We've been working on our first site that really makes heavy use of DotNetNuke's Banners module for displaying revenue generating ads. Today I was trying to get the banners module to work for a Newsletter piece (more on that later) of the site that has a very tight layout but the way Banners is implemented didn't allow me to do what I needed. Currently, the banners module renders banners in a table and the only way to add spacing between banners is by setting cellpadding and/or cellspacing. We needed a solution where we could ad space between the banners without adding space on the sides of the banners. This wasn't possible with the current implemenation (other than by adding whitespace to the banner images which we didn't feel was a good solution) so we needed another solution.

I could have gone in and made a couple quick changes to the banners module to get it to do what I needed but then, we would've have had to reapply the changes every time we upgraded the site.

Instead, I spent about 10 minutes creating a new module based on the existing banners module. Luckily, DNN makes this easy.

The change to the code is the easy part (though really it was all very easy). I just changed the RepeatLayout attribute for the DataList to "Flow" instead of the default "Table" and then added a class to the label within which the banner is implemented.

The more involved process was copying and renaming the files and class. In all though, it took less then 10 minutes to think up and implement this solution.   Read More...

Last week, we put a lot of effort into improvements to the search and RSS aspects of Efficion's Articles module. As part of that, we noticed that no matter how many times you hit the Re-Index content link on the Host->Search Admin page, the links never actually get updated. As we dug further, it became clear that to update the links used by DNN's search and RSS, you actually have to purge the search tables.

This has implications beyond our module so I thought I'd share the steps as a good practice to do every once in awhile on your DNN site to make sure you Search Results and RSS Feeds are linking properly.   Read More...

As most HTML aware folks know that when you paste content from Microsoft Word or Outlook for use as HTML, it includes all sorts of gobbledygook that clutters up your markup and overrides your CSS. Luckily, the fckEditor has a couple ways to handle this. If you're pasting from Word into the editor using IE, it pops up a dialog that gives you a chance to clean up the markup which is nice. If you're using Firefox you can achieve the same results by clicking on the special Paste from Word icon. But, there's an issue...   Read More...

One of the under-utilized features in the DotNetNuke module development API is the ability to utilize DotNetNuke's built in Permissions architecture within your own custom modules.

Rather than having to write your own code to display a grid of available roles and special permissions, it's fairly easy to add your permissions to the existing permissions grid that usually just displays "View" and "Edit".

I found a nice article that gives a very good overview on how to do this
Extending DotNetNuke Module Permissions for Custom Modules   

As I build out the settings for DotNetNuke modules, I only like to display settings that are relevant to the other selections the user has made. The best way to do this is with Javascript so users don't have to wait for a postback everytime they change a relevant control.

In trying to put these things in place, I often find the code often doesn't work quite the way I expect (or at least used to expect) it to. The issue usually has to do with the way asp.net renders controls. I usually find I have to dig into the source view a bit to see exactly how asp.net rendered something and then fiddle a bit to get everything working right.

Here, I'll describe, one particular case where I had two checkboxes linked. The 2nd checkbox should only be displayed when the first checkbox is checked...   Read More...

A question that I see a lot of is, "Can DotNetNuke run on top of MySQL". The answer is a bit complicated. I believe there is a MySQL provider out there for it. But, it is a terrible idea to try to run DNN on MySQL. STOP TRYING!

DNN does provide an abstraction layer so that it can be run against multiple databases. And, I believe there is a MySQL provider provided by someone at cost. But, even if you can get the core running against MySQL, it's still a bad idea...

Reason #1: Loss of modules - You would lose the key thing that makes DNN special, Modules. I'm sure some of the core modules are included in the MySQL provider, but, the core modules are just the beginning of DotNetNuke. Y ou would have to create a MySQL provider for every module that you want to use. The cost of doing this would far exceed the cost of using a hosting company that would provide you a shared SQL Server on which you can run DNN.

Reason #2: Performance -The SQL used for DotNetNuke is chock full of Stored Procedures. The Stored Procedures improve the performance and security of the system.

To be continued....   

When I first started trying to install DNN on a local Vista installation I had various strange errors that I eventually determined to be due to the fact that I was running my IIS7 App Pool in Integrated Pipeline mode instead of Classic (IIS 6). And so, from that I learned DNN can't run in Integrated Pipeline more.

Today, I discovered that DotNetNuke can run in integrated pipeline mode as long as you're running DNN version 4.8 or greater. Charles Nurse discusses this in this blog.   

Sometimes, you need (or want) to know which of the modules that are installed on your DNN site are being used, which aren't, and where a module is being used. This can be useful if you want to uninstall unused modules for performance improvements or if you're planning on upgrading your site and you need to know what modules you'll need to test or upgrade. Here's some sql that will help you answer these questions...   Read More...

 There's an interesting article on a fairly simple way to improve the sitemap that DotNetNuke generates for you. It doesn't require any core modifications but does set page priority up in a way that makes a lot of sense while also not requiring much work.

DotNetNuke Sitemap Improvement by Equana Solutions   

The for profit wing of DotNetNuke, the DotNetNuke Corporation, announced an infusion of funding today from a couple venture captical firms. As someone who's livelihood is intricately tied to DNN, I've got mixed feelings about this news. While I fully appreciate that the new funding should help take DotNetNuke to the next level, both from a features and functionality as well as a marketing and penetration perspective, it also worries me that priorities may shift, revenue may trump the "common good", and everything may get more profit minded and expensive. So, we'll just have to wait and see...   Read More...