Ventrian Systems

This is a test post using Windows Live Writer

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:54:00 GMT

This is a sample post with some images: Click the above images to receive a preview..!

The Return of the QueryString into DotNetNuke URLs

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:44:55 GMT

This post will argue that @DNNCorp should consider the return of the QueryString into some of the URLs of DotNetNuke.

Expandable Regions in DotNetNuke

Scott McCulloch — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:00:32 GMT

I'm half way through the code migration of News Articles into the modern DNN 6/7 implementation. Throughout this process I've been using the wonderful DotNetNuke UX Guide that was introduced with DotNetNuke 6. This guide provides an overview of the UX experience in DotNetNuke and how you can achieve it within your modules. However, while porting a page today I realized that the expandable regions in DotNetNuke have not been included! (Edit: actually they are! They are called Panels) If you don't know what I am referring to, these are the collapsible regions that surround form content (e.g. Basic Settings below). Adding Expandable Regions To add these to your form, it's actually quite simple. If you are implementing the form pattern detailed here, you just need to add the following line before the

<%=LocalizeString("BasicSettings")%>

.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } (update the localized string and H2 ID to match your specific circumstances). And that's all there is to it!

Analyzing DotNetNuke Performance with the SQL Profiler

Scott McCulloch — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 04:56:41 GMT

Analyzing DotNetNuke Performance with the SQL Profiler can help to identify slow performing modules and bottlenecks on your website.

5 Things I'm hoping to get out of DNNWorld

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:47:45 GMT

I'll be attending DNNWorld for this first time this year and thought I would summarise the top 5 things I want to get out of the experience. #1 Product Roadmap One thing about the DotNetNuke project that I don't have a clear understanding is the product roadmap. If you look at their website, the product roadmap area looks to be in a state of disuse. I'm looking for some high level points of planned feature sets for the next 1-2 years. #2 Networking I've already met Will Strohl by accident in one of the motel shops. I'm looking forward to linking up with other developers and learning from their experiences. Many years ago, I met quite a few of the other DNN developers at a Las Vegas conference, so it will be great to renew those relationships. #3 Module Documentation & Best Practices I'm keen to understand how other developers find the documentation for DotNetNuke. Part of my own experience has been a mashed up mix of blog posts, wiki articles, quickstart posts, etc. The end result is a lot of the API is under documented or fragmented in coverage. I spend most of my time reading the core code to understand how best to use it. I'm sure the presentations at DNNWorld will help to fill some of this knowledge gap. #4 DotNetNuke 7 This version of DNN is shaping up as a great administrative build. I'm looking forward to understanding this release more. #5 Deployment Best Practices Part of my work with F5 is the deployment of a web farm to support devcentral.f5.com. I'm looking to find some best practices for supporting a web farm along with any performance guides.

What DotNetNuke module is DnnForge News Articles?

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 23:27:09 GMT

This module is Ventrian News Articles. It was originally created as DnnForge back in 2003-2004 when I was offering free code samples to the community. In 2005, Ventrian started a subscription service that included these modules providing support and enhancements. If you have an older version of DnnForge NewsArticles, it is completely upgradeable (as it still uses the same internal name and versioning)! You can find more information about News Articles here.

Exporting And Importing DotNetNuke Portals

Scott McCulloch — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:39:21 GMT

A how to guide on exporting and importing DotNetnuke sites.

Migrating DotNetNuke sites from Development to Production

Scott McCulloch — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:18:40 GMT

This is an update to older article I wrote a few years back that describes the process to move DotNetNuke sites between development and production. In traditional ASP.NET development, a typical move from development to production (for a brand new install) might involve:- Copying your files to production. Creating a database in production and running the necessary scripts to initialize your database Performing any configuration necessary. (Connection Strings etc) An upgrade of an ASP.NET application might take the following the steps:- Copying your files to production. (Replacing existing files). Run sql scripts to update your database to the latest version. Understanding DotNetNuke Source Code The major difference between DotNetNuke and traditional applications is that it has a number of files that are actually modified in production and you do not want to replace these when publishing. The other major difference is that DotNetNuke contains a number of sub-applications known as modules, these are designed to be deployed into production through the installation interface. It is for this reason, you do not want to continually publishing from development to production. You should however, copy up new files when:- DotNetNuke changes (new version) – upload new files and watch it auto-upgrade to next incremental version (auto-upgrade instructions are here) You will want to use the extensions installation interface for:- Module changes (new version of a module) – upload through installation interface and watch it auto-upgrade to the next incremental version. Skin change (new version of a skin) – upload through installation interface. Content Content is slightly different however, each dotnetnuke installation is broken into many portals, each segmented in the database providing that portal’s content. Publishing a site up each night, would not copy the content across. You must use one of the methods described in the next section. There are a few ways of moving a DotNetNuke site to production dependant on the scenario, some of these are:- “The Clean Install” “The Export/Import” The Clean Install The clean install method is used when you have no existing production site. You want to move exactly what you have in development to production. You would normally:- Copying your files to production (just like asp.net) The difference comes when creating the database however. Your options are:- Backup/Restore your database to production; this will copy all of your data out of development, as well as module settings, etc. Make sure you add a portal alias for your new url to Admin -> Site Settings before doing the backup and restore! Create a new database, and let DotNetNuke initialize the database when running the application. You will then have to install any modules, skins, etc. You will then have to export and import your portal (see below). Performing any configuration necessary. (Connection Strings, File Permissions etc) The Export/Import The export and import is ideal for moving a site to production where the production site already exists and you simply want to add a portal. You will first need to make sure your production site has all the modules installed, and potentially skins. You can then Import/Export your portal, using the technique described in this article:- http://www.ventrian.com/blog/exporting-and-importing-dotnetnuke-portals Note: Some modules do not export/import there content (3rd party modules). All core modules provide this functionality however. Issues Incremental Content Changes The problem with content arises with incremental changes, currently, the core modules are not versioned, and this is left up to the developers. So you can’t really make non-live changes to your production site to existing content. New content is fine because you just hide it to everyone except admin while in the test mode. My News Articles module doesn’t actually post an article until it has been approved, so it is a good way of holding back on a piece of content. You are left to best manage this yourself, even if it means a bit of copying and pasting. Conclusion While not a straight forward process, or a single path to success. Once DotNetNuke is installed and running, it should not provide any great issues, the versioned core and modules provide an excellent way of constantly upgrading your site. Staging existing content proves to be the only difficulty. Any thoughts, please post in the comments section for all to see.

Adding Sitemaps to Robots.txt

Scott McCulloch — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 05:25:31 GMT

The method I’ve always used to submit sitemaps to Google has been through the Google Webmaster tools but this precludes other search engines from discovering your sitemap. If you want to add a reference to a sitemap so that it can be auto-discovered, try the following:- Open up robots.txt at the root of your site (create if it doesn’t exist) Add Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml In the case of this site, I use the DotNetNuke Search Engine Sitemaps Provider that is freely available from codeplex. So my sitemap is actually located at /SearchEngineSitemap.aspx and my robots.txt file looks like this: User-agent: * Disallow: /Privacy.aspx Disallow: /Terms.aspx Sitemap: http://www.ventrian.com/SearchEngineSitemap.aspx I also use the News Articles provider to have my blog entries automatically included in the sitemap file. There is even a Property Agent provider as well!

Friendly Urls and DotNetNuke

Scott McCulloch — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 03:30:23 GMT

Since swapping over to UrlMaster and logging the pages that result in a 404, I’ve noticed a few requests to ventrian.com/friendly. This project (and url) was some early work that I produced in DotNetNuke 2-4. It converted the old non-friendly urls (?tabid=233) into something that rewrote the parameters inside the normal url path (/tabid/233/). This work was done in the provider model and I offered a 3rd party provider for it. Eventually this work was incorporated into the core and that is the reason it is no longer offered as a download on this page. If you want friendlier urls today, my best recommendation is to use UrlMaster by iFinity. It’s what I use on this site and has support for custom providers for individual modules: UrlMaster by iFinity Friendly Url Provider for Ventrian News Articles If you are a module developer and want to create a new plugin to UrlMaster, make sure you read the following: Create your own custom module provider for iFinity UrlMaster

Setting the Page Title Dynamically in DotNetNuke

Scott McCulloch — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 04:25:24 GMT

Information about how to dynamically customize the page title when creating DotNetNuke modules.

Getting User Profile Image Paths in DotNetNuke

Scott McCulloch — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 07:30:00 GMT

The great new social features in DNN 6.2 has meant a standardization of user profile information and allows module developers to begin to pull in social information. When I started to work on my presentation for the Seattle DotNetNuke User Group, I needed the image representing the user: Luckily, this is a fairly trivial task with DotNetNuke: protected string GetProfileImage(int userId) { return Page.ResolveUrl("~/profilepic.ashx?userid=" + userId.ToString()); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } By default, it looks to be restricted to a maximum width and height of 55px. However, you can pass in parameters to control the width & height. protected string GetProfileImage(int userId, int width, int height) { return Page.ResolveUrl("~/profilepic.ashx?userid=" + userId.ToString() & "&w=" & width.ToString() & "&h=" & height.ToString()); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } What I would like to see in the future is the ability to enforce a standard square view rather than just scale. This would involve a small amount of cropping and is a standard feature in Simple Gallery. Great! But what if I’m still using Active Social? If you are a user of active social (pre DNN 6.2), you can do the same as above by adjusting the url path: ~/desktopmodules/activesocial/profilepic.ashx?PortalId=&uid=&h=&w= (replace the tag placeholders with the equivalent value).

Including StyleSheets in DotNetNuke Modules

Scott McCulloch — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 03:59:56 GMT

After working with DotNetNuke since Version 1, including a custom StyleSheet has always been fairly hacky. Of course, we’ve always had module.css which DotNetNuke automatically picks up and loads for each module (if it exists). However, sometimes a developer may want to include a custom stylesheet if they have their own templating/skinning system in the module (like News Articles or Property Agent). With the introduction of the Client Resource Management functionality in DotNetNuke 6.1, including these custom StyleSheets has became super easy! Including a StyleSheet in an ASCX file <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" Namespace="DotNetNuke.Web.Client.ClientResourceManagement" Assembly="DotNetNuke.Web.Client" %> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } (substitute “” for your module) Including a StyleSheet Programmatically Add a project reference to: DotNetNuke.Web.Client.dll Make sure you import the namespace in your class: using DotNetNuke.Web.Client.ClientResourceManagement; ClientResourceManager.RegisterStyleSheet(objPage, objPage.ResolveUrl("~/DesktopModules//css/custom.css"), FileOrder.Css.ModuleCss); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } (substitute “” for your module) (FileOrder.Css.ModuleCss will put the stylesheet just after the module.css) Including a StyleSheet the Old Way For completion, here is how I used to include stylesheets (a little complex no?): public void LoadStyleSheet(string template) { Control objCSS = _objPage.FindControl("CSS"); if ((objCSS != null)) { Literal objLiteral = new Literal(); objLiteral.Text = ""; for (int i = 0; i <= objCSS.Controls.Count - 1; i++) { if ((objCSS.Controls(i) is HtmlControl)) { HtmlControl objChildLink = (HtmlControl)objCSS.Controls(i); if ((objChildLink != null)) { if ((objChildLink.Attributes.Item("href") != null)) { if ((!string.IsNullOrEmpty(objChildLink.Attributes.Item("href")))) { if ((objChildLink.Attributes("href").ToLower() == _objPage.ResolveUrl("~/DesktopModules/DnnForge - NewsArticles/module.css").ToLower().Replace("%20", " "))) { objCSS.Controls.AddAt(i + 1, objLiteral); return; } } } } } } objCSS = (HtmlGenericControl)_objPage.FindControl("Head"); if ((objCSS != null)) { for (int i = 0; i <= objCSS.Controls.Count - 1; i++) { if ((objCSS.Controls(i) is HtmlControl)) { HtmlControl objChildLink = (HtmlControl)objCSS.Controls(i); if ((objChildLink != null)) { if ((!string.IsNullOrEmpty(objChildLink.Attributes("href")))) { if ((objChildLink.Attributes("href").ToLower() == _objPage.ResolveUrl("~/DesktopModules/DnnForge - NewsArticles/module.css").ToLower().Replace("%20", " "))) { objCSS.Controls.AddAt(i + 1, objLiteral); break; // TODO: might not be correct. Was : Exit For } } } } } } } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }

New Ventrian Module (Testers Needed)

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:08:00 GMT

The time -has finally come to release a new Ventrian module and I need help testing the module. The module allows you to run "quizzes" on your site by quiz type, subject and favourites. It has been built from the ground up specifically for DNN 6 only. If you would like to test this module and you are a current Ventrian subscriber, it is now available on the downloads page. Please let me know your feedback either by contacting us or in the forums.

Simple Gallery - An Ennead of Enhancements

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:58:00 GMT

In Egyptian mythology, an Ennead refers to a group of nine deities worshipped at Heliopolis. In a similar spirit, I've looked at Simple Gallery and put together a group of 9 planned changes, an Ennead of enhancements.

Test Blog Post with Files

Scott McCulloch — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:58:00 GMT

The new version of News Articles allows you to select many files to attach to an article and show them with the relevant templates. This blog post is a test for this functionality.

Skins by Armand Nokiko

Scott McCulloch — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:34:00 GMT

One of the subscribers on this site has putting together some skins and this one caught my eye. It contains a template for use within News Articles! Here is the live preview demonstrating what can be achieved with News Articles.

Customising Active Forums for Subscription Sites

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:19:00 GMT

Quite a few people have asked me how to customise the forums on this website to show the role a person is in (or a subscriber for subscription sites). In Active Forums, the module uses a very similar technique to skinning as ventrian modules. If you go to control panel -> templates, you'll be able to customise the PostInfo template (This is the section of detail about a user that appears next to every post). Adding the [ROLES:XXX] token will show the role name of the post's user by checking each role in turn (until it finds a match). If it doesn't find a match, it will show nothing. e.g. [ROLES:Administrators;Gold Membership;Silver Membership;Hosting Membership;Registered Users] Furthermore, if you want to customise Active Forums and Private Messages, see this article.

Sample Article with Images

Super User Account — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:17:00 GMT

The following is a test to demonstrate attaching images to an article. This is part of the new 00.07.61 build.

Follow Ventrian on Twitter

Scott McCulloch — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:12:00 GMT

Ventrian Systems is now online at Twitter. We'll be posting regular tweets about site and module updates. You may follow us at http://www.twitter.com/ventrian. P.S. Does anyone have any good recommendation for a twitter DotNetNuke module?

Distance Sorting in Property Agent

Scott McCulloch — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:15:00 GMT

A new demonstration of features in Property Agent has just been posted. The demonstration is called Team Locator and is designed to show the new distance sorting feature available in Property Agent. Sorting by distance can be used in situations such as “Shop Locators” where the results are returned ordered upon the location of the user performing the search. Generally speaking, to sort by distance we need to know two things:- 1.) The origin of the person performing the search 2.) The longitude/latitude of a property If we know these two items, we can calculate the distance between the two points and sort by that value. Note: for developers interested in how I implemented this in SQL Server, see this article. The following steps describe how the Team Locator was setup:- 1.) In layout settings, make sure maps are enabled and you have a valid google key (if you do not have a google key, you can get one here). 2.) Specify a distance expression to retrieve the origin of the user performing the search. The expression will be made up of a [LOCATION] token which is retrieved from a new search textbox in the search modules (see further below). In the Team Locator, we are using Australian postcodes, so we are able to use [LOCATION], Australia as the expression. It’s important that the term the user is entering will result in a unique long/lat otherwise it will be difficult to sort on distance. For American zip codes, it might be [LOCATION], America. If you want to test out some geocoding searches, try this link. 3.) Specify whether or not you want to search in miles or kilometres. 4.) A new textbox called [LOCATION] is now available in the search areas of Property Agent (landing page and search companion module). You can turn on location in the various settings of each module, or use the [LOCATION] token if you have a custom search layout. 5.) A new feature of the search companion module is to pick the sort order for search results. In the case of the team locator, the sort order is set to distance because we are only searching on location. This feature allows you to have different sort orders for the main module compared to the search companion module (as one might be a content search vs. a distance search). 6.) Lastly, to see the distance in the module, you can use [HASDISTANCE][DISTANCE][/HASDISTANCE]. The template is also available for download in the templates area.

Currency and Map Demo

Scott McCulloch — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:50:00 GMT

As a follow up to yesterday's post about property agent, here is a live demo of property showing currency conversion and a property map. I ended up going with a static image for the map, the width, height and zoom level are configurable in layout settings.

Property Agent Currency Conversion

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:17:00 GMT

The next version of Property Agent will have a number of new features (previously discussed):- Mapping Customizable search templates Customizable menu options (add new property, property manager) Granular security control over the publishing details on the edit property form And a new one (not mentioned before):- Live currency conversion. Users can select from a dropdown to save their currency preference (via cookie) and have prices converted automatically (utilising RSS from currencysource.com) To achieve item 1, a setting has been added to Layout Settings that will allow you to pick from set of currencies to be the default for the module (so it will no longer use the portal locale) The default set of currencies are:- AUD - Australian Dollar CAD - Canadian Dollar CZK - Czech Koruna EUR - Euro GBP - Pound Sterling JPY - Japanese Yen NZD - New Zealand Dollar NOK - Norwegian Krone USD - U.S. Dollar ZAR - South African Ran Any requests for more currencies?

Module Updates, Flash Player 10 and DNN5

Scott McCulloch — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:05:00 GMT

Module Updates The next version of Property Agent will contain the following enhancements:- Templated search area Templated menu options (property manager/add new property) Granular security control over the publishing details on the edit property form Pending testing, it will be out mid-week. Flash Player 10 Some Ventrian modules that use SWFUpload (File Links, Simple Gallery and Property Agent) were broken due to a recent security update to Flash Player 10. SWFUpload has released a beta release that I'm working on integrating. DotNetNuke 5 The next version of DotNetNuke is causing some issues with SWFUpload and breaking the client script library. I'm currently working on resolving the issue (including look at other uploaders such as Fancy Upload)

jQuery, Cambrian and Ventrian Modules

Scott McCulloch — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:45:00 GMT

Earlier, I posted about the desire for ASP.NET/DotNetNuke to include a standard way of integrating 3rd party script libraries (such as jQuery). Well, it looks like DNN 5 and ASP.NET will support jQuery! See announcement here. For DotNetNuke, you can pick a version bundled with DotNetNuke (default), a hosted version or a debug version. This is great news because we can now freely use jQuery functionality in our modules and in our skins (without the risk of script conflicts). I've been testing the DNN 5 build with Simple Gallery recently, a few problems I ran into are:- The default js/jquery link is wrong (broken link), if you switch to hosted it works OK (in host settings). Although it still includes a js/jquery link in the head tag (shouldn't it be removed?). Using the SWFUploader completely breaks the ajax in the DNN install. You have to reset the application via host settings to get it back working. I'm still debugging "why" this is occurring, as all the flash file does is post to a handler file. The odd thing is that it breaks for any page you visit after uploading a file. Is anyone else experiencing issues with RC1? Does anyone know when RC2 is due?