Official Blog of Will Strohl

Participate in DNN By Asking and Answering Questions

Thu, 30 May 2013 11:10:17 PDT

This is the second post in a series of blog posts that will focus on ways that you can participate in DNN in some way. Participation is incredibly important. Without it, any community will suffer, and an open source community like ours knows this all too well if you look at the history of open source. After all, what good is any project if no one is using it. Luckily, we have had the luxury of millions of users, nearly a million production sites, over a thousand eco-system vendors & system integrators, and more. We have thrived more than most. However, like I stated before, there are a ton of ways for you to participate. If you’re new to DNN, this post will help you help others by answering questions.

Why Answer a Question?

At the time of the writing of this blog post, we are sitting in a pretty wonderful place in terms of the number of and quality of the resources that we have available to us. We have online help, wiki, video library, community exchange, user/superuser manuals, white papers, web seminars, YouTube channel, and more. When I first lucked upon DNN, there was only forums (on two different sites) and the blog. This made learning about DNN primarily a try it and break it kind of proposition. For some, this is still the way to go, but the average user now has so much more at their fingertips to work with. Could any of it be done better? Sure. That will always be the case for any site.

My point here is that people need help. Even you. None of us were born with the answers. Questions are being asked. There are plenty of folks that still need someone else to give them a bit of information that they don’t have currently. Part of a community is knowledge sharing. Our community has always been better at that than most. This is what made me fall in love with the DNN community years ago! People were participating so much and so often!

When I first was getting acquainted with DNN, I barely had my own answers – much less answers for other people. Lucky for me though, I had a job with a certain amount of built-in down time that allowed me to play with DNN a lot. In an effort to become as versed as possible with it, I regularly would find questions in the forums that hadn’t yet been responded to. If I already knew the answer, great. However, most of the time I didn’t. I would spin up a test site (if needed) and try what they were trying to do. Once I’d find the answer, I would relay it back to the community in the forum thread.

This did two things for me...

First, it forced me to learn an incredible amount of ways that DNN could be used. The architecture and extensibility for creative uses of DNN started to become second nature. This allowed me to say “yes” to pretty much anything in meetings when someone asked if our website could do something.

Second, I began to meet and interact with people all over the world. I helped people. There was a certain amount of satisfaction in giving back, but there was also the fact that I built some very meaningful and lasting friendships with numerous people in the DNN community. There’s no two ways about it.

This kind of participation is what got me to where I am today. Who knows what opportunities it might bring to you tomorrow!

These days, another reason to answer to questions is to earn points in the community. Over time, you will end up competing with others in the community, earning reputation, and more. (More to come on that later…)

Can I Ask a Question?

Of course you can, silly! It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been using DNN. Everyone needs help sometime. If there is something that you would like to ask someone about, there’s now two main ways to participate with questions.

Ask in the DNN forums. Forums were never really meant to be a question and answer kind of discussion. At least, that’s not how they’ve ever been built. However, some questions require a little back-and-forth troubleshooting. If you think your question requires a conversation to solve, then the DNN forums are a perfect place for it.

If you have a question that you feel can be answered in a single shot, then community exchange is a perfect fit for you! This area is designed to allow you to ask a question in a way that ends up building a power knowledge base – but it is also addictive to those that want to answer questions because they are incented to get you the right answer the first time and before anyone else does!

Tell Everyone About Your Question

Regardless to which way you participate with your question, I would highly suggest tweeting your question as well to get people’s eyes on it. Just be sure to hashtag your tweet with #DotNetNuke and #DNN.

How Can I Answer Questions?

Anyone can answer a question. You don’t have to know the answer right away either – but that’s awesome if you do. Half the fun might be figuring out what the answer might be.

One of the things I made sure of is to have a test DNN site ready to go when I found an interesting question that I wanted to answer. Then, I would try to find a solution without worrying about breaking a development or production site. Mike van der Meulen has made this easy for everyone. He participated by building a nifty DNN desktop installer! He aptly called it MakeDNNSite. These days, I keep it handy with it pinned on my task bar.

There’s no rules around where and how you answer questions. Just do your best to put forth the best answer. And don’t be afraid if your answer doesn’t work. No two DNN sites are alike. Oftentimes, there are several potential fixes for the same problem. And if your fix is missing something, the person asking will let you know. This will allow you to hone in on the right answer eventually – or even better – it might push them just enough to discover the answer on their own.

Answer as many questions as you can and help vote up answers if you’re in community exchange. This will help others determine the right answer. The more you interact with community exchange, the more capabilities you’ll unlock as well.

The DNN forums work pretty much just like any other forum out there. However, you do also earn community points for contributing new threads and for replying to posts.

Participate In DNN Through Social Media

Mon, 20 May 2013 06:02:31 PDT

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

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

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

Participate. It’s simple. Easy. Fun.

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

Social Media

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

Participate Through Social Media

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

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

Facebook, Twitter, and Google+

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

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

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

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

YouTube or Vimeo

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

DNN on YouTube

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

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

Blogs

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

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

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

Discover some new DNN blogs:

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

Wiki

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

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

Instagram and Flickr

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

Foursquare

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

Google Hangout, Justin.tv, Skype, and UStream

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

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

Participation is Empowering!

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

Southern Fried DNN 2013 Recap

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:53:11 PDT

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

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

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

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

Training

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

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

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

Keynote

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

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

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

Sessions

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

Lunch

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

Ignite Sessions

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

DNN MVP’s

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

DNN After Dark

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

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

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

Additional Southern Fried Articles

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

South Florida Code Camp 2013 Session Resources

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:51:38 PST

There’s really nothing bad I could possibly say about any code camp in Florida. Community leaders like Dave Noderer make such a thing impossible. They are so amazing in their ability to organize a fantastic event. South Florida Code Camp 2013 was just as amazing as this code camp always has been. This is about my 3rd or 4th time presenting here. It just gets better and better! This blog post is mostly about the resources for my sessions though.

I had two and a half sessions that I presented. The first session was alongside Ryan Morgan of Arrow Consulting & Design, a gold partner in the DotNetNuke partner program and the founder of Arrow. I have known Ryan as long as I’ve known DNN, so it was nothing short of an honor to finally present along side him during the first session that introduced DNN to a nearly full room of attendees. We even had a DNN-hater in the crowd that we managed to turn around into a DNN-lover. Him and his co-worked stayed for the remainder of the DNN track! This session didn’t really have any resources for you to download here.

Build a DotNetNuke Module in Minutes!

My next session was geared to show attendees how fast they could be up and running with DotNetNuke module development. We covered the architecture of the past and the architecture of today. Then, we built a module using the wildly popular module templates built by Chris Hammond. This allowed us to use the new DAL2 method of building DNN modules. We literally had a usable module up and running and packaged in minutes! This session has a slide deck that attendees might be interested in having, as it had a bunch of references in it.

Build a DotNetNuke Module in Minutes! slide deck

Probably the best thing about this session was how packed the room was! There were all kinds of new faces of people that wanted to learn about DNN and how to create modules. There were even a few people that were interested in building modules for the Store.

DotNetNuke Makes your Website and Web Application SOCIAL!

I may have given this session a few times before, but it has more and more meaning as we get closer to the launch of something you may have heard called “Nebula” at DNN World 2012. I spoke to the attendees about why social is so important, showed them the existing social features, and then showed them how easy it is to integrate with those features. Finally, I briefly told them about the great things that are coming. We had Will Morgenweck at the DNN Corp table where he was showing off the upcoming social release. People were so excited at what they saw… It was awesome!

This session did have a slide deck with several resources.

DotNetNuke Makes your Website and Web Applications SOCIAL! slide deck

In Closing…

In closing, I just wanted to thank a few people… First, Dave Noderer for putting on yet again one of the best code camp events I’ve been to. Ryan Morgan and his folks at Arrow Consulting & Design for sponsoring and helping with the DotNetNuke track. And also Jess Coburn and Applied Innovations for supplying the critical display adapter we needed at our own sponsorship table. There are plenty of other people to thank for the code camp, but you’d get bored in a heartbeat.

Keep your eyes and ears posted for the next DNN event… And let me know if you have one!

DotNetNuke Track at South Florida Code Camp 2013

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:20:26 PST

It’s been a while since I’ve been to South Florida Code Camp (#sflcc). If you’re not aware, it is the largest code camp in the State of Florida. They regularly have at least 700 attendees. People come from all over the state to attend this code camp, and if you’re reading this blog, you should too. Code camps are a one-day event that allows you to learn about all kinds of useful information. In fact, Day of DotNetNuke was modeled after the code camp model. If you want to meet and learn from some of the most passionate people dealing with Microsoft technologies… Go to a code camp!

Code Camp Basics

If you have never been to a code camp before, you can expect several tracks of content to include things like Windows Phone, SQL Server, coding techniques, and SOOOOOOOOO much more. South Florida Code Camp has 15 tracks this year. You also get fed. Don’t bring your lunch unless you want to and you will have plenty to drink too. Expect to get free stuff! Code camps are 100% sponsored and as a result, you get all kinds of free swag and prizes from the sponsors that are there. The freebies can range from stickers and to-shirts to XBoxes and Kindle Fires!

Why South Florida Code Camp?

Quite honestly, I could not wait to write this blog post! During my time in Florida, I was one of the speakers that would “do the circuit” in the state by speaking at all of the code camps. Being as crazy about DotNetNuke as I am, I also made sure that every code camp had an entire track of DNN sessions. It has been sad to see that DNN tracks had faded away when I left… Until now!

Arrow Consulting & Design is a Gold Partner in the DNN partner program. They are sponsoring an official DNN track at this code camp. If you want to learn all that you can about DotNetNuke in a day, this is the place to be! I am very thankful to Ryan and the others at Arrow for putting this together. I love DNN so much, so it’s comforting to see it rise up to a premiere spot at again at a code camp in Florida.

If that wasn’t enough, Arrow and DNN Corp. will both have a booth for you to stop by for demonstrations and swag. You might be able to expect other surprises too. If you know what’s on the horizon for DNN, you know what I mean. Get your head out of the clouds and see the stars! ;)

One more thing about this code camp in general… This code camp usually boasts the most Microsoft MVP’s and authors that you will find at other code camps.

When and Where Is South Florida Code Camp 2013?

Date: February 9, 2013
Time: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM EST
Register to Attend: http://www.fladotnet.com/codecamp/Register.aspx

Registration opens at 7:30 AM. I would suggest showing up closer to 7:30 AM to skip registration lines and so that you don’t miss any opening announcements. (Hint, hint!)

DotNetNuke Content

There will be a total of 5 sessions on DotNetNuke.

A Lap Around Your Free CMS

Get started with DotNetNuke by understanding what it is, what you can use it for, and how to install it so you can start working with it. Presented by Ryan Morgan and Will Strohl.

Presenter(s): Ryan Morgan & Will Strohl

Designing for DNN 7

DotNetNuke 7 continues to build upon the user interface changes introduced in DotNetNuke 6. DotNetNuke 7 goes even further to give site designers greater control and flexibility. In this session you will learn everything you need to know to build great looking websites with DotNetNuke 7. You will learn about all of the CSS enhancements and what that means for existing site designs. We will also discuss best practices and guidelines for building high quality DotNetNuke skins.

Presenter(s): Ralph Williams

Build a DotNetNuke Module in Minutes!

You may have heard of DotNetNuke. You may have been told horror stories from developers that are 6 years old now. DotNetNuke has changed. It looks different. It feels different. Today you can develop different. You can roll out a site in a fraction of the time it would normally take. You barely have to write code today to build a production-ready module. In this presentation, learn about how you can use project templates, form patterns, DAL 2, and more to build a module in minutes – not days!

Presenter(s): Will Strohl

Mobile Website Development for DotNetNuke

Join Arrow Consulting & Design Founder, Ryan Morgan, as he explores the business case, creative process, and technology used to create the three types of mobile experiences and how DotNetNuke supports them. Ryan will walk through the decision-making process of choosing a mobile website, versus a responsive design and show examples of how to integrate mobile iOS applications into the data stored in DotNetNuke.

Presenter(s): Ryan Morgan

DotNetNuke Makes Your Websites and Web Applications SOCIAL

In recent years, the tools and features of DNN have grown by leaps and bounds, including the latest social features that allow you to have a Facebook-like experience on your own website with nearly no effort. We will show you some of the new social features that you can take advantage of out-of-the-box to instantly change your website to one that engages your visitors in a way that creates a sticky experience. We will also show you how you can take your own applications and integrate them with features like the activity feed to create a socially engaging experience for your own applications and content. Finally, we will give you a sneak peak into the ultimate social solution for .Net code-named Nebula.

DotNetNuke Job at University of Florida

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:51:11 PST

What do alligators, gators, and DotNetNuke have in common? The University of Florida! That’s right… The University of Florida – or Florida to most of you – is looking for a talented DNN developer to build some state-of-the-art applications. This is not a remote gig. You need to move to or live near the university.

The University of Florida has been a long time supporter of DotNetNuke. They are the team behind the popular Shibboleth Authentication Provider. People such as Nik Kalyani, DNN Corp co-founder, have been onsite doing consulting in the past. Now it’s your turn to help them build the next generation web applications using your favorite CMS and application framework!

Here is the official job description:

The UF Office of Research has a web developer/web designer opportunity for an innovative individual that would like to participate in rebuilding current administrative applications, and designing and creating new web applications at the University of Florida using state of the art tools. These applications will be modules used in our DotNetNuke intranet. This development will focus on building high performance highly interactive mobile friendly web applications to access our SQL Server databases using client side binding, server side binding, and web service binding. We will be using state of the art tools including Knockout JS, jQuery, Javascript, Telerik controls, CSS, vb.net, C#.net and others. This is a full time position that provides excellent benefits and a flexible work environment. You can find more information about this position by emailing Cheryl Bearden at cbearden@ufl.edu. In addition, the official job description is posted here: https://jobs.ufl.edu/postings/33827. Any new tools, ideas, experiences, module experience, etc. that you can bring to the table will be considered as we are open to pursuing the latest and best technologies available in rebuiding and building our new applications. This is primarily a module developer position but skinning and design experience is also highly valued. Please contact us soon if you are interested in this position.

I don’t know about you, but this definitely sounds like a great job to have, and in one of the most fun college cities in the US. Happy job hunting!

First CMS User Group Meeting in London

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:36:11 PST

It may surprise you to hear that in such a populated region such as London to hear that there has never been a DotNetNuke user group there. That’s right! There isn’t an area in the United Kingdom that is considered to be more metropolitan. It’s also considered to be a leading global city in numerous areas such as arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, research and development, and more. Yet DNN hasn’t reached their techie scene. That’s changing! The very first user group meeting that focuses on DNN will be held there in just a couple of short weeks.

It is with great pleasure that I can yet again introduce you to a brand new DNN user group. LonDNN is led by John J. Royle of Glanton Corporate Web Services – which is currently a Gold DotNetNuke Partner. Their first meeting is on Wednesday, December 5, 2012 – or 05/12/2012 for you locals. Hehehe…

What Can You Expect?

First, don’t forget that this is the kick-off meeting. This usually consists of a lot more networking than anything else, and also helping to form what the user group will be moving forward. However, you can thank awesome sponsors like PowerDNN and Novus Leisure Ltd. for making sure that you will have a great venue, refreshments, and prizes at the very first meeting! And of course thanks goes to Glanton Corporate Web Services since they are helping to sponsor the coordination and promotion of the monthly events. Did you know they are sponsoring the S.E. Queensland DNN User Group too?

Many user groups have to work months or years before you have a chance to meet notable community members. This first meeting already has people like James Roswell of 51Degrees (the software behind the awesome DNN mobile redirection features), Harvey Kandola & Saar Cohen of Gemini (the software that runs the DNN bug tracker), and Salar Golastanian. You may have seen or heard of Salar from any number of community and ecosystem contributions through Salaro. I’ve looked at the attendee list personally and saw quite a few familiar faces there, but there’s too many to mention. Sorry, gents. :)

On a final note for what to expect… I heard through the grapevine that there is some really nice DNN swag on the way to the event. If you want some of that, you have to show up!

Where and When?

The first monthly meeting of LonDNN will be held at the Piccadilly Institute, in the Shrink room. All details and registration can be found below:

Target Audience: All types of DNN users, even if you’re new to DNN
When: December 5, 2012 @ 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: Piccadilly Institute, in the Shrink Room
Address: The London Pavillion 1 Piccadilly Place, London

DotNetNuke SUPER Fan 2012 Results

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 12:00:46 PDT

First of all, if you haven’t already heard, there was a contest. The annual DotNetNuke SUPER Fan contest. There was voting. There were shenanigans. There was all kinds of friendly competition. And in the end, there was a winner. That winner was awarded at DNN World 2012 in Orlando, Florida. Not only was the contest a bunch of fun as usual, but the awards ceremony continues to be a blast since it’s held at the most prestigious and informative event about open source CMS in the world…

Like last year, we awarded the top 3 finalists in the contest. I kept my eye on the voting daily. (You kind of have to do that to make sure that the shenanigans don’t go unchecked.) The number one leader changed a few different times. It wasn’t until the final days of the contest that we knew what was going to happen. In fact, in preparation for the awards ceremony, I was still checking the voting just to be sure that I didn’t need to make any final changes the day before. There’s nothing like this kind of excitement!

Thank You!

Before I announce the winners, I must take a moment to thank all of the people that took the time to submit entries. They were all fantastic. It’s really great to see you all participate in the contest. This years entrants included Cara Pluff, Clint Patterson, Joe Brinkman, James Wallace, Peter Donker, and Ryan Morgan.

I also want to quickly thank the people that took the time to vote. Even though it was a very quick and easy thing to do, it is also a very easy thing to forget to do. Your participation is a key ingredient to the success of the contest and choosing the winner.

Finally, I have to thank DNN Corp. I absolutely loved running the contest, but every contest needs to award the winner. Without the backing of my favorite employer, this contest would have not been nearly as cool as it was.

And the winners are…

Third Place: Ryan Morgan

Even though you might not have heard his name before, Ryan Morgan has been part of the community pretty much since the beginning. He is the founder of Arrow Consulting & Design, a DotNetNuke author, speaker, and more. For his entry, he decided to embrace the super hero theme and create a comic showing part of why he loves DNN. If you’ve seen him in person, you might question his physique in the comic though. Just saying… Hahaha!

I was once told that second place is the first loser… While there are no losers in the SUPER fan contest, you can see that Ryan clearly feels that way here. :D

Second Place: Cara Pluff

If you ask Cara, she doesn’t like to be in the spotlight. I don’t believe her, but it shows when you look at the visible areas of community involvement. While she hasn’t been in the community nearly as long as Ryan, she is part of Applied Innovations, who hosts too many DNN websites for me to count. She is a networking machine at all of the events I’ve seen her at, so her fandom is very much an in-person thing that you’d have to see. Her entry takes a very popular internet meme of creating a music video based upon a pop song, and apply other people to it. In this case, she involves some prominent community members, DNN Corp founders, as well as DNN Corp employees.

Cara was much more gracious in her winning photo…

2012 DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Winner: Clint Patterson

I must say that I was really rooting for Clint to win this year. I was a huge fan of his entry last year and voted for him daily. If you have your ears or eyes open to any part of the community, you will undoubtedly see or hear his name, if not see him in-person. Clint does so many different things for the community. His entry this year goes a long way to basically serve as a DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Contest resume. If only the DNN MVP winners were announced sooner, his video would have one more thing to have in it. I am so proud and honored to be able to let you all know that Clint Patterson is this years winner of the DotNetNuke SUPER Fan contest. This is a well-deserved win!

Clint certainly deserves his title of DotNetNuke SUPER Fan this year. You can see that he definitely is happy about it too!

Once again, I want to publicly thank everyone that was involved in this contest. Some of the people behind the scenes that helped make this possible include Quoc Ngo, Richard Dumas, Chris Hammond, Joe Brinkman, Scott Willhite, and Stephanie Tejada. They all had a direct impact on the coolness of the prizes, getting them made, and promoting the contest.

Start getting your ideas cooking now for next year. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with next time!

Ride with Chris Hammond and I After DotNetNuke World 2012

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:40:20 PDT

Chris Hammond just announced that there will be an organized ride for anyone that wants to show up Saturday morning following DNN World. It will be an early ride to ensure that we get some good weather and that we don’t interfere with anyone’s checkout times or plans. Don’t worry if you are not a pro rider or don’t have your own gear. We have that covered. Chris found a bike rental place that will being all the gear you want. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to pick up the bill. Sorry.

Here is the run-down of what you need to know:

Don’t have a bike? You can rent your bike, helmet and get it delivered for $90 each
What should I bring? Shoes, clothing, yourself, and any additional gear that you want.
Where are we riding? Still up in the air. It depends on who shows up and what skill levels you are.

Don’t worry if you are not a cycling expert or if you don’t think you can “keep up” with anyone. This is intended to be a community ride for everyone to have fun, so it will be conducted as a no rider left behind (NRLB) ride.

Hammond did a great job of laying out the details and how to register for the ride. I hope to see you there!

Catch a DotNetNuke User Group Meeting in New York

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:03:15 PDT

This blog post isn’t about another one of my presentations. Actually, I just wanted to let you know about a .Net user group that is having a DotNetNuke presentation given in the New York area on October 4, 2012. DNN is rampant across the east coast of the US, but it’s not often I hear about a DNN presentation in the New York area.

Vincent Malanga is presenting a DNN session at the LI.Net Users Group where he will be re-acquainting some people with DotNetNuke, and introducing it to others for the first time. Vincent is an experienced software architect at IMI Software where he helps deploy DNN-based websites.

If you are new to DotNetNuke or haven’t seen it in a while, this is a great session and venue to learn more. The presentation is expected to be high-level. However, if you’ve ever been to a user group meeting, you know that the presentation could go any direction.

If you happen to follow me on twitter, then you might have caught the photo below.

Attend the LI.Net Users Group meeting on October 4th, 2012 at 6:30 PM EDT, and you could be the lucky recipient of a DNN mug, shirt, or something even cooler…

When: October 4, 2012 at 6:30 PM EDT
Where: 5 Hub Drive, Melville, New York 11747

DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Contest 2012 Voting is Open

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:24:23 PDT

Well, it’s finally here. The DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Contest entries have been collected. They have been reviewed. They have been sorted. And they have been put together for you to view, share, comment, and VOTE on! Like last year, we have had some excellent entries. I was personally excited to see that most of the entries this year were videos. I don’t know about you, but I love videos! They are a lot of work, but they are so much more fun to look at. Without any further babbling, let’s get to the point…

It is pretty clear that we got a lot of hard work in the entries. There was a ton of thought and creativity that went into them. I wish we could award them all, but only 3 winners will survive from the entries that were submitted, and they will be rewarded at DNN World 2012! Those that make it into the top 3 will win some AWESOME prizes! Literally… I mean it! Hehehe…

If you haven’t installed DotNetNuke yourself, then you should know that a fictitious bicycle store called Awesome Cycles is the default website template in DNN 6 for you to use as a baseline to build your website. Ironically, many of us have taken up cycling since then. You don’t have to have a bike, much less enjoy cycling to love these prizes… You have to just be a fan. If you’re a fan, you know what I mean. You want anything and EVERYTHING that has a DotNetNuke logo on it. And something with the default website template worked in just sweetens the deal!

Third Place Winner

The third place winner wins an Awesome Cycles bicycle helmet like shown above. Don’t worry if you have a large noggin either. We have you covered! ;)

Second Place Winner

If you’re lucky enough to win second place, you get an Awesome Cycles kit. A kit is the jersey and pants combo like you see above.

Grand Prize Winner

The grand prize winner is someone that I will be SO jealous of. As the world’s most elite SUPER fan of DotNetNuke, they win both the kit and the helmet. They also win a custom painted Awesome Cycle. The world’s ONLY Awesome Cycle. There will not be another one made. You have bragging rights for life for not only being the SUPER fan, but this one-of-a-kind bicycle. I just rode it from the car to the shop where it’s getting customized yesterday. Let me tell you – it’s a REALLY nice bicycle! More photos of the bicycle will be coming soon. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for an ongoing photo album of the bicycle getting customized.

(Awesome Cycle concept design by Ube’s Icecream Shop)

(Awesome Cycle - before)

You’re still here? Help a lucky someone win this Awesome Cycle!

Vote for the 2012 Super Fan Now!

Media Module Released with Social Integration and Now in C#

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:22:57 PDT

I couldn’t believe it when I saw it, but the last official release of the Media Module for DotNetNuke was in January of this year! That is way too long for this module to go without having a release. Therefore, I am very excited to get this release out the door, and even more excited about the nature of the updates that can be found in this release.

PLEASE NOTE: The Forge where the module is hosted will take up to 24 hours before the release is reflected.

If you are not aware, the Media Module began several years ago and was called the Image Module. All it could do was allow you to choose or upload an image. Not the most exciting module out there, I know. Later, the module included support for rendering the appropriate HTML for videos and Flash and was renamed as the Media Module. It wasn’t long after this when I took over the project. There have (in my opinion) been some great releases since then adding things like oEmbed support, and more. These kinds of upgrades really redefined what the module allowed you to do since now “media” could be anything. It could be embed codes from your favorite site, or content from well over 200 websites that support oEmbed.

Today, I am excited to announce some very exciting updates that have just been rolled out in this release which I hope you will enjoy to take your media integration and features to the next level…

C# Conversion

This release marks the very first release of the Media Module written in C#. All prior versions was written in VB. There were no ideological reasons for this. The reason was simple… I was about to speak at a C# user group – so I needed to either build a new module in C#, or convert an existing project to C#. With the core of DotNetNuke being written in C# now, it made sense to convert this module due to it historically being included with the core.

I used a tool called Instant C# to convert the project, and it did amazingly well. This project isn’t huge with only 2,600 lines of code, but I was still impressed that I only needed to resolve 18 errors in the entire project. They were very easy things too. Mostly, it was adding appropriate references to the class files. The only other thing I had an issue with were the user controls. I kept trying to build the project, but the designer files for the user controls were not properly picking up the correct types. After way too much troubleshooting and trickery, I finally found that the class files for the user controls had been turned into abstract classes. Once I fixed that, the module was already usable with the existing features from the earlier release.

Media now Includes SOCIAL

Part of the reasons I chose to update this module was to integrate it with the social features in the 06.02.00 release of DotNetNuke. This means that you cannot install this release on any prior versions of DNN. However, the integration is pretty nice (and fairly easy to do).

Administrators can set a site-wide setting to determine whether updates to the media module are posted to the journal as a status update. You can also set another site-wide setting to notify site administrators when the media module has been updated. This could be a useful feature, if you want to keep an eye on what media people are posting on your site.

Media HTML Generation Now an API

Part of the roadmap for the Media Module has always been to take the HTML logic out of the views in such a way that it could be an API for another other module to use. This would allow other modules to also display media in the same way this module does. Thanks to the social features and how the integration was needed to be done, this has been done as of this release. As long as this module is installed on your development site, you can program against the Media Module to easily display any content using a simple API call. Just make sure when you redeploy your own modules, that you also redeploy this one too.

The code sample above literally returns either a useful error, or the HTML you want to display. This is abstracted a level further in the actual Media Module business controller class.

Other Updates

All of the other updates are pretty minor. The module is now branded with the DNN-colored M for “Media.” When you choose to edit this module on your site, or add it to a page, look for this logo.

I thought I had support for MPG in the past, but as it turned out, there was a bug in a very specific spot that would actually ignore the MPG files entirely. Now, these files are fully supported.

There was another nasty bug that I didn’t anticipate on sites where the original superuser/host account had been deleted from a site. On any site with this configuration, the module actually wouldn’t install properly. This issue has been fixed for this release. However, it is not back-ported to prior releases.

Download the Media Module

PLEASE NOTE: The Forge where the module is hosted will take up to 24 hours before the release is reflected.

Session Resources from Tampa, West Palm Beach, and Southwest Florida Code Camp 2012

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:04:02 PDT

If you weren’t aware, I just visited a few events in Florida to spread the word about DotNetNuke and DNN World 2012. The events included Tampa#, FLA.Net West Palm Beach .Net, and the Southwest Florida Code Camp. These events were all very cool. The organizers did an outstanding job amidst a pending tropical storm and a hurricane, illness, and the always challenging logistics of a code camp. There were 5 sessions in all, and in each of them, I promised resources from the session. The wait is over… Here are the resources from the sessions.

Thanks to the Event Organizers

Before I get to the resources, I just want to thank the organizers of these events for doing such a great job. Robert Venables did a fantastic job putting together the Tampa# meeting. He had to scramble to find a venue, and it was a great one. And it’s always a plus to me when a user group meeting has bottled water. Not many do, and Robert made sure that this meeting had some. Bonus!

The leader of the West Palm Beach user group, Sam Abraham, was not only dealing with a tropical storm literally closing our venue, but he was too sick to even get to work and somehow managed to move the venue and get the attendees there without a hitch. Of course, Applied Innovations stepped in to cover the costs of not only the food and drinks, but the cost of renting the new venue room. All of this was literally done in hours!

John Dunagan and his team did an incredible job of organizing and execute the Southwest Florida Code Camp. Of course, I would expect nothing less of these folks. Not only are they some of the nicest people you’d meet, but they are incredibly passionate members of the Microsoft community.

Now for the session resources…

DotNetNuke Makes Your Websites and Web Applications SOCIAL

In this session, I gave a brief overview of DNN and its social features from a high level. Then, I showed how you can easily integrate with its social features to create socially enabled web applications. I gave this presentation 3 times, so the 3 slide decks are listed below. Click the download link for your event, but know that they are only redistributable in PDF format due to the licensing of some of the artwork.

The code I used to demonstrate these features was in the Media Module. However, the release is not ready for prime time just yet. In the meantime, you can find the code used in the source code on Codeplex.

Beginning DotNetNuke Module Development

This is a session that a lot of people have done a lot of times – myself included. I haven’t done this session in a long time, so I decided to take a new spin on it. I used the new module templates by Chris Hammond, and I showed how you can use the ContentItems feature in the DNN API to have a DAL-less module.

The first version of the module that I used was literally built in a couple of hours. However, after the session I went through the code and refactored the data being saved into ContentItems, as well as added a lot more comments in the source code.

Using Open Graph Protocol in DotNetNuke & Intercepting Page Requests

This session had two goals for me… First, I wanted to show the value of and how to use Open Graph Protocol. Second, I wanted to highlight in several places how I was saving time, effort, and simply writing better code by re-using portions of the DNN API. This was perhaps my favorite session that I gave during this trip.

The module I demonstrated in this session was not new. In fact, the first release was January of this year. However, when I was preparing for this session, I noticed how incredibly BAD my code looked. I spent most of the time on the flight to Southwest Florida Code Camp refactoring and fully commenting the code. This was a good thing, because it also allowed me to add some caching to the module.

DotNetNuke SUPER Fan 2012 Entry Time Extended

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 05:33:17 PDT

The deadline for DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Contest entries was this past Friday. However, over the weekend, I received several requests to extend the deadline. There were enough of you asking, that it is definitely worth the wait.

We will accept SUPER Fan contest entries for another week. Please submit your entries by September 15, 2012. If you don’t submit an entry, you won’t have a chance to win any of the Awesome Cycles gear, nor will you be able to claim the prestigious title of being the Official DotNetNuke SUPER Fan for 2012 – and have the world’s ONLY Awesome Cycle!!!

(Just an artistic rendering. The actual bike may be another style.)

Submit you SUPER Fan Entry today!

We Want YOU to be a DotNetNuke Sales Engineer

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:21:14 PDT

What do San Francisco, year round perfect weather, delivering solutions advice, participating in community activity, and DotNetNuke have in common? How about evangelizing DotNetNuke to the community through things like Twitter, blogs, Facebook, forums, exchange, and user groups? Give up? It’s the open position of Sales Engineer at DNN Corp. That’s right… We are still looking for just the right person in the DNN community to join the team!

Sales??! No Way!

Don’t get too worked up on the job title. Yes. This position is in the sales department. No. You will not be a sales person. You are not selling anything. Your role would be to simply help prospective DotNetNuke customers learn more about DNN and help match them up with the right solution. No money. No sales. No cold calls. None of those scary things that I am sure you just flipped out over.

Solutions, NOT Sales

Your job as a Sales Engineer would be to help a customer realize what DNN has to offer them. They will be asking questions like, “Does DNN allow you to have SSL pages and logins?” You will be the person to talk to them or show them where and how. You are literally here to help get a prospective customer excited about the platform that you know and love! Does that sound horrible? ;)

Community, NOT Sales

Don’t let the header fool you. You would be working in the sales organization at the headquarters of DotNetNuke in San Mateo, California (San Francisco Bay Area). However, 20% of your time would be spent on interacting with the DNN community. YOU WILL be EXPECTED to blog, post on the forums, answer questions in the exchange, talk to the community on twitter, and more. Who knows… If you’re the right person, you just might be able to get PAID to speak at user groups and code camps! That doesn’t suck, right?

Just to summarize that last paragraph… You get paid to do what you love – be part of the DNN community!

How Can You Join?

I don’t know how you couldn’t be asking, “Where do I sign?” at this point. Before I tell you, I should make very clear that we are looking for a community member that is passionate, fun, and willing to move to the San Francisco Bay Area. If you live in humidity or snow, this is a perfect opportunity to get near perfect weather year round.

Probably one of the coolest things about working in the Bay Area is being so close to things like Salesforce or Opera web browser (nearly walking distance of DNN Corp), or near other companies like Zynga, Twitter, Klout, Disqus, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Mozilla, Apple, and more. There’s always something going on around here!

All you need to do to be considered for this position is to have DNN experience and a resume to back it up. Send that to us at the Sales Engineer job listing page.

2012 Sales Engineer Job Listing

Speaking at Southwest Florida Code Camp 2012

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 06:35:56 PDT

I’ve been to and spoken at every code camp in the state of Florida. Each one has it’s own unique touch. Some are known for their sheer size, others for their night time events, and more. They are all really incredible. We have some great leaders in the Florida .Net community. However, only one code camp in the state has John Dunagan leading the charge. No disrespect to anyone else, but John really is a community machine!

Like I’ve said, I have spoken at all of these user groups before, and John sure does make sure that he and his team put on a good show for everyone that attends. While southwest Florida isn’t the most accessible place to get to if you’re not already there, you will surely miss out if you’re within driving distance and don’t attend.

I am planning two sessions for this event, which follows stops I’ve already announced in Tampa and West Palm Beach. The first session is one that I am planning to give at the other two stops as well, which is to get to know the new social capabilities in DotNetNuke 6.2. The second is one about how you can save a ton of time and be incredibly interactive with your end users by leveraging KnockoutJS and content items to build DotNetNuke modules. Both abstracts are below.

DotNetNuke Makes Your Websites and Web Applications SOCIAL

You may have heard of DotNetNuke before. You may know it as DNN. You may have even used it in the past. In the past few years, the tools and features have grown by leaps and bounds, including the latest social features in the recent version 6.2 release that allow you to have a Facebook-like experience on your own website with nearly no effort.

In this presentation, we will re-introduce you to DNN and show you some of the new social features that you can take advantage of out-of-the-box to instantly change your website from one where people look and leave, to one that engages your visitors in a way that creates a sticky experience. That sticky experience will keep your visitors on your website longer, and create a community of evangelists around your own company’s products and services.

We will also show you how you can take your own applications and integrate them with features like the activity feed to create a socially engaging experience for your own applications and content. Imagine your e-commerce customers being able to show other customers on your site items they just purchased. Think about other applications doing similar things like help desk systems, learning management systems, media gallery, and more.

By attending this presentation you will be reintroduced to DotNetNuke, as well as learn about socializing your website and some of the best practices that come along with that. Finally, you will get some insight into just how easy it is to integrate your own applications into those social features.

Leveraging KnockoutJS and Content Items in DotNetNuke Development

Building modules for DotNetNuke doesn't need to be difficult. In fact, the most difficult thing doesn't need to be done, which is using the built-in data access layer. DotNetNuke has long had something in the API called content items. Content items allow you to use existing data access layer architecture to store your data. This makes it incredibly easy for you to build your modules for most scenarios without writing any messy SQL statements.

We will take this a step further by using KnockoutJS to easily implement templating capabilities for your designers to use to get just the right look and feel that they need in order to have 100% control over the branding of your module. This also enables site admins to have an easy way to integrate 3rd party tools and customize what does and does not get displayed to website visitors.

By the end of the session, you will see just how easy it is to build a module without having to worry about where and how data is stored, and make it incredibly easy for those implementing the website to control just how the HTML markup is rendered to the page.

Sneak Peak at the DotNetNuke SUPER Fan 2012 Prizes

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:03:46 PDT

When I announced this years DotNetNuke SUPER Fan contest, I promised that I would let you know what the prizes would look like. If you don’t remember, we are taking the Awesome Cycles branding from our default installation template a step further and providing an AWESOME cycle and cycling gear to the top 3 places in the DotNetNuke SUPER Fan contest. Winning is simple. Do something amazing to prove that you are the world’s most passionate fan of DotNetNuke, and if the community agrees through voting, you win!

Third Place: Awesome Cycling Helmet

Third place in the contest will win a Awesome Cycles helmet. This is a very nice helmet made by Kask. It features 24 air vents, ventilated non-stick pads, quick release buckle, and hinged adjustment system to make it easy for anyone to adjust the helmet to just the right size for you.

Second Place: Awesome Cycles Cycling Kit

If you are lucky enough to win second place, you will get the Awesome Cycles cycling kit shown below! This is a very comfortable jersey and bottom from Voler.

First Place: You get it ALL!

But wait, there’s more! Not only do you get the helmet. You get the cycling kit. You also get the world’s ONLY Awesome Cycle. You’re not getting a picture of the bicycle yet. You can see it later… :P

What are you waiting for? Sky write, Lego build, bake, record a video, write a song, get a tattoo. Do anything that you can think of that you feel will win you the grand prize and prestigious title of DotNetNuke SUPER Fan!

You have until August 31, 2012 to submit your entry, so HURRY UP!

Visiting the Tampa C# User Group this Month

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 06:19:13 PDT

If you’ve never been there, you should know that Tampa Bay is an incredible city. It may not look large depending on where you’re from, but it’s home to Busch Gardens, New York Yankees spring training, former Super Bowl Champion Buccaneers, NHL champion Lightning, the Rays, and it’s also where the best Punisher movie was filmed (in my opinion). This city was also home to the first ever Day of DotNetNuke in 2009, which has since spread to Orlando, France, Canada, Chicago, and Charlotte. I am very happy to be able to say that I am once again bringing DotNetNuke back to this great city in a meeting on August 23, 2012.

It’s very exciting to come back to Tampa. I have lots of friends there, and it’s a hot bed of brilliant .Net people. I simply love the energy that I feel every time I’ve been in town to present or attend user group meetings, code camps, and other events. Of course, I hope to see my favorite Microsoft Developer Evangelist while I am there, Joe Healy. Hopefully, this public shout out will get him to stop by. Hehehe…

I apologize for not having a more recent headshot on-hand, Joe. ;)

As it turns out, this will actually be my first stop on my Florida trip promoting the new social capabilities in DotNetNuke 6.2. I had already announced West Palm Beach, but that meeting is the week after this one. Fortunately for both areas, you will not be missing any content. I plan to give the same presentation at both events. The abstract is below…

Before you read the abstract though, know this… I plan on having a special surprise for those attending that might already be familiar with my modules. As you might now, I am a VB guy through and through. But, this is a C# group. I’ll let you ponder on that until I arrive.

DotNetNuke Makes Your Websites and Web Applications SOCIAL

You may have heard of DotNetNuke before. You may know it as DNN. You may have even used it in the past. In the past few years, the tools and features have grown by leaps and bounds, including the latest social features in the recent version 6.2 release that allow you to have a Facebook-like experience on your own website with nearly no effort.

In this presentation, we will re-introduce you to DNN and show you some of the new social features that you can take advantage of out-of-the-box to instantly change your website from one where people look and leave, to one that engages your visitors in a way that creates a sticky experience. That sticky experience will keep your visitors on your website longer, and create a community of evangelists around your own company’s products and services.

We will also show you how you can take your own applications and integrate them with features like the activity feed to create a socially engaging experience for your own applications and content. Imagine your e-commerce customers being able to show other customers on your site items they just purchased. Think about other applications doing similar things like help desk systems, learning management systems, media gallery, and more.

By attending this presentation you will be reintroduced to DotNetNuke, as well as learn about socializing your website and some of the best practices that come along with that. Finally, you will get some insight into just how easy it is to integrate your own applications into those social features.

The Tampa# user group meeting information is below:

Date: August 23, 2012 at 6:30 PM
Target Audience: Users, Site Admins, Developers
Location: CoWorkTampa (Future Room), 3104 North Armenia Ave, Suite 2, Tampa, FL 33607

DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Contest 2012 Announced

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:19:34 PDT

It’s that time again! It’s that time when you show off your tattoos, websites, graffiti, rapping, and yes… Even your {Ahem!} baking skills… It’s time for you to enter the DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Contest! Last year we had 8 excellent entries. Not bad for a first time contest that had almost no notice, huh? The top 3 entries were awards some great prizes that included a DotNetNuke branded XBox 360 Kinect, Kindle, and an all expenses paid trip to the DNN Corp Headquarters. This year, we’re upping the ante. The only way to win though is to enter the contest!

I am certain that last year’s winners would all tell you that this contest was a blast. You definitely can ask them. Jonathan, Clint, and Ralph all did an incredible job putting their SUPER Fan entry together.

The Timeline

Entries can be submitted as of right now. We will be accepting entries until the end of the day on August 31, 2012 (PDT).

Voting begins on September 3, 2012 and ends on the first day of DNN World.

The winner is announced at DNN World 2012 in Orlando, FL. Winners will be given their prizes at that time.

The Entry

Your entry can be anything that showcases why YOU should be voted as the DotNetNuke SUPER Fan. This could be a really compelling website, a video, or anything else you can think of. It’s up to you and your creativity. You can use last years entries to give you some ideas.

Just be sure that you submit something that really does attempt to convey that you’re a SUPER Fan of DNN. Any entry that doesn’t do this will not be accepted.

Every entry that is accepted will earn the entrant 100 community points!

The Rules

The rules are simple. Create something that people can see that will convey to the world that you are the world’s most passionate fan of DotNetNuke. Your entry will be put alongside everyone else’s, so you want it to stand out among the crowd. Your entry must be family-friendly, and it cannot be an entry from last year. I know I said this before, but you really should look at last years entries for some inspiration.

How to Win

Winning is easy. Your entry just needs to get the most votes from the community. Voting begins on September 3, 2012, and ends with DNN World begins.

Who Can Vote

Anyone in the community can vote. All you need is an account on the DotNetNuke website. Like every other contest, you simply click on the vote button to cast your vote. The last vote button you click is the entry that you’ve chosen for the day. You can vote daily up until the contest ends.

Every day that you vote, you earn a community point!

The Prizes

A lot of thought was given to what we might be able to give to the ultimate fans of DotNetNuke. As soon as someone thought of the idea, it just clicked! I won’t say who, because apparently many people had the same idea before everyone else. ;)

The prizes are all co-branded with DotNetNuke, and the fabled Awesome Cycles bicycle store we have been seeing in our default DNN installs since version 6.0 launched. Artistic renderings will come in an announcement later.

Third Place: A co-branded DotNetNuke and Awesome Cycles bicycle helmet

Second Place: A co-branded DotNetNuke and Awesome Cycles kit (jersey and bottoms)

Grand Prize: You get the helmet. You get the kit. And you also get the world’s only Awesome Cycle! That’s right… You will be the only person in the world that has a DotNetNuke bike!

Eligibility

DNN Corp employees, contractors, and household family members are not eligible to win. However, anyone can submit an entry.

DNN Super Fans also cannot win two years in a row. We are doing something very cool this year, and plan to in subsequent years. The reigning SUPER Fan will be awarding the new SUPER Fan. At DNN World this year, we will not only be announcing the SUPER Fan results, but Jonathan Sheely will be passing the torch to whoever wins this year.

Official DotNetNuke SUPER Fan Contest Page

DotNetNuke Social Presentation in West Palm Beach

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:29:31 PDT

I have to be honest… I lived in Florida most of my life. With one exception, the only times I’ve been to South Florida were to speak at code camps, or for wrestling tournaments. (I was a pretty good wrestler when I was in high school.) I am continuing the trend on August 28, 2012 when I come to the FLA.Net West Palm Beach .Net User Group to talk about DotNetNuke. It’s very exciting for me to return to Florida in such a beautiful area, and I appreciate this user group welcoming me.

I am working on 2 other visits to Florida, but I cannot announce anything yet. So far, the topic is social… We hear about it. We use it. We are being asked to look into it, and we are even in some cases working (not playing) with it. Here is the long-form abstract:

DotNetNuke Makes Your Websites and Web Applications SOCIAL

You may have heard of DotNetNuke before. You may know it as DNN. You may have even used it in the past. In the past few years, the tools and features have grown by leaps and bounds, including the latest social features in the recent version 6.2 release that allow you to have a Facebook-like experience on your own website with nearly no effort.

In this presentation, we will re-introduce you to DNN and show you some of the new social features that you can take advantage of out-of-the-box to instantly change your website from one where people look and leave, to one that engages your visitors in a way that creates a sticky experience. That sticky experience will keep your visitors on your website longer, and create a community of evangelists around your own company’s products and services.

We will also show you how you can take your own applications and integrate them with features like the activity feed to create a socially engaging experience for your own applications and content. Imagine your e-commerce customers being able to show other customers on your site items they just purchased. Think about other applications doing similar things like help desk systems, learning management systems, media gallery, and more.

By attending this presentation you will be reintroduced to DotNetNuke, as well as learn about socializing your website and some of the best practices that come along with that. Finally, you will get some insight into just how easy it is to integrate your own applications into those social features.

The FLA.Net West Palm Beach user group meeting information is below:

Date: August 28, 2012 at 6:30 PM EST
Target Audience: Users, Site Admins, Developers
Location: PC Professor, 6000 Okeechobee Blvd., #200, West Palm Beach, FL 33417

But wait… There’s more!

Don’t forget two very important things… First, we still have job openings at DotNetNuke Corp. To be more specific, I am definitely trying to find another person to join us in a Sales Engineer role.

Last, but most certainly not least, we are holding DNN World 2012 in Orlando again. This time it’s in October. Don’t forget to register and join us! Ask anyone that’s been there before… You don’t want to miss it!