There are hundreds of different functions and variables available through DotNetNuke, ASP.NET, and HTTP which can give you a variety of variations on your sites URL. I often find myself needing one variation or another as I'm building one application or another. The problem is, I have yet to find a clean and consistent way to get at the site's root or fully qualified URL regardless of whether the site is in a virtual directory (i.e. http://www.efficionconsulting.com or, for sites with virtual directories http://www.efficionconsulting.com/dotnetnuke). For DotNetNuke, I'm now using the following...

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One thing I think it's important to do is to protect my clients from spam. Clients like to be able to put their email address on their sites. But, putting an unprotected email address on a site can soon result in a lot of spam as spambots search sites looking for email addresses to add to their lists, often referred to as "harvesting". There are multiple ways to prevent this...   Read More...

There are many thousands of skins out there in the DNN universe. Many companies specialize in producing skins for DNN and other CMS systems. I haven't spent a lot of time looking, but most of what I've seen, just isn't what I'm looking for.

As a developer with very strong HTML and CSS skins, and solid but limited image manipulation skills, what I really need is a good starting point so that I can quickly build out a custom skin that speaks to the personality of my client organizations.

Over the years, I've spent quite a bit of time producing and refining a skin that has exactly what I need to get started, and nothing extra. I have focused on creating truly clean, proper, HTML  that works on all (within reason) browsers. And the few nice clean images it does use make it easy to manipulate the skin into any color in the known universe.

You can see an image of this skin now. Soon, I'll be sharing the source of it with everyone. Many people simply won't get it, "Not enough pop", "where's the stock photos", "too generic", and that's fine, but I'd love to see the skin that ships with DNN be a lot more like this.

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One of the biggest drains on our time has been the menu system. As a result, for the last year and on into the future, we now only build our skins using Telerik's Rad Menu. To be continued...   

Efficion Consulting, in partnership with Lieneke Group and ITArchitechs, recently completed Watercop.com, an e-commerce web site for an automatic water shut-off system. Built on top of DotNetNuke, the site features: a custom design built to appeal to WaterCop's target audience; a clean, easy to use online store with 3 separate interfaces geared towards the different levels of users; interactive flash animations that describe the product's appeal and functionality; a powerful administrative interface that makes it easy for Watercop staff to administer and update the store, process orders, and track detailed sales information. In addition, the site includes many customizations to tailor it to the exact needs of the client. Some of the customizations include:

• Configuration Wizard - Walks new users through the process of buying the WaterCop System
• Reseller Capture - A module that integrates with the E-Commerce system for capturing information on potential Dealers and Installers in order to grow the WaterCop reseller network
• Dealer Locator - Enables users to quickly find local resellers. The module integrates with the Google Maps API to present information in a clean easy to use format.
• Rapid Order Entry - Streamlines the order process for Dealers and Customer Service personnel
• Custom Reports - Provides advanced analysis capabilities through tracking sales and statistics data relating to purchases, site statistics, and user information.