So I got a random email tonight, his words not mine, from a 21 year old Comp Sci student up in Wisconsin.
"I'm 21, a computer science major at a smaller private college in Wisconsin. I stumbled on your blog just by chance. I see that you're 31, a software developer, and (if I do say so myself) leading a pretty nice life.
I was just curious what kind of career path you took that led you to where you are today?"
Check out my full blog post to see my response.
When I was in Las Vegas for OpenForce07 I got to talk to some of the folks over at AT&T wireless' developer program, DevCentral http://developer.att.com
I had signed up on their site LONG ago when I first purchased my MPX200 way back in the day, but never really took it anywhere. Well now that my Blackjack is working again (replaced by AT&T) I'm looking forward to diving into mobile device development so I've started digging around on the website a bit. It doesn't look, based on forum threads, to be all that active, but perhaps I can help change that. We'll see how much I can get going on my phone, though I'm really anxious to get the phone upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) so I can be on the latest and greatest...
While working on the Engage: Publish module's latest round of enhancements I started having problems working with my development machine at home. The machine here is a Vista Ultimate machine that I've blogged about getting configured in the past. The issue I had been stumbling over for a few weeks, though only researched solutions last night, had to do with ASP.NET Ajax. DNN ships with an older version of the System.Web.Extensions DLL. Which appears to work fine on my machine at work (in which I probably also had the AJAX framework installed). At home though on Vista whenever I tried to go to one of my test pages that had Publish installed I would get an error about the Scriptmanager must come before the Updatepanel control.
Well fine and dandy, but I'm positive that we had the codecheck in place for this. It ends up that with Vista I was having problems with that old version of System.web.extensions. The fix was rather easy, I simple downloaded the .Net 3.5 framework and installed it. Now it appears that all is well once again in Vistaland. If you need to download the 3.5 framework get it here from MS.
Now I have to decide, do I install VS2008 on my home machine, or do I spend some money and upgrade my machine (build a new one), then install 2k8 on that..... Decisions decisions.
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If you need to build yourself a membership provider in DotNetNuke, to perhaps link up to an external membership store, check out this article from one of my Co-workers.http://www.engagesoftware.net/Blog/tabid/297/EntryID/41/Default.aspx
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Many thanks to Jim over at www.stlrecruiting.com, yesterday he called me up for a quick interview and today he posts an article about me!
If you're looking for my Technical posts, check out my blog at http://weblogs.asp.net/christoc/. Just heads up though, for any posts you find that may seem odd ;), I use my blogs to do a lot of SEO work, so some posts may not seem to fit, but they all have a...
Check out all of the DotNetNuke Daily Tips from Chris Hammond.
DotNetNuke Daily Tip for 6/27/2006
This is a quick tip as I was out of town for a while and haven't had a chance to catch back up yet.
Did you know with DotNetNuke 4.3 you can now edit content in place on your website? What's that you say? You didn't know this?
Well that's right, you can change module titles within your DotNetNuke pages, and have been able to do that for a few versions with DNN4. BUT, something new to DotNetNuke 4.3, the Text/HTML module includes this functionality as well. You can edit text within the Text/HTML modules without having to go to the edit screen, and also save these changes by clicking elsewhere on the site.
Stay tuned for another DotNetNuke Daily Tip coming tomorrow!Posted from...
Check out all of the DotNetNuke Daily Tips from Chris Hammond.
DotNetNuke Daily Tip for 6/23/2006
Have you ever needed to send mail from one of your DotNetNuke modules? Here's the DotNetNuke method for sending off a message.
public static System.String SendMail ( System.String MailFrom , System.String MailTo , System.String Cc , System.String Bcc , DotNetNuke.Services.Mail.MailPriority Priority , System.String Subject , DotNetNuke.Services.Mail.MailFormat BodyFormat , System.Text.Encoding BodyEncoding , System.String Body , System.String Attachment , System.String SMTPServer , System.String SMTPAuthentication , System.String SMTPUsername , System.String SMTPPassword )
But what does that really mean? Here's a simple call to the mail function from a module.
Mail.SendMail("FROM@ADDRESS.COM", "TO@ADDRESS.COM", "", "THIS IS THE SUBJECT", "THIS IS THE MESSAGE BODY", "", "HTML", "", "", "", "" );
Could it get any simpler than that?
Actually it could! Here's another signature for sendmail
public static System.String SendMail ( System.String MailFrom , System.String MailTo , System.String Bcc , System.String Subject , System.String Body , System.String Attachment , System.String BodyType , System.String SMTPServer , System.String SMTPAuthentication , System.String SMTPUsername , System.String SMTPPassword )
Do you have a question about DotNetNuke? Perhaps I can answer it here as a Daily DotNetNuke Tip! Email chris.hammond at dotnetnuke.com with your question! Be sure to put Daily Tips in the subject line.
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DotNetNuke Module Development from Engage Software. Check out our module development pages, also check out some of the DotNetNuke projects we've done www.stlouischildrens.org www.tamko.com
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Well, I decided to check out Chad's website again. And, not to my surprise, he hasn't done anything with it! I am still a...
There's only a few days left to vote for the DNN BOF Session at TechEd 2006. Be sure to get your votes...
Community Server can be a pretty powerful tool if you take your time to setup a decent site for your users.
Here are a few tweaks I've made to SCCAForums.com to make it a bit more user friendly.
On the home page there are sections for active, unanswer, and my posts(if logged in). These controls don't provide much information to the user though, by default only a link and portion of the subject of a forum post.
On SCCA Forums I've setup the controls to display the user who made the last post, link directly to the last post rather than the first post, and also display and link to the particular forum that the post was made in.
To do this you need to add the following script to your default.aspx page.
<script language="C#" runat="server">
int getPageNumber(int replies) { int page = 1; if (replies > 14) { page = 1 + replies /15; } return page; }</script>
You also need to change the ItemTemplate section of the ThreadRepeater controls to look like the following
<ItemTemplate> <div class="CommonSidebarContentItem"> <strong><a href="<%# ForumUrls.Instance().PostPaged((int) DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "MostRecentPostID"), getPageNumber((int)DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "replies")))%>"><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Subject").ToString() %></a></strong> - <%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "MostRecentPostAuthor") %> (<a href="<%# ForumUrls.Instance().Forum( ((Thread) Container.DataItem).SectionID ) %>"><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Forum.Name") %></a>) </div></ItemTemplate>
More tweaks to come....
I just went through and enabled HTTP Compression for the server that ChrisHammond.com, Solo2.org, and various other websites run on. Now, I can't tell if the difference is noticable, or if I just think it's noticable? hmmm
Followed the instructions in this article for setting up HTTP Compression on IIS...
If you're looking for the MHCC, Maryland Heights Chamber of Commerce then you should check out http://www.mhcc.com/. This is one of our client sites here at...
Just archiving a link for me to read...
Just a quick post to aid in a little bit of search indexing for...
I implemented a version of Google Maps with SCCAForums.com, which runs on the CommunityServer platform. If any businesses are interested in this coalition of two products please contact me for further information. I'm readily available for consulting work for...
Found a couple of reviews popping up for DNN vs Sharepoint.
Check them out if you're looking for some good...
Last night I launched a new feature on SCCAForums.com. Our recently launched Mapping System uses Google Maps functionality to allow SCCAForums.com Registerd users to plot points on our map, allowing users to see who is located near them, or in other parts of the country. Check out the Maps page for more features! We're sure this new system will generate some questions and we've tried to answer a few of them here, we'll add to that list over the next few days. If you have further questions please post in our Questions and Suggestions forum. http://sccaforums.com/maps/...
Google even tells me so!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=excellent+programmer <--currently 5th on the search results for excellent programmer.
I will be number one, I will be the most excellent programmer of them...
It looks like I (Chris Hammond) am back with the Cincinnati Reds again!
I still have some of the Chris Hammond rookie cards from when he started with the league, with the Reds. For more information on Chris Hammond the pitcher, check out...
Are you looking for an Excellent Programmer? You've found him! If you're looking for mad programming skills from an excellent person, you've come to the right place!
(inside...
The above topic covers two different thoughts..
I have the power. Chad complained this morning because his once obscure site has now been indexed by google. That's right, I have the power!
The other reason for the post. This morning I got a new Microsoft Natural Keyboard (4000). When I arrived at work I took off my fleece jacket and reached for my mouse. I immediatly felt a large shock, and after about an hour of diagnosis I figured out that I managed to fry the mouse with that shock. Great, now I have to go buy a new...
Well, as you may have seen in my previous post, my good buddy Chad Hobson was razzed a little about his lame website, www.chadhobson.com. His response to my razzing was to throw up a little picture, and make a few text changes. Though he's still yet to provide anything functional on his website, he has called me a god, to which I am...
I've been here in Lexington, Kentucky for the past 4 days. I was fortunate enough to meet two of the brightest minds in the industry! Also, I can't forget Chad Hobson (checkout that killer site, what mad skillz).
Anyways, back to the brightest minds. I got to meet Shaun Walker, founder of DotNetNuke, and Scott Willhite, one of the Board members for DotNetNuke. I of course got them to sign my DotNetNuke book while they were...
Sometimes, it's great to get to work with the best minds in the business and see how they work! I do lead a very good...