Learn MS .NET

Skinning in DotNetNuke Part 1 of 4

omacdon — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:56:28 -0400

As DotNetNuke has grown and aged the methods of skinning for the framework have continued to age and improve. With the pending release of version 5.1 of DNN about to happen, I thought it would be nice to put together a series of blog posts about the methods and types of skinning options available.

The options for skinning DNN have grown considerably since version 1.0 of the product. With 1.0 you had to actually change the skin within the codebase and it wasn’t a very easy task at the time.

When 2.0 was released, one of the important features of that release was the ability to easily update and change skins. At least if my memory serves me correctly. I know by the time 3.0 was released skinning had been basically standardized in how it was going to be accomplished.

At this point forward till the release of the 5.0 product, not a lot had changed in how skinning was done within the framework. We had two options when it came to skinning, I’m going to call the two methods we had up to this point the web designer way and the the web developer way.

Let me explain what I mean, the web designer way consisted of using html, css and xml files to provide the markup, style sheet information and the xml file tied them together with the skin objects that were available within the framework that it was being installed on.

The web developer way consisted of using ascx and css files to accomplish the same thing. The main difference is that as a web developer, the properties of the skin objects were placed within the ascx file instead of the xml file. The other main difference is that using the ascx and css file combination the file wasn’t changed when it was uploaded to the framework.

With the release of version 5.0 of the framework, there was an introduction of a 3rd method of creating skins with the use of skin widgets. As well as some new methods of packaging up your skin for public release has changed with the new version. We still have support for the older way of packaging up skins in zip files without an xml manifest, but there is a new way that allows us to provide more information as well as the ability to write release notes and to provide a license for the use of the skin.

Over the next several blog posts I will go into detail and build a skin that will take will be the same but built in the three different ways that we have available. As well as a post about the new method of packaging up a skin for the latest release of the framework.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Skinning,Software,Themes

New Beta 5.1.0.364 release of DotNetNuke CE

omacdon — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:41:17 -0400

Keeping with their promise to release often, we have a new beta version that was released today. The new beta can be downloaded from CodePlex.

The following bugs have been fixed in this new release

(5.1.0.364) Beta 3

DNN-9853
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Binary Compatability issue for repository

DNN-9871
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Audit info when creating new pages

DNN-9661
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Errors in user registration form (profile properties)

DNN-9892
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Enable disable host menu

DNN-9898
Installation / Upgrade
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: upgrade from 493 to 5.1.0.266

DNN-9899
File Manager
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Admin cannot add/delete folders or files, etc. in Admin-->File Manager

DNN-9904
Core Modules
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Repository is broken after after upgrading TestBed_493_3 with 5.1.0.266

DNN-9908
Skinning
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Skin ControlPanel breaking change

DNN-9905
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Some Admin/ Host Controls are missing after upgrading TestBed_493_3 with 5.1.0.266

DNN-9903
Installation / Upgrade
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Languages broken after upgrading TestBed_493_3 with 5.1.0.266

DNN-9895
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Adding Module to Another Page

DNN-9897
UI / Usability
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: No longer shows page hierarchy when adding existing module

DNN-9856
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Upgrade from 5.0.1 - Console

DNN-9918
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Exception when emptying recycle bin

DNN-9916
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Menu doesn't refresh after restoring a page

DNN-9930
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Error on Language rename

DNN-9890
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: changes to tabs need to audit tab and tabpermission changes

DNN-9952
General
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Module Settings: Move module to page results in a copy instead.

DNN-9964
File Manager
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Permissions Grid Does Not Correctly Display Permissions

DNN-9965
UI / Usability
New Feature
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Display version info for "Beta" builds

DNN-9967
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: user view shows all users

DNN-9936
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Sitemap priority defaults to 0

DNN-9925
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Fallback Skin Doctype changes not reflected in UI on load / postbacks

DNN-9912
Security
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: 5.1.0 - Possible Breaking Change FileSystemUtils.SetFolderPermissions

DNN-9946
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Behaviour Change for Inline Editing

DNN-9254
Performance
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: "PageState Persistence" set to "Memory" kills AJAX modules

DNN-9568
Security
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Permission issues

DNN-9654
Search
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Search Input module: no search text

DNN-9950
Localization / ML
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Incorrect icon for button

DNN-9928
Control Panel
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: User with page edit permission can see admin & host console links

DNN-9953
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Missing Default Language options => Broken Site Settings

DNN-9948
Admin / Host Functions
Bug
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Control Panel Visibility Selection not Saved properly

DNN-9971
Admin / Host Functions
New Feature
Checked-In
Complete

Summary: Add Skin Event Handling

There is a new release expected at any time to cure the issue that developed today that involves not allowing the install to complete if .NET 3.5 is not installed on the system.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Software,Programming,ASP.NET

New Free DotNetNuke Admin Guide

omacdon — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:08:55 -0400

How many new that there was a new Free DotNetNuke Admin Guide available. I hadn’t seen an announcement about it anywhere. But the other day after installing one of the latest versions of DNN, there it was on my new shiny install.

I’m not sure how long it has been available, but from the looks of the form that it takes you to to complete information to receive the guide, it is a relatively new document.

Being ever curious I filled out my information and then proceeded to download the document.

The document is 182 pages long and contains some good information for someone who is not familiar with DotNetNuke and has just installed the framework on their system and wants to know what to do from there.

Here’s the short list of topics that the document covers:

Introduction
DotNetNuke Concepts
Managing Your User Account
Configuring DotNetNuke Host Settings
Creating One or More Portals
Installing and Allocating Modules
Configuring your Site Settings
Building a Portal
Managing Content Using Modules
Working with the Recycle Bin
Adding Search Capabilities to your Site
Adding your Privacy and Terms of Use Statements
Submitting your Site to Search Engines
Managing Role Based Security
Managing User Accounts
Working with Files and Images
Managing Vendors, Banners and Affiliates
Sending Newsletters to Site Members
Managing Site Design
Text/HTML Replacement Tokens

As you can see from the list there are a lot of topics covered and really gives a new DNN administrator something to get them started with. There are walkthroughs on how to do the tasks and should help with a lot of newbie questions to the framework.

To get your free copy – this will take you to the form to complete and let you download your own copy. After downloading I also received a sales email from Nik Kalyani with more information about the Professional Edition as well as an invite to a demo.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Software

DotNetNuke CE 4.9.4 released

omacdon — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:01:31 -0400

While taking a look at the forum this early morning, I noticed a post that someone had made yesterday or late last night not sure of at the moment, but the post made mention of them receiving an email that the PE version for 4.9.4 had been released, but that the CE version wasn’t posted yet.

So being me I hoped on my trusty browser and headed over to CodePlex to see what I could see. Lo and behold there was a shiny brand new update to the 4.0 release of DotNetNuke.

So what’s new in 4.9.4

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.

Download the new version

I guess I'm off to start upgrading some sites this morning.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Software

Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview

omacdon — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:36:13 -0400

For anyone who has interest in signing up for the technical preview, that is due in July. The registration form page is below.

Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview

Technorati Tags: Software

New DotNetNuke Admin Console Module in 5.1.0 Beta

omacdon — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:03:25 -0400

After installing the latest 5.1.0 beta of DotNetNuke that was released this week, I noticed a new icon and a couple of links in the Control Panel when I logged in as the host of the new install.

As always in my endeavors with this platform my curiosity got the best of me and I had to see where these two links took me. I assumed that it would be to something that only an admin or host would need access to. I was pleasantly surprised to see the result on clicking on the admin link.

It brought me to a page in my new DNN install that had a link to each of the pages under my admin menu. As well as when I placed my mouse over any of the items in the Admin Console, a tooltip is displayed telling me about the link and what I can find by following it.

Also on the console there are two drop down boxes one is to select the size of the icons for use on the page. As well as another one to choose whether to display the contents of the page in simple view or detailed view. Detailed view basically takes the tooltip contents and places it on the page instead of the popup window.

I also noticed that this console module was placed on the Admin page of the menu and the host console was placed on the Host page of the menu. In previous versions of DNN these two menu choices were not enabled so we couldn’t navigate to them in the menu structure. I think this will be a great tool for new administrators and people unfamiliar with how DNN works.

But there are more goodies in this module. I also checked to see if this module had any settings that could be adjusted. I found that there are a number of different settings in the module settings.

The settings of the module are as follows:

Show children of: allows us to set this module on any page and then show the children of a different page then the one we are currently on. If no page is selected then it shows the children pages of the current page the module resides on.
Default icon size: this can be set to 16px or 32px for displaying the icons in the module.
Allow icon resize: if this checkbox is checked then the user can select the size of the icons they want to use in the module themselves in the drop down box.
Default view: this can be set to simple or detailed view for displaying the items in the console module.
Allow view change: if this checkbox is checked then the user can select the type of view that they want to see in the module themselves.
Show tooltip: checking this checkbox determines whether or not we will see the jQuery tooltip when we hover over a choice in the module.

If a user makes changes to the console module as to how they want to view that page such as large icons or detailed view, these changes get saved and the next time the user comes back they will be presented with the same view that they previously had. This is a nice feature and allows each user to customize how they want to interact with the module. Also the module checks permissions to determine what pages a user has access to.

After looking at the module and the code that it generates, it is nice to see that they code outputs xhtml and doesn’t make use of tables anywhere in the output. So it provides a good example of how modules should be written to take care of the over exuberant use of html tables in module development.

I have some uses that I can picture for the use of this module going forward in the future in some of my development. Most of which would be a similar use as to how the core framework uses it, but would be incorporated into my modules.

Guess I’ll go back to exploring this new release see if I can find some more new features to let everyone in on.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Programming,Cambrian

Configuring DotNetNuke to Produce a Human Friendly URL

omacdon — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:59:31 -0400

One of the big complaints that I have seen over the years with DotNetNuke has been the horrible URL’s that get produced by the framework. This is a problem that is part of most dynamically created content on the web, not only DotNetNuke.

For the successful Content Management Systems, they have come up with ways to make these ugly URL’s more human friendly. DNN did this back in about version 3.0 with the introduction of Friendly URL’s. This allowed us to get rid of the dreaded querystring for SEO purposes. So we went from URL’s that looked like http://domain.com/Default.aspx?tabid=39 to http://domain.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx.

This was great for getting better rankings with the pages in the search engines but doesn’t give us that URL that is easy to remember in human terms. This is the default setup that has made it’s way into the DotNetNuke eco-system, and has given us this common complaint about DotNetNuke sites in general.

There is a solution to this that anyone who is looking to make their site distinctive and remove that stigma about it being a DNN site can use. It is available within the core framework itself we just need to make some changes to the configuration of the web application.

So lets look at the default configuration in the web.config file for the Friendly URL provider:

   1: <friendlyUrl defaultProvider="DNNFriendlyUrl">

   2:   <providers>

   3:     <clear />

   4:     <add name="DNNFriendlyUrl"

   5:         type="DotNetNuke.Services.Url.FriendlyUrl.DNNFriendlyUrlProvider, DotNetNuke.HttpModules"

   6:         includePageName="true"

   7:         regexMatch="[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]" />

   8:   </providers>

   9: </friendlyUrl>

As you can see it only has a couple of options defined by default in the config file when you first install DNN which are the following:

includePageName: this is set to true by default and determines if we have the name of the page included in our URL when we are in searchfriendly mode of the provider.
regexMatch: I'm not a regex expert by any means. But the default match allows the inclusion of all upper and lower characters as well as ll numbers, spaces, underscores and dashes. If I’m wrong someone let me know in the comments would you.

This is what gives us those ugly URL’s everyone complains about.

Now when we venture into the Core Framework code for the FriendlyUrl Provider, we have a few more options that aren’t shown in the web.config and can really give us some nicer URL’s to work with on our DNN site.

FriendlyURL Provider Options

includePageName: this was explained above.
regexMatch: this was explained above
fileExtension: by default the file extension on DNN is .aspx. I played around with this option and also looked at the code and although it is defined and being pulled into the provider in the code. I don’t see where this is actually doing anything in provider.
urlFormat: this is the real treasure in the provider we have two URL formats that we can use here the default of searchfriendly or humanfriendly. If we do not include it in the web.config then by default it is searchfriendly but if we add this and change it to humanfriendly then we have much nicer URL’s to work within the framework.

So lets change it in our web.config file to be humanfriendly:

   1: <friendlyUrl defaultProvider="DNNFriendlyUrl">

   2:   <providers>

   3:     <clear />

   4:     <add name="DNNFriendlyUrl"

   5:         type="DotNetNuke.Services.Url.FriendlyUrl.DNNFriendlyUrlProvider, DotNetNuke.HttpModules"

   6:         includePageName="false"

   7:         regexMatch="[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]"

   8:         fileExtension=".aspx"

   9:         urlFormat="humanfriendly" />

  10:   </providers>

  11: </friendlyUrl>

Once we do this and save our web.config file. We can go refresh our site, and now should have URLs that look like the following: http://domain.com/home.aspx or http://domain.com/admin.aspx. It also makes it easier for allowing direct logins without placing a link on the page for logging in because in this format our login page becomes http://domain.com/login.aspx.

I hope that people find this information useful although what we have in DNN is just a basic URL provider there are other providers out there in the DNN community. When I have time I will try to add some of them to this post or provider another post with a list of them out there.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Progamming,ASP.NET

DotNetNuke 5.1.0.266 Beta released

omacdon — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:18:33 -0400

Well today has been a great day for anyone who uses and develops with DotNetNuke. The first public release of 5.1 was released to everyone on Codeplex today. Although it wasn’t without mishap today.

The first version that was uploaded and released version 5.1.0.254 had a couple of show stopper issues that prevented the installation of the framework. This was quickly noticed and replaced with a good version.

I recommend anyone who is developing modules and skins for DNN and want to get a good look at the direction that the framework is headed, then you should download this version and see what is coming. There are some great changes that I will document in some future blog posts as time permits over the next week or so.

I will be posting a blog post about the installation of the new version and hope to have that available shortly.

To find out more:

One thing to remember with this software, it is beta software and should not be used in any production system. This software should only be used for evaluating the software as to new features that will be available in the release.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,ASP.NET,Beta

DotNetNuke Team Meeting Notes from 4/30/09

omacdon — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:15:10 -0400

For anyone who may have missed this. I thought I would post this so that everyone can get an idea of where DotNetNuke is headed over the next little while as well as few other things that the Core Team is batting around for the public to know.

DotNetNuke Team Meeting Notes from 4/30/09

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke

New Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta 2

omacdon — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:40:00 -0400

During MIX09, the Web Platform Installer was mentioned in the first keynote on Wednesday, March 18. Some of the new features they mentioned were a new Web Application Gallery to install these on your server or local machine easily.

They also talked about some new extensions for IIS 7 as well. Well they have many new features in this Beta. I will go over them and I am testing it to see how it will do with installing some PHP applications as they are the hardest for me to get working properly on my Vista Laptop.

Web Platform Installer Download

Overview

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer. In addition, install popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps with the Web PI.

What’s New

Administration Pack 1.0
Advanced Logging 1.0 Beta
Application Request Routing 2.0 Beta
Database Manager 1.0 – RC
Dynamic IP Restrictions 1.0 – Beta
FTP Publishing Service 7.5
IIS Media Services 3.0 Beta
Windows PowerShell Snap-In 1.0
Silverlight 3.0 Tools for Visual Studio Beta
SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express
WebDAV 7.5
Web Deployment Tool 1.0 – RC

Lots of new goodies to play with and as well as configuring Sql Server 2008, PHP and installing several web applications and configuring them for you.

Well off to play with it and see how it goes.

Technorati Tags: sql server,windows server 2008,software,iis,asp.net,dotnetnuke

You Searched For User Control in BlogEngine.NET

omacdon — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:48:26 -0400

I received an interesting comment today about my blog. It was really appreciative of a feature that is included within the blogging engine. Which is the “You Searched For” user control. This takes the search query that is sent along from the search engine and matches it to a search within the local site when the referrer comes from a search engine.

What especially made me take notice is that the comment came from a member of the DotNetNuke Blog Module team. With a request to understand how this was achieved within my site. Well I figured I could have just sent back a quick and dumb answer of it is just part of the blogging engine I use. Which in my case is BlogEngine.NET. Or I could do what I am doing now and go into to detail about how the blogging engine accomplishes this, which is what was really being looked for.

With that in mind I will walk through how it is accomplished as I think this would be a great control to be a part of the DotNetNuke core Blog Module as well as a module that could be used to allow people to get more search results when they land on a DNN site. May have to build that.

There are two parts to this to make it work successfully. The first part is the addition of the user control to skin theme for my blog site.

  1: <blog:SearchOnSearch ID="SearchOnSearch1" 
  2:     runat="server" MaxResults="5" 
  3:     Headline="You searched for"
  4:     Text="Here are some results for the 
  5:     search term on this website" />

The second part is the code that is behind this user control. First of we have a few properties that can be configured on the control

Properties:

MaxResults: This is the maximum number of results to return to the page if there are any found.
Headline: This is the headline to display for the control when it returns search items found.
Text: This is the text to be displayed below the headline and above the search results.

Class Implementation:

  1: 
  2:  public class SearchOnSearch : Control
  3:  {
  4:      private static Regex _rxSearchTerm = null;
  5:  
  6:      static SearchOnSearch()
  7:      {
  8:  	// Matches the query string parameter "q" and 
  9:         // its value.  Does not match if "q" is blank.
 10:  	_rxSearchTerm = new Regex("[?&]q=([^&#]+)", 
 11:              RegexOptions.Compiled | 
 12:              RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | 
 13:              RegexOptions.CultureInvariant);
 14:      }
 15:  
 16:      public override void RenderControl(
 17:           HtmlTextWriter writer)
 18:      {
 19:   	string html = Html();
 20:   	if (html != null)
 21:   	    writer.Write(html);
 22:      }
 23: 
 24:     /// <summary>
 25:     /// Checks the referrer to see if it qualifies as a search.
 26:     /// </summary>
 27:     private string Html()
 28:     {
 29:         if (Context.Request.UrlReferrer != null 
 30:             && !Context.Request.UrlReferrer.ToString().Contains(
 31:             Utils.AbsoluteWebRoot.ToString()) && IsSearch)
 32:         {
 33: 	    string referrer = HttpContext.Current.Request.UrlReferrer.ToString().ToLowerInvariant();
 34: 	    string searchTerm = GetSearchTerm(referrer);
 35: 	    List<IPublishable> items = Search.Hits(searchTerm, false);
 36:             if (items.Count == 0)
 37:                 return null;
 38:             return WriteHtml(items, searchTerm);
 39: 	}
 40: 
 41: 	return null;
 42:     }
 43: 
 44:     /// <summary>
 45:     /// Writes the search results as HTML.
 46:     /// </summary>
 47:     private string WriteHtml(List<IPublishable> items, 
 48:         string searchTerm)
 49:     {
 50: 	int results = MaxResults < items.Count ? MaxResults : items.Count;
 51: 	StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
 52: 	sb.Append("<div id=\"searchonsearch\">");
 53: 	sb.AppendFormat("<h3>{0} '{1}'</h3>", Headline, HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(HttpUtility.UrlDecode(searchTerm)));
 54: 	sb.AppendFormat("<p>{0}</p>", Text);
 55: 	sb.Append("<ol>");
 56: 
 57: 	for (int i = 0; i < results; i++)
 58: 	{
 59: 		sb.AppendFormat("<li><a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a></li>", items[i].RelativeLink, items[i].Title);
 60: 	}
 61: 
 62: 	sb.Append("</ol>");
 63: 	sb.Append("</div>");
 64: 
 65: 	return sb.ToString();
 66:     }
 67: 
 68:     /// <summary>
 69:     /// Retrieves the search term from the specified referrer string.
 70:     /// </summary>
 71:     private string GetSearchTerm(string referrer)
 72:     {
 73: 	string term = string.Empty;
 74: 	Match match = _rxSearchTerm.Match(referrer);
 75: 	if (match.Success)
 76: 	{
 77: 		term = match.Groups[1].Value;
 78: 	}
 79: 
 80: 	return term.Replace("+", " ");
 81:     }
 82: 
 83:     /// <summary>
 84:     /// Checks the referrer to see if it is from a search engine.
 85:     /// </summary>
 86:     private bool IsSearch
 87:     {
 88: 	get
 89: 	{
 90: 		string referrer = HttpContext.Current.Request.UrlReferrer.ToString().ToLowerInvariant();
 91: 		return _rxSearchTerm.IsMatch(referrer);

 93:     }
 94:  }

As we can see from the class it checks to see if there is a query “q” attached to the referring url to see if this comes from a search engine. If it does then we want to search the site and see if we have any posts that we can display to the user.

This is really neat and helpful for users.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,blogengine.net,asp.net,Programming

DotNetNuke.com gets a Facelift

omacdon — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:31:52 -0400

After their announcement that they were going to have some significant downtown yesterday. We have awoke this morning to a new revamped site and much greater prominence for the Professional edition of Dotnetnuke.

Way to go!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Software

2009 Florida Code Camps Viewing Online

omacdon — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:07:32 -0400

For anyone that is not located in the Florida Area or who like me live in the vast wasteland and can’t get to these type of events, Will Strohl has provided online viewing today through his the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group site.

This link below provides a list to the sessions for the day.

The Mighty Blog - The personal web site for Will Strohl - 2009 Florida Code Camps Coming - Back to Back

This link provides access to viewing of the tracks as they are presented.

http://orlando.dotnetnukeug.net/ODUGLive.aspx

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Programming

DotNetNuke Site Updates & Changes – Dogfooding 4.9.2

omacdon — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:12:02 -0400

Well it appears as if the anticipated update to fix issues with 4.9.1 is slowing making it’s way down the line to us. It was apparently upgraded at the main DotNetNuke site and is now being tested probably at it’s heaviest for now. Lets hope no major issues are found and hopefully we will also see that long awaited update for 5.0.0 to 5.0.1 as well.

More information can be found by following the link below from Scott Willhite:

Dogfooding DNN 4.09.02 - DotNetNuke Site Updates & Changes - DotNetNuke

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Programming,Software

New DotNetNuke Host Module – Dashboard Part 1

omacdon — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:53:43 -0400

With the release of the latest versions of DNN, there was the introduction of a new host module, the Dashboard. This module was designed for the new Professional version of DotNetNuke. It’s main purpose is to give information about the server that the framework is running as well as some important information for anyone trying to provide support to another person.

The base module provides us with the following 6 tabs of information:

Web Server
Database Server
Host
Portals
Modules
Skins

Web Server

The web server information that is provided gives us lots of useful information for finding out key important information

OS Version: This will tell us what version of the operating system we are running on and what service packs are installed with that OS
Web Server Version: Each different IIS version has their own requirements on how things work and knowing the version can make life much easier when supporting someone.
.NET Framework Version: The version of the .NET Framework that the web site is running under.
ASP.NET Identity: This provides us with the identity of the user that ASP.NET is running under.
Host Name: The name of the server that the site is being run on.
Physical Path: The actual path to the root of the site on the server.
Site Url: This provides us with the URL that is used to access the site with a browser.
Relative Path: This is the virtual directory path.
Server Time: The current date and time on the server.

This takes care of the first part of the module. I will get part 2 of the post out tomorrow which will cover the Database Server section of the Dashboard.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke Skinning 101 - Home

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:20:21 -0400

For anyone that is having trouble Peter Schotman of interApps has created a basic skin to help people understand skinning within the latest version of DotNetNuke 5.0.

It is a basic skin from looking at the zip file. It has the Manifest file for use with DNN 5.0 and contains two skin files and 4 containers within the setup file.

It does not make use of the new widgets in the skin files, but the files are ascx files and not the html/xml combination files that some people are used. It does give a good base for the Manifest file though.

DotNetNuke Skinning 101 - Home

Technorati Tags: Skinning,dotnetnuke

Microsoft SDK Downloads

admin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:36:01 -0400

For anyone having trouble trying to find an SDK that they know Microsoft ships have a look at the following it may provide and answer for you in your search.

Microsoft SDKs

Technorati Tags: Programming

Blogengine.NET Theme pack

admin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:32:57 -0400

BlogEngine.NET has released a theme pack that is compatible with the version 1.4 and 1.4.5.

The theme pack contains themes designed and created by the community, and they have been brought together as a downloadable theme pack. Janko has compiled them together for the community to use.

Download the BlogEngine.NET theme pack here.

Technorati Tags: BlogEngine.NET,Programming,Software,ASP.NET

DotNetNuke 5.0.0 Skin Repackaging Script

admin — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:17:31 -0400

Paul Scarlett of tressleworks.ca has created a Visual Basic Script to re-package DNN 4.0 skins into the new format for DNN 5.0.

The script is designed to unzip an existing skin/container package and then generate the appropriate manifest and then repackage it back up for deployment to a DNN 5.0 site.

He makes mention of requiring the following library to be installed on your system: XStandard XZip library.

Download DotNetNuke Skin Repackaging Script

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,Cambrian,DotNetNuke,Skinning

DotNetNuke Releases 4.9.1 and 5.0.0 for Christmas

admin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:45:58 -0400

For anyone new to DotNetNuke and that hasn’t been a member of the DNN Community for long then they wouldn’t understand the significance of this date in the history of DNN. On December 24, 2002 the first release of IBuySpy Workshop was released to the community on the ASP.NET forums that hosted the discussion's surrounding the IBuySpy Portal Starter Kit. That was the beginning of the tool that is now known as DotNetNuke.

So as I like to periodically check for new updates and see if I can catch them happening. I did notice the change start on Christmas Eve day for the release of DNN 4.9.1 and 5.0.0. I was excited but I let it ride till I could check it out on Christmas Day after the presents were unwrapped and before I rushed off to have dinner with the in-laws.

DNN 5.0.0 has been a long anticipated release with much discussion about the feature set and what would be available when it was released. What I have seen of the 5.0.0 RC2 release was exceptional and will provide many opportunities to extend this many new features for skin developers and module developers alike.

DNN 4.9.1 is a stabilization release to fix some known issues and bug patches to the community. There is a critical security issue that has been fixed so an upgrade to this release is strongly suggested.

DNN 5.0.0 Major Features

Added jQuery support to the core platform. jQuery will now be distributed as part of the DotNetNuke installation and will be available for use by module developers.
Added support for Internet Explorer 8 Web Slices. Administrators can configure any module to use IE8 Web Slices including the ability to set time-to-live and expiration values.
Removed distinction between admin modules and pages and normal pages. This allows administrators to easily delegate access to any portion of the application to any group of users.
Updated the installation services to support manifest files for all extension types. Now skins, containers, providers and modules are all first class citizens that can be installed and uninstalled.
Expanded XHTML, WCAG and ADA compliance.
Refactored core to improve support for Unit Testing. Refactored several core classes to use interfaces and added a simple component factory to provide dependency injection support.
Added ability to deny permissions in the permissions grid. This new feature extends the permission framework to give administrators greater flexibility in defining permissions.
Added Widget framework. The new Widget framework allows you to quickly add JavaScript/html widgets to your site with very little effort. The framework supports the use of a simple object tag based representation which means you don’t have to know JavaScript in order to add the widgets.
Added new Object notation for using skin objects in Skins. Skin designers will no longer need to include separate XML files when creating and packaging skins. No more funky “[SKINOBJECT]” tags littering your html. This significantly simplifies the process of creating skins and further opens up skin development to a broader group of designers. If you include a simple JavaScript reference in your HTML skin, you can even get a full WYSIWYG experience when designing your skin.

Security Fixes

Includes a rollup of all 4.x security fixes

Updated Modules/Providers

The following modules and providers have been updated in the 5.0.0 packages. Please see the specific project pages for notes on what bugs or enhancements were corrected with each release.

Providers

AD Authentication Provider 05.00.0 0

In addition to these highlights there are literally hundreds of bug fixes in this release.

For more information about a specific issue please refer to the official change log.

DNN 4.9.1 Major Features

Fixed issue with the cache which was preventing proper operation of the scheduler.
Fixed issue with web crawlers which could cause thrashing in the cache
Fixed issue with the EventQueue to remove events that result in an error. This prevents an event from filling the event log with errors.
Fixed issue with the RoleController.GetUserRoles method which introduced a breaking change in 4.9.0.
Added a new column to the version table to distinguish between Community Edition and Professional Edition installs
Added a new feature for logging server restarts in a web farm environment.
Added a new admin Dashboard page. The dashboard provides a single page where hosts can view an overall snapshot of their site.

Security Fixes

Critical - User can access additional roles for which they do not have permissions

Updated Modules/Providers

The following modules and providers have been updated in the 4.9.1 packages. Please see the specific project pages for notes on what bugs or enhancements were corrected with each release.

Modules

Survey 04.60.00

Providers

AD Authentication Provider 01.00.05

As always the new releases can be downloaded at the DotNetNuke web site.

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,Cambrian,DotNetNuke,Software

C# & VB.NET Coding Standards Guides

admin — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:47:52 -0400

Clint Edmonson has released a some free C# and VB.NET Coding standards guides to the community to use. For anyone who wants to download them they can be downloaded below

C# & VB.NET Coding Standards Guides

Technorati Tags: Programming,C#,VB.NET,Visual Studio

DotNetNuke Web Framework 5.0 Release Candidate 2 released to the public

admin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:32:48 -0400

On November 11, 2008, DotNetNuke Corporation released a sneak preview to the public of the Release Candidate 2 of Version 5.0 of their open source framework. They have made the following available

Each of these can be downloaded from the DotNetNuke web site.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, Programming, ASP.NET, Cambrian

DotNetNuke Announces a Professional Edition

admin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:15:24 -0400

On November 11, 2008, DotNetNuke Corporation announced that they would be releasing a commercially supported version of their open source content management system. DotNetNuke Professional Edition will provide access to expert technical support and value added network services that simplify and optimize the maintenance of DNN Web sites.

The announcement stated that the first release of their professional edition would be based on the current 4.9 core release.

DotNetNuke Corporation plans to provide maintenance and support subscriptions to meet the requirements of organizations to fully utilize the DNN platform. This is expected for public release in the first quarter of 2009.

Read the press release

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, ASP.NET, Software, Programming

DotNetNuke - Host Settings Unavailable

admin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:41:36 -0400

While working on a clients DotNetNuke install trying to get the mail server working correctly. I tried to access the host settings for the web portal framework and came up with the following:

  1: Error: Host Settings is currently unavailable.
  2: DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.ModuleLoadException: 
  3: D:\admin\Host\FriendlyUrls.ascx.vb(44): error BC30560: 'RewriterRuleCollection' is ambiguous in the namespace 'DotNetNuke.HttpModules.Config'. ---> 
  4: System.Exception: D:\admin\Host\FriendlyUrls.ascx.vb(44): 
  5: error BC30560: 'RewriterRuleCollection' is ambiguous in the namespace 'DotNetNuke.HttpModules.Config'. ---> 
  6: System.Web.HttpCompileException: D:\admin\Host\FriendlyUrls.ascx.vb(44): 
  7: error BC30560: 'RewriterRuleCollection' is ambiguous in the namespace 'DotNetNuke.HttpModules.Config'. 
  8: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.PostProcessFoundBuildResult(BuildResult result, Boolean keyFromVPP, VirtualPath virtualPath) 
  9: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetBuildResultFromCacheInternal(String cacheKey, Boolean keyFromVPP, VirtualPath virtualPath, Int64 hashCode) 
 10: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVPathBuildResultFromCacheInternal(VirtualPath virtualPath) 
 11: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVPathBuildResultInternal(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean noBuild, Boolean allowCrossApp, Boolean allowBuildInPrecompile) 
 12: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVPathBuildResultWithNoAssert(HttpContext context, VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean noBuild, Boolean allowCrossApp, Boolean allowBuildInPrecompile) 
 13: at System.Web.UI.BaseTemplateParser.GetReferencedType(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean allowNoCompile) 
 14: at System.Web.UI.BaseTemplateParser.GetUserControlType(VirtualPath virtualPath) 
 15: at System.Web.UI.MainTagNameToTypeMapper.ProcessUserControlRegistration(UserControlRegisterEntry ucRegisterEntry) 
 16: at System.Web.UI.BaseTemplateParser.ProcessDirective(String directiveName, IDictionary directive) 
 17: at System.Web.UI.TemplateControlParser.ProcessDirective(String directiveName, IDictionary directive) 
 18: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ParseStringInternal(String text, Encoding fileEncoding) 
 19: --- End of inner exception stack trace --- 
 20: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ProcessException(Exception ex) 
 21: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ParseStringInternal(String text, Encoding fileEncoding) 
 22: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ParseString(String text, VirtualPath virtualPath, Encoding fileEncoding) 
 23: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ParseFile(String physicalPath, VirtualPath virtualPath) 
 24: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ParseInternal() 
 25: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.Parse() 
 26: at System.Web.Compilation.BaseTemplateBuildProvider.get_CodeCompilerType() 
 27: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildProvider.GetCompilerTypeFromBuildProvider(BuildProvider buildProvider) 
 28: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildProvidersCompiler.ProcessBuildProviders() 
 29: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildProvidersCompiler.PerformBuild() 
 30: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.CompileWebFile(VirtualPath virtualPath) 
 31: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVPathBuildResultInternal(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean noBuild, Boolean allowCrossApp, Boolean allowBuildInPrecompile) 
 32: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVPathBuildResultWithNoAssert(HttpContext context, VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean noBuild, Boolean allowCrossApp, Boolean allowBuildInPrecompile) 
 33: at System.Web.UI.TemplateControl.LoadControl(VirtualPath virtualPath) 
 34: at System.Web.UI.TemplateControl.LoadControl(String virtualPath) 
 35: at DotNetNuke.UI.Skins.Skin.InjectModule(Control objPane, ModuleInfo objModule, PortalSettings PortalSettings) 
 36: --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

This did not bode well for trying to access any of the mail settings or anything else for that matter that was controlled through the Host Settings. So off to Google I went to try and discover what could be causing our issue.

Upon searching I found a forum post on DotNetNuke that sounded very close to what was causing my issue. On the third page of the thread Rija RABETOKOTANY RAOBIVELO provided just the answer I was looking for:

Don't know if this is still needed but I post it anyway.

I got the same problem and found that the DotNetNuke.HttpModules.dll replaces all other dll in the same namespace including DotNetNuke.HttpModules.UrlRewriter.dll since 4.6.0. So in my case these two files exist in the bin directory of my 4.5.3 install. Surely that an upgrade attempt was made so the new assembly copies the DotNetNuke.HttpModules.dll into the bin directory and it co-exists then with DotNetNuke.HttpModules.UrlRewriter.dll

So you can delete the DotNetNuke.HttpModules.dll file from your bin directory if you're still in 4.5.* but delete DotNetNuke.HttpModules.* if you're in 4.6.*

That fixes my issue

Hope it will help

When I looked at his answer I then went and checked the properties of the DotNetNuke.dll file in my bin folder which let me know that the site was currently using version 4.5.3 of the platform. I then looked through the bin folder and found that I indeed had both the DotNetNuke.HttpModules.dll and the DotNetNuke.HttpModules.UrlRewriter.dll file in my bin folder. So this was giving me my error message from before. To verify this I checked the properties of the DotNetNuke.HttpModules.dll and found that it was attached to version 4.6.2 so at some point someone tried to do an upgrade to the portal framework that didn’t take and caused us the small grief.

Once the file was removed, the host settings came up just like there were supposed to and it has been working great every since. Hope this helps anyone else that runs into this issue with DNN.

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Remove Display Name from Registration in DotNetNuke

admin — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:59:26 -0400

Having worked with DotNetNuke since Version 1.0 and before I have seen many changes within the framework. One of the changes that I liked but found it to be repetitive was when working with the registration tools, we had this field called Display Name that was always asking for input in the form.

This image shows the display name as a required field. I understand the need for this as we want to display a user’s preferred name to them when they login, but it is also nice being able to set this to our own predetermined fields as well. Well this can be done within the framework, with the added bonus that the display name will now not be part of the registration process.

To accomplish this, lets walk through the process.

Remove the display Name

Login to the portal as an administrator
Go to Admin –> User Accounts
Click on User Settings either at the bottom of the module or in the drop down menu for the module.
Locate the Display Name Format field near the bottom of the user settings
Place the following within the textbox [FIRSTNAME] [LASTNAME]. This will set the display name to the first and last name of the user that is registering.
Click the update button at the bottom of the module.
Log out of the portal as administrator and then click on the registration link. The Display Name field should now not be visible in your registration form.

This makes for a consistent naming scheme for wherever the Display Name field is used within your portal as well as allowing the field not to be required during registration when having new users register.

If you have any comments or other suggestions about tips you would like to see about DotNetNuke please leave them in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke,Software,Programming