each of then. A great example is the obvious one – Facebook. Nearly everyone seems to be on it these days, but most of us keep only our close friends and family on it and stray away from mixing business with pleasure so to speak. This form of participation is not meant to ask you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. Quite the opposite, actually.

Share where and how you want to… I am going to go through a few of the more popular social networks in North America, but these tips should translate to your respective region of the World as well if you don’t live in “the states.”

Facebook, Twitter, and Google+

If you see anything cool or noteworthy about DNN, feel free to pass it along to your followers on the social networks that you feel would appreciate it. If you see someone else share something that resonates with you, re-share their post or update. If you need help and prefer to ask for it in one of these places, go ahead and ask a question. You’ll get an answer, I’m sure. If you know the answer, there’s no reason why you can’t chime in and respond with your answer as well.

The easiest thing you could possible do though is like the post. It’s just a click, and you just participated!

When using Twitter and Google+, be sure to hashtag #DotNetNuke, #DNN, #CMS, or #DNNSocial as appropriate.

On Facebook, it’s not as easy to tag content, but you can write on the DotNetNuke Facebook page.

YouTube or Vimeo

Creating videos is something that pretty much anyone can do these days. Whether you’re using a commercial or free screen capture utility, anyone can record their screen and create useful DNN videos for the community. You don’t have to create a live action commercial – but it would be cool if you did. Even a 5 minute video showing how you did something cool, reconfigured your site, or anything else will definitely be appreciated by a community member just like you. In fact, I’d argue that any videos longer than 5 minutes shouldn’t be made these days anyway.

DNN on YouTube

You don’t have to be a video wiz to participate with videos either. Like, share, or comment on the videos. Let people know that you liked them or give them feedback on what you want.

If you want to create your own videos, here are a few free and paid tools that can help you.

Blogs

If you see a blog post that has helped you with DNN or you think will help someone else, share it on any social network that you want. More importantly, leave a comment. As a blogger myself, it’s always rewarding to see a comment made on something I wrote. After all, writing a blog post takes time. We bloggers accept comments on our posts as a form of currency. The more comments we have, the more we feel rewarded for that time we spent writing instead of doing something else.

That was all of the easy stuff… But there’s always room for more bloggers to write about DNN. No topic is too simple. Everyone has a voice and perspective that someone else in our massive community would appreciate. Create a blog and write something!

There are so many blogging tools and options out there. This is not an endorsement at all, but here are just a couple of many. Try them for yourself.

Discover some new DNN blogs:

You could also add your own blog to the DNN Community Blogs above.

Wiki

Did you know that there is a wiki on the DNN site? It’s full of so much DNN information. There is something for everyone too. You can read more about various content editing features and administrative functions. You can of course even learn more about creating skins (designs) for DNN or various types of extensions. But how can you participate?

Once again, you can share the wiki article you found on any of the social networks. You could even blog about the article. However, we are always looking for more content. Remember that you have a voice. Feel free to edit an existing wiki article or write a new one.

Instagram and Flickr

It doesn’t matter if you have DNN swag to show off, if you’re at a user group or conference, or if you’re literally taking pictures of a cool looking DNN site. Feel free to share here as well. Just be sure to tag DNN or DotNetNuke. The rest of the community loves to get insight into the various events and things that others are doing. Remember, not everyone has the luxury of going to DNN World, Day of DotNetNuke, user group meetings, or other community events.

Foursquare

Not everyone can check in at the DNN corporate office, DNN engineering office, or our office in Amsterdam. Although, we’d surely love to meet you. However, you may be visiting a user group meeting or attending any number of other DNN events. If you are, feel free to check in to that event. For example, a few of us were checking in at the last Day of DotNetNuke, called Southern Fried DNN. If the user group or event venue doesn’t exist, create the venue. It only takes a moment. Foursquare has apps built for pretty much every smart phone.

Google Hangout, Justin.tv, Skype, and UStream

The final area I’ll talk about is probably the most interactive. There are a number of streaming services out there that allow you to live chat over a web cam or stream an event. It doesn’t matter if you’re streaming a user group meeting, DNN session at a code camp or conference, or if you’re simply doing a video chat room. You can be an attendee or host the video chat and interact with other community members. It could be your own virtual user group meeting of sorts. Those that attend would definitely appreciate it, even if it lasted for 10 minutes.

You don’t have to be an expert on anything to do this either. The tools make it simple to start and the people that attend make it valuable. Just make sure you spread the word that you’re doing this before and during the broadcast on the social networks that you use.

Participation is Empowering!

In closing, I just want to tell you that you don’t have to shoot for the stars. Start small. Try out one or two things and see how you like it. If you don’t, try another one. You have a voice and your voice empowers the community and the community will return that back to you. It’s a cyclical thing. We all feed off of each other and we get out of it what we put into it. At the end of the day, someone helped you out. Why not pay it forward and help someone else out in return? The more we each do this, the better, bigger, and more exciting our community will be. It all starts with you!

P is for Participate-QCDUG adopts a module

DotNetNukeFool — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:22:00 GMT

First, let me clarify that the title for this blog really really really should be “C” for contribute (as Chris Hammond reminded me)… but I already used that letter in my alphabet (C is for Cookie) and I have other letters planned

If you were fortunate enough to attend SouthernFriedDNN in April you probably listened to Chris Hammond’s Ignite session which was a plea for the Community to contribute to projects that need help in the DNN community. There are plenty of Open Source modules that are run by one or two individuals that need help. It doesn’t’ matter if you are a programmer or not- you can help in so many ways.

Category: DotNetNuke

Category: Free Modules

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.

Alternative Way to Feature Related Stories on DNN Blog

Ultimate DNN Modules — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:44:00 GMT

Today I would like to show you one alternative way to feature related storied on your dnn blog. That is a external plugin [LinkWithin]. You should know most blogging platforms now feature a number of third-party plugins that can display a list of related stories on your blog, or even on other blogs on the Internet. Typically, these plugins will look at how a story was tagged and then display a short list of similar stories that use the same keywords. LinkWithin is the newest contender in this market. The plugin looks at tags, but it also analyzes other factors like relevancy, popularity, and recency. Unlike similar plugins, however, LinkWithin doesn't just display a list of headlines underneath each post, but also a thumbnail with a picture from each post, which makes it far more attractive than most of its competitors and is why I recommend it for you here.

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!

SunBlogNuke 6.0 Technology Preview

Ultimate DNN Modules — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:07:05 GMT

I’m pleased to announce that the SunBlogNuke 6.0 Technology Preview is now available for download. Keep in mind that this is not intended to be a production quality release. You are sure to find many bugs and features that are not ready for prime-time. The purpose of a release like this is to have an opportunity to collect feedback about new features. This is especially important when we are building new features that impact the overall user experience and interface. Continue reading to learn more about some of the exciting new features coming in SunBlogNuke 6.0.

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.