Version 4.1 of Efficion's Articles module for DotNetNuke is now available. Our previous release, 3.2.6 was downloaded over 30,000 times. The Articles module provides a range of features that make it a great tool for many uses including: news, announcements, events, blogs, and much more. Learn More...   

Efficion has always been proud to offer some nice, powerful, free and open source modules to the DotNetNuke community. There were 30,000 downloads of version 3.2.6 of our articles module and we answered hundreds of support requests. We always plan to give back to the community that has given us so much in a variety of ways. But after a great deal of consideration, we have decided to begin selling the Articles module rather than giving it away.   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   

We have made version 4.0.10 available as the first Release Candidate for version 4.0. Most of the features and changes have been tested extensively by many users but there are enough changes between version 4.0.9 and this version that I feel it's best to call this a release candidate so it can get some additional external testing before I deem it the full release. View Details

In addition to the new release, I've made improvements to this page and site and have installed the latest version of Active Forums to improve support, organization, and information about this and our other modules. View the Forums.   

Efficion is hard at work on a new Professional Social Networking site for Pharmacists and the Pharmacy industry. Dynalabs has contracted Efficion Consulting to create RxSpace.com. The site will provide a sounding board for pharmacy students, pharmacists, pharmacy owners and academia to discuss, debate and initiate conversations on topics and issues relevant to their fields. Learn More...   

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...

This new website for St. Louis Art Works, built on the DotNetNuke CMS platform, features Online Giving, an online store, AJAX based rotator, image galleries, an advanced Events module, and much more. The site was designed to let ArtWorks staff easily add new content to the site while also utilizing a variety of advanced CMS tools to keep site content fresh. St. Louis Art Works new site.   

"Efficion was able to create a new site design for us within a very short time frame. We are extremely appreciative of Efficion's efforts to go above and beyond for us when asked."   

"As a school with a limited budget, we were very pleased with the pricing, speed, and design of our new site! We're already seeing great returns!"   

 DotNetNuke 4.8 added Human Friendly urls, but unlike Friendly URLs, it can only be enabled through the web.config. To enable human friendly urls, replace:

<add name="DNNFriendlyUrl" type="DotNetNuke.Services.Url.FriendlyUrl.DNNFriendlyUrlProvider, DotNetNuke.HttpModules" includePageName="true" regexMatch="[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]" />

with:

<add name="DNNFriendlyUrl" type="DotNetNuke.Services.Url.FriendlyUrl.DNNFriendlyUrlProvider, DotNetNuke.HttpModules" includePageName="true" regexMatch="[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]" urlFormat="HumanFriendly" />

NOTE: Keep in mind though that no 301 Redirects for existing URLs are created so if you implement this for a site that has been around for awhile, you should make sure to manually create 301 Redirects or set up Canonical URLs for all existing pages to make sure to not dillute your link juice.   

Efficion partnered with ITArchitechs in the creation of a website for Mid-America Cold Storage. Mid-America Cold Storage lies within a retired 6 million square foot Limestone Quarry nestled in a bluff just outside of St. Louis. As with most of our sites, this site is built with DotNetNuke making it easy for the client to update site content themselves.   

We need to start upgrading our skins from the older RAD Menu to the newer RAD Ajax Menu. This article will go through the steps involved.

Telerik Migration Guide   

I'm so tired of people discounting HTML Tables. I'm a huge fan of CSS, I'm fully aware that it is possible to do columns using CSS, but in order to do so, you have to use a variety of hacks, and those hacks change based on a variety of circumstances.

With DNN, because we have skinning, we already have the needed separation between content and presentation. Tables are the best way to handle columns. They are rendered consistently across browsers, are clean, and easy to read and use, and provide capabilities that are very hard to get without Javascript hacks in CSS.

I've spent countless hours trying to work around problems with my CSS based columns due to one need or another. I've researched many approaches to the best way of handling them. None of the solutions I've seen have proven to be nearly as clean and easy as just using tables.

If you continue to feel compelled to build tableless designs, go for it, perhaps you'll have better luck than I, but when you have a complex need and you can't find a solution that works consistently in all browsers, I give you permission to just go ahead and use a Table.   

This version contains several significant bug fixes, CAPTCHA for non-logged in comments, SEO enhancements, new options for templates, and a new way of handling CSS. I'll be writing up guidelines on styling the module through CSS prior to the release. I also hope to have quite a bit of additional "Help" information for the release.

There are known bugs in this release mostly relating to particular and less common settings. Click Read More to view known bugs and planned features.

(UPDATE: 4.0.7 had some bugs with Detail Template loading that have been fixed for 4.0.8)   Read More...

We've just put a new custom built DotNetNuke site live for St. Francis Cabrini Academy. The new site features: a powerful Content Management System that makes it easy for Cabrini staff to keep the site fresh; integrated Online Giving giving capabilities; a custom design/skin created by Efficion; and lots of other great features that help Cabrini communicate to their staff, parents, students, potential students, donors, and potential donors.   

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...

    Read More...

Efficion put together a great looking skin under a tight deadline for Lincoln Land Community College's brand new Green Center. The engagement included the creation a brand new Logo for the Green Center, and the design and implementation of a DotNetNuke skin. The skin incorporates a soft, clean design with nices curves and shadows along with a Flash Image Rotator to provide some additional movement and interest to the design.   Read More...

It's been a bit since I posted 4.0.6 but I assure you I have not been idle. Since the release of 4.0.6, over 50 issues have been submitted, reviewed, and responded to, added to the ticket system, and/or fixed. At the time of this writing, there are 21 issues that need to be addressed before we reach beta status. I do plan on releasing 4.0.7 in the next couple days with a variety of fixes and improvements. Click the Read More link for this Article view a live report of the Issue Tracker   Read More...

When the "Remember Me" feature of the DotNetNuke Login is enabled an encrypted authentication cookie is placed on the user's machine. By default, the web.config has a setting which causes to cookie to expire after one hour, which makes it almost useless.  However, the expiration of the cookie can be tweaked by editing a line in the web.config.   Read More...

I've still got a few more things I need to do before I can call this a beta but this release is really shaping up nicely. I am now using it on all my major sites and have done quite a lot of testing. But it will be a few more days before we get to code-freeze and the beta. Here's alpha 3 for those that can't wait.

If you get an error about an "Ambiguous" class definition when you install this, you need to delete the EfficionConsulting.Articles.dll from your bin directory. When I release the beta version, I'll be compiling the module into a DLL again or making both styles available.

Please report any bugs you find in the module to the right.   Read More...