Tutorials, Reviews, Podcasts, Articles, Modules, Themes

DotNetNuke is an Extensive Framework

Administrator — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:31:00 GMT

You can use DotNetNuke (DNN) as an extensive framework to develop and publish websites. The categories can be selected from wide range. For instance a News portal with heavy customizations can be configured using DotNetNuke CMS. Alternatively an online gaming network would be another choice to use DNN to develop and maintain the structure. PokerDIY is a cool portal developed with DNN and author of this website also contributes to DotNetNuke Community. PokerDIY hosts games for players and the credit system is interesting.

How To Install DotNetNuke Rad Tag Cloud Module Correctly

Ismet — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:25:00 GMT

If your environment has same structure like mine, you may experience trouble installing DotNetNuke Rad Tag Cloud module. It looks like DotNetNuke Package Installer has same old school problem that produces invalid install reports with SQL Data Provider files. I've checked this issue with my friends from DotNetNuke Core Team and already reported the problem under several bug reports for each modules but it seems no solution has been provided yet. What i can suggest is after downloading Rad Tag Cloud module from Codeplex, you may want to try installing module from Host > Extensions first. If it fails, then extract the downloaded zip package into a folder and find the 01.00.00.SqlDataProvider file. Copy and paste the contents of this file into Host > SQL panel and ensure that Run as Script is checked. Then, you will need to click on Execute and thats all... Rad Tag Cloud module will be installed correctly after applying this tip. Hope it helps others :)

Facing the New DotNetNuke Content Localization Environment

Ismet — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:04:00 GMT

The Team: Ismet Dumlupinar (www.mynetnuke.com) and Patrick Gauthier (www.or-rouge.com). The Customer: ThermaPro Solutions (www.thermaprosolutions.com) is a leading company in Montreal, Canada - providing bed bugs detection and extermination services. The Challenge: Originally, the website was set with DSLocalizator combined with MLHTML, but it appears (from an SEO point of view) that DSLocalizator was not making the cut after upgrading the installation to dnn 5.5 or higher... Meta titles were shortened to 50 character, home page was afflicted by a redirection loop... enough to make the website disappears from Google results and to spoil months of SEO work. Our Solution: After an attempt to solve the problem by updating DSLocalizator, we decide to update to dnn6, to save all metas, contents and sitemap, to remove DSLocalizator and MLHTML, rebuild all pages and redirect all old URLs to new ones. Not an easy task, indeed! And you are right if you think that upgrading a DotNetNuke website with custom extensions should be handled by experts! However, going on step by step and carefully following our best practises, we finally achieve the desired result in fewer hours than expected. The Result: Less than two weeks after going online with our new updated version, www.thermaprosolutions.com was getting back his ranking, and we were able to restart implementing our SEO strategy. Not an easy task, but results were back, and in our SEO business, is there anything else to consider?

DotNetNuke Upgrade Timeout Issue

Ismet — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:13:00 GMT

Today, i decided to upgrade one of my own DNN websites. It was running DNN 5.6.3 so the goal was to upgrade it to DNN 6.0.0 and then DNN 6.0.1. Of course i had to be careful, cus hosting provider was Godaddy. Since Godaddy is a shared hosting provider, its likely to encounter some warnings/errors during DNN Upgrades. Luckily upgrade job completed successfully. Later when going on home page of website, i received following error message. [HttpException (0x80004005): Request timed out.] Hmm, sounds interesting... Refreshing a few times did the trick and home page loaded correctly. However, there was a problem with login pop-up dialogs. Currently investigating this...

DotNetNuke 6 Community Edition Released

Ismet — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:59:00 GMT

We have been waiting for this moment to come. C# version of DotNetNuke has been asked many times at DotNetNuke forums and today it is a big milestone for DotNetNuke Community. DotNetNuke 6 package has been released at Codeplex. If you log in as host to your existing DotNetNuke portal, you will be welcomed with a notification for the upgrade. I tested DotNetNuke 6 for Turkish Community and i believe although it is safe to use with EN-US locales, i would wait for DotNetNuke 6.1 For Turkish Community. I'll keep you posted about details. Note: Before applying new upgrade don't forget to take backups of physical file system and DotNetNuke Database.

Gzip Compression Breaks AJAX on DotNetNuke 5.6 with Medium Trust

Ismet — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:06:00 GMT

One of my own DotNetNuke Websites is hosted under Godaddy (a shared hosting provider with Medium Trust). While playing with settings, i noticed that module action buttons does not load because of unknown AJAX issue. I tried to visit Event Viewer to check to see whether any record logged. However, there was none. Then, i decided to compare a working website (this one too hosted under Godaddy) with faulty one... I came to realize that setting Compression to GZIP was killing the AJAX. Only after setting compression to none, AJAX loaded fine. I believe, DotNetNuke compression should exclude AJAX for certain roles.

Could not load file or assembly ChilkatDotNet2 or one of its dependencies

Ismet — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 12:54:00 GMT

Today, I'm moving many #DNN websites to a new Windows 2008 Web Server for a client. He needs to get it done as soon as possible. However, #migration of websites can be tricky, if source and target operating system versions, database server versions and collation strurctures are different. For instance, if you receive following error: Could not load file or assembly ChilkatDotNet2 or one of its dependencies And permissions are correct, file in place... So what's wrong? Yeah, i can see that you are about to pull your hair :) Here comes the solution... You must enable IIS 7 Application pool of related website to run 32bit applications. Default value is set to false, causing migration process headaches...

SQL Server SELECT Query Tutorial

Ismet — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:02:00 GMT

I'm following MSSQL Tips website and those guys publish useful tutorials for SQL Server. Select is one of the most used Query types in SQL Server so, in case you need to learn more about it, i strongly recommend reading following tutorial. SQL SERVER SELECT Tutorial >>

How to Integrate Facebook Comments into your DotNetNuke Pages and DNN Modules

Ismet — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:59:00 GMT

Last week, Chris Hammond posted an article that shows us how to implement Facebook Comments API into DotNetNuke contents. One of my clients had requested this feature a few years ago. They had a XMOD based news portal with missing comment addon. Unfortunately they didn't want to keep XMOD because of licensing costs. So they requested a transform. Instead of using a legacy release of XMOD i had to transform main structure to News Articles module from Ventrian Systems. Although they were some Comments API out there in Snowcovered, I didn't want to deal with them because of static/dinamic display issue which has been covered by Chris Hammond as well. However, Facebook Comments implementation is another story. Integrating facebook comments into DotNetNuke will power up your social integration and help you climb your ratings toward Facebook Users.

Download DotNetNuke Design Challange 2011 Skins

Ismet — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:39:00 GMT

DotNetNuke Design Challange 2011 Winners has been announced. The great dotnetnuke skins & dnn themes can be viewed and downloaded via DotNetNuke Design Challange Gallery. >>

Scheduling DNNScheduling ProcessGroup Run

Ismet — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:13:00 GMT

I'm using DNN for one of my clients at a hostel booking website. You can browse the hostel booking website by following this link >> While checking Log Viewer for error logs I've noticed the following error: Method: DotNetNuke.Services.Scheduling.DNNScheduling.ProcessGroup.Run StackTrace: Message: System.Threading.ThreadAbortException: Thread was being aborted. at DotNetNuke.Services.Scheduling.DNNScheduling.ProcessGroup.Run(ScheduleHistoryItem objScheduleHistoryItem) It seems DNN Scheduler has a problem with items in ScheduleHistory table. While searching this on DotNetNuke forums i only found old posts from 2007. Maybe a bug appears again after a long break.

HTTP Error 503 the service is unavailable

Ismet — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:15:00 GMT

In case you are getting the error "HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable." Most likely there is a problem with server behind the web application. You can troubleshoot this error, by checking Application Pool of your web application. For instance if you or any sysadmin accidentally pause application pool of your web app, then this error will welcome you while browsing your website.

DotNetNuke 6 beta 1 released

Ismet — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:59:00 GMT

I was expecting to see the release of DotNetNuke 6 Beta 1 after WebConnections conference. I guess, I'm right since checking DotNetNuke library on Codeplex brings list up new items for DNN 6 Beta 1 (install, source, web platform installer, upgrade package etc...) DotNetNuke 6 will be released very soon, so if you haven't done yet go ahead and test the BETA releases. Report issues you find under Support Tracker and help the team to improve it for community.

Host Header Issues When HumanFriendly Urls Applied

Ismet — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 06:59:00 GMT

Many hosting providers do not allow you to install your web application into your hosting account's root path. However, you can overcome this limitation by several ways. Specifying a host header in web.config and modifying Portal Alias table is one of the useful methods. Although it can be a good workaround, using host header in DotNetNuke has its own limitation with SEO Friendly URLs. If you are in a rush, you can see the logged issue here >> I had some time to test DotNetNuke 5.6.2 release against the goal of removing sub directory name from URL, i was able to do it. But, URL structure where Human Friendly (SEO Friendly URLs) used, gave 404 errors. For instance, if you install your website in a folder called portal, your host header value should be following as demonstrated in DotNetNuke Wiki. <add key="HostHeader" value="portal/" /> After using this and adding a naked portal alias into Portal Alias table for desired domain, you will be able to access your website. Partly! Login, Registration and some of Host pages will work, while others won't! So, the only way to overcome this problem is to remove urlFormat="humanfriendly" from following section in web.config. <add name="DNNFriendlyUrl" type="DotNetNuke.Services.Url.FriendlyUrl.DNNFriendlyUrlProvider, DotNetNuke.HttpModules" includePageName="true" regexMatch="[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]" urlFormat="humanfriendly" /> After using this workaround, you will be able to access the pages in your website with no subfoldername in urls. However, you will have no benefit of using SEO Friendly URLs. Maybe it's by design, or a bug in core needs to get fixed. Issue is logged below: Human Friendly URL's With Host Header in web.config If interested in solution, you can click on Watch button at bottom left corner.

Monitor Your Paypal Accounts Against New Vulnerability

Ismet — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:05:00 GMT

This morning, i was checking my Twitter account and noticed a tweet regarding a vulnerability in Paypal's system. The vulnerability in question allows an unauthorized people to access your account details. Once a password reminder request sent, system sends password reset tokens to a random email address instead of yours. Since we use Paypal for purchasing stuff for our DotNetNuke installations or any other personal needs, i strongly suggest monitoring your accounts until we hear from Paypal Staff.

DotNetNuke 5.6.3 Will Be Released Next Week

Ismet — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:02:00 GMT

My resources (erikVB from Twitter) has just announced that DNN 5.6.3 will be released next week after Web Connections Conference. I guess, the new release will handle core permission provider issue and add some extra improvements to DotNetNuke Core....

Web Connections Time

Ismet — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:12:00 GMT

Web Connections Conference time... Tomorrow will be great opportunity for DotNetNuke Community. Unfortunately, i will not be able to attend for several reasons. Anyway, if you want to learn more, you could take a look at Will's latest post on DotNetNuke Blogs. Are You Ready for Web Connections 2011? >>

Sunblognuke, Ventrian News Articles or Default DotNetNuke Blog Module?

Ismet — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:03:00 GMT

If you are looking for a alternative blog module for your DotNetNuke website, then I can provide a few suggestions. So far I have used default core DotNetNuke blog module, Ventrian's News Articles as a blog and SunBlogNuke for a client. AFAIK all of them are receiving updates periodically. So, it depends on requirements and budget to choose which one to use. Ventrian also provides extra modules which would be useful for other purposes. Property Agent is the strongest one. Subscription fees are reasonable and templated interface of News Articles module helps you organize your templates quickly within a few clicks. The only thing you need to know and understand is Tokens plus basic HTML. Templated interface also supported by SunBlogNuke and DNN's default core blog module. Again, If you need a professional support you can pick third party modules, however DNN Blog module also becomes stronger within each new release.

Sunblognuke, Ventrian News Articles or Default DotNetNuke Blog Module?

Ismet — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:03:00 GMT

DNN Localization Editor Helps You 2 Create Language Packs for DotNetNuke

Ismet — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:16:00 GMT

Peter Donker has announced the new release of Localization Editor for DotNetNuke. Localization Editor helps DotNetNuke Administrators to create language packs and modify them. If you have used localization features of DotNetNuke before, i believe you won't have any hardship while using Localization Editor. You can read Peter's article about a brief history of static localization features in DotNetNuke and get the latest release of DotNetNuke Localization Editor from Codeplex repository. >>

Module Development Video Series

Ismet — Sat, 28 May 2011 11:36:00 GMT

I strongly recommend checking DotNetNuke Video Library as it gets updated regularly. Chris Hammond's Video Series include following topics about DotNetNuke Module Development: Introduction to Task Manager Series How to Create Task Manager Project Task Manager Solution Overview & Installation How to Create a Project in DotNetNuke Forge How to add Source Code at Codeplex Repository Video series available at DNN Video Library. >>

DotNetNuke 5.6.2 Turkish Language Pack Released

Ismet — Fri, 27 May 2011 11:17:00 GMT

Today, I'm planning to update Turkish Community page of DotNetNuke with the latest version of Turkish Language Pack. DotNetNuke 5.6.2 Turkish Core Language Pack will be published today.

Building a list of known issues

Ismet — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:37:00 GMT

Yesterday, i had a chance to work on DotNetNuke 5.6.2 release with Turkish Community Localization enabled. I have collected some useful information to build a list of known issues. So that, i can either report them as a bug, or try to create a temporary workaround. With switching to new DNN 6, i believe those notes would help us to have a more useful DotNetNuke initial release.

DotNetNuke 5.6.2 Core Permission Provider Major Security Issue Patch

Ismet — Wed, 25 May 2011 11:38:00 GMT

DotNetNuke 5.6.2 introduces a legacy security issue regarding Core Permission Provider via User Profile. An authenticated user could access admin level rights from user profile page and this issue could be one of the major security issues of DotNetNuke. If you are using an earlier version of DotNetNuke i would suggest either upgrading to DotNetNuke 5.6.1 for now, or if you are using latest build then go ahead and apply the temporary workaround from a DotNetNuke Partner... The issue is still being discussed under following topic >> The temporary workaround can be applied by replacing a core permission provider dll of DNN.

DotNetNuke 6 CTP 3 Released

Ismet — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:06:00 GMT

Last week was an exciting moment for DotNetNuke Community. DotNetNuke 6 CTP 3 package has been released. Joe and his team listened the feedback from community and developed the application for better ui and performance. I didn't get any chance to test DNN 6 CTP 3 yet, however I guess I'll have some room for it tomorrow. Well, I'm far away from the current phase so I better tidy up things before official release. Read details by following DNN Blog post >>