I'll be presenting at the St. Louis .Net User Group meeting tonight. If you're in town and have nothing else to do come on out! www.stlnet.org I've not been posting many DNN related blog posts here lately, there's a reason for that. I've been trying to seperate my personal site, www.chrishammond.com from some of the technical posts. Right now they are all being posted at http://weblogs.asp.net/christoc and my blog on dotnetnuke.com. That will all be changing soon though, stay tuned for what I think is a very cool announcement later this week!

Yesterday I posted that I had found a fix for the issues with the Ajax ScriptManager issues that have been occuring with DNN 4.7 and greater. Well here it is! It's not pretty, but from my testing so far it appears to fix the problems I've been having here on www.ChrisHammond.com To use this fix you're going to have to recompile the DotNetNuke Source package you can download from www.dotnetnuke.com. I've only tested this with 4.8.1 source, but I don't believe there should be any issues if you're trying to recompile 4.7.0 or 4.8.0. Here are the two files you need to make changes to. This fix does not apply to DNN 4.8.2 or greater, 4.8.2 has a fix for the issue

Earlier today we had a customer post a question in the forums on www.engagemodules.com regarding using Engage: Publish as a replacement for the Text/HTML module within DotNetNuke. That is definitely one of the use cases we have for Publish, though have not promoted that much. Using Engage: Publish as a replacement for the Text/HTML module gives you actual CMS functionality within DNN. You can now have versioning and approvals on your content for your website, rather than just giving access to content editors who then can make live changes on your website. For the steps to configure Publish as a Text/HTML replacement check out the Wiki entry I updated today on the topic.

So I've been working for the past few weeks on an a little project. The goal is to convert http://chrishammond.com from CommunityServer to DotNetNuke. I'm not going to be using the DotNetNuke Blog module, instead I've been adding some new features into the Engage: Publish module so that it will support blog like functionality, with the ultimate goal of making it support nearly all the blog type functionality that you find in common blogging systems. I've spent probably 100 hours over the past month or two working on the module (mostly on my own time) to get it setup for the conversion. I believe I have the software nearly ready to go so a few days ago while I was in Chicago for some DotNetNuke Training classes that I was conducting I started working on the SQL scripts that I will be using in the conversion. I have most of these scripts configured as the import process seems to be good, all the blog posts and tags are pulled over. I still have a few more things to finish up on the import process though. Here's a list of things I need to do to get the site ready for the conversion. I'll mark them off as I get them completed. Create conversion scripts for all blog posts (955 posts) Script to convert all tags (300+ tags) Script to convert all comments (1194 comments) Create a URL Handler for the old to new URLs (an unknown number of urls) Skin the site (3 DNN pages initially with more in the future) As I typed it up I see I have more left to do than I expected! I would like to see this will all be done by 1/6/2008 but I don't see that happening as it is 1am on the 6th right now. I'll keep working for a bit longer, then get back to it tomorrow evening after I watch American Gladiators! More coming soon on my conversion from CommunityServer to DotNetNuke! Update 2:30am 1/6/08: I've finished the conversion scripts for Comments now as well. Posted from...

Tonight we released the latest version of Engage Publish, 4.4.4 (12/9/2007). This release has a few minor bug fixes, a few UI improvements, and some enhanced features! Here's a brief overview of the changes for 4.4.4. Be sure to read about all of the changes in the Release Notes for 4.4.4. Corrected some globization issues with datesEnhanced Article's Version DescriptionCorrected issue with PrinterFriendly pageCorrected a globalization with Language urls Upgrade Instructions: Backup your database before performing ANY module installations or upgrades. Install the module as you would a new module from the Module Definitions page. The module should upgrade itself from there. If you have any installation problems be sure to post in our Forums on EngageModules.com Engage: Publish is the industry's leading Content Management Versioning and Workflow module for the DotNetNuke platform. The module is developed by the team at Engage Software, you can find out more information about the module on the Engage: Publish page at EngageModules.com. Posted from...

We're sitting here at Scott Guthrie's keynote this morning as he starts to discuss Visual Studio 2008 and development on the platform. Scott reiterated the announcement from last night that Visual Studio 2008 will be released later this month, available to MSDN subscribers and they will also be sending out copies to the attendees of DevConnections. Sitting here this morning I've seen quite a few core team members walking by. Phil Beadle Jon Henning Vincenc Manasas (sorry Vincenc) Joe Brinkman After Scott's presentation is over there will be a short break for the expo hall and then Shaun Walker's DotNetNuke Keynote will take place. I'm sure that room will be packed, so if you read this before then, get there early. So far Scott is just covering some of the basics of 2008. Such as:  Multitargeting to allow development in 2008 that can be built towards specific older frameworks of the .Net runtime, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5. The IDE will only show you intelligence and tools available to the specific version that you are targeting. Integrated AJAX support within 2008: JavaScript intellisense, debugging, testing. ASP.NET Ajax built into VS2k8 instead of being a separated download for the framework. Rich CSS Management and HTML designer the Expression WYSIWYG designer. LINQ and rich Data Support, new technology in 3.5, easily queries and works with data, ORDesigner included Scott just welcomed Sam up on stage to do a demo for ASP.NET on 2k8. Demos switching between design and source view and the speed at which he can switch. Sam is demoing some of the new CSS functionality within VS2k8, as well as LINQ data access and now paging on a review with AJAX. He's now on to covering JavaScript intellisense and debugging. I'm now sitting in the speaker. Room, trying to get online. There's Wireless here at hte conference, and I can get connected to it, but from there I'm pretty much SOL. So far the speaker room isn't looking too much better as I'm still typing this and not posting it! Heh, gotta love that. I had a darn IP address specified on my wired connection, no wonder I couldn't get online.     Posted from...

This is actually a very simple trick to do inside of your modules, though you might need to setup an option to allow this to be turned on or off depending on what the site administrator wants the page title to be. In C# you can use the following code DotNetNuke.Framework.CDefault tp = (DotNetNuke.Framework.CDefault)this.Page;tp.Title = "This is my page title"; So the next time you're coding a module and need to change the page title, it's that simple. See you all at OpenForce07 in Vegas! Posted from...

Here's a quick list of why you should go to the OpenForce07 conference in Las Vegas in November 2007! Feel free to copy the list and create your own. OpenForce07 is the first DotNetNuke specific conference You get to hear presentations from the brightest in the DotNetNuke World Vegas Baby, Vegas Meet the Core Team Mandalay Bay DevConnections Asp.net Connections SQL Connections I'll be there! It's Vegas, how can you say no? Don't forget, if you can't make it to Vegas you should try to make it to OpenForce Europe in September! Registration is open, so start bugging your bosses, get them to foot the bill for your trip! It will be a great time for anyone who uses DotNetNuke, either as an administrator, content editor, or developer. There is plenty of information to learn with the best resources in the business there to learn it from! Posted from...

Sometimes you just have to take a break at the office and play with toys! I must say, our office environment is great, everyone is under 40 (except for Grandpa Henry), and we get to enjoy our days. We are always looking for experienced or willing to learn DotNetNuke developers at Engage Software. Below is a link to some of the fun we had yesterday. (right click and download the file before trying to watch it, it is a 350mb file, as it's in HD) http://www.christoc.com/video/7-19-07/7-19chopper.wmv   Posted from...

A few years back I was enlightened by Chris Paterra in the ways of using NANT scripts to aid in the packaging of DotNetNuke Modules. Using NANT to package your WAP (web application project) modules within Visual Studio 2005 is a snap, and can save you a LOT of time each time you have to come up with a new release. Using NANT scripts we are able to create the Private Assembly Installation ZIP file and Source files for Engage: Publish by running a single command from the Command line. With our Publish module this process takes about 23 seconds on average, for our smaller modules such as Engage: F3 the process takes less than 2-3 seconds. To get started with using NANT scripts in your own development environment you need to download the latest (0.85) release from SourceForge, you can visit the project page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/nant/ Once you've installed NANT on your machine (I install it on my C drive in a c:\nant\ folder) you'll need to add NANT to your system variables path so you can call it from the command line. To do this: Right click on My Computer and choose Properties Go to the Advanced Tab Find the System Variables section and Modify the Path variable Add your NANT folder (c:\nant\) to the path, separating entries with the semicolon (;) Save the settings. Now I'd recommend adding a .BUILD file to your DNN Module's project/solution. I've provided a sample build file on our Tutorial Page at www.engagemodules.com, you do have to login in order to access the file. The provided sample file is a good start for your project, by opening up the file in VS2k5 you'll see it is a XML document with some basic information about the product name and folder location. You'll want to find the references to Engage and EngageF3 in the BUILD file and replace them with the name of your module and business name. You can also play around with the include/exclude options in the Fileset node to add or remove certain types of files from your packages. You'll see the two sections in the build file that define which ZIP files to create, one section is called CreateBinZip and one is called CreateSrcZip. Once you have the BUILD file setup you'll want to check a few more files in your DNN project. In the .DNN File be sure to set your module version properly and include the SQLDATAPROVIDER files, as well as the necessary DLLs. In the AssemblyInfo.vb (.cs in our case. At Engage as we do 95% of our DNN module development in C#) be sure to setup your DLL information and version information. By setting the version number in the assemblyinfo and .dnn file you can get NANT to include the version number in the package's file name, allowing an easy way to handle upgrades from version to version for your modules. Once you have all of the files in the solution setup properly you can run the NANT script. To do that bring up a Command Prompt, change directories to your DNN/desktopmodules/ModuleName/ folder. At the command line type "nant" and watch the magic happen. If everything builds properly the script will create a Package folder in your Module's folder, inside of the Package folder you should find two newly created ZIP files, one labeled Install and one labeled Source.   Technorati Tags: ASP.NET, DotNetNuke, DotNetNuke Tips, Daily Tips, NANT, C#, VB.Net, Module Development, Engage Posted from...

Welcome back to the DotNetNuke tips! I started doing this over a year ago, though with getting married last fall and working on my Datsun 240Z lately I haven't blogged near as much lately about DNN topics. So here we go, starting up again with my DotNetNuke Tips. Today's tip follows: When you're doing testing locally with a backup for a Production Database and Website one of the things you need to be sure to do is change your Portal Alias for your local URL, instead of your production URL. If you don't do this you'll hit the local URL and it will most likely redirect you to the production URL. This can cause a bit of chaos if you don't notice that you're no longer on the local/testing URL and start modifying the production web site. To change your portal alias you can do the following. Open your SQL Server management tool; SQL Enterprise Manager, SQL Server Management Studio, or whatever you choose to use. Browse to your local/test database, open up the PortalAlias table. You can either Modify your existing Alias, or you can add a new Alias to this table. test.myurl.com for example, be sure to setup the proper portal ID if you're adding a new alias and you have a lot of different aliases in there. You might also need to setup the aliases for the child portals as well if you plan on using those. The next step is crucial. You'll want to reset your website before you try to hit the new alias. You can do that in a couple of ways, I always prefer to open up the web.config file, add a carriage return and hit save. This will cause IIS to reload the site, clearing out the cache and loading the new portal aliases. Look for more DotNetNuke tips coming soon!Posted from...

A day or so ago Joe posted a link to the speaker announcements for the OpenForce 07 conference in Vegas in November. There are some very cool topics that will be covered out in Vegas. I hope to meet as many of you as possible, and see you in my presentation as well! Here's a link to the OpenForce page. Here's a list from the current Speaker's page. GENERAL DGN100: DotNetNuke Open Force ’07 Keynote AddressShaun Walker DGN103: Panel Discussion: DotNetNuke – The Road AheadJoe BrinkmanNik KalyaniScott WillhiteShaun WalkerIn this panel discussion, the four co-founders of DotNetNuke Corporation will share their vision for the company and the DotNetNuke Open Source project. The resources, approach and business model required to manage and grow a large Open Source project such as DotNetNuke are substantially different than those required for a commercial software company. Get an inside look at how DotNetNuke Corp. is addressing today’s challenges while preparing for the future. DGN102: The Quiet Enterprise Web Revolution: DotNetNuke as a WeaponMark TrenchardEnterprises are grappling with ways to reduce system complexity and cost yet increase capability, speed to market, and flexibility. Current web technologies give enterprises the rare opportunity to get it all and the ones that get it are quietly reinvesting in web architectures to achieve competitive advantage. In this session, Mark looks at DotNetNuke from an IT leader’s chair and believes that the solution has a strong value proposition for companies that want to build out a multi-portal platform with a rich set of shared services.  He will discuss the DotNetNuke advantages from an IT leadership view and explore the dimensions that are unique to larger enterprises that may need additional investment. SKIN DESIGN DSD201: Creating Accessible DotNetNuke Skins Using CSSLee SykesCathal ConnollyIn this session you will learn how to create a clean, simple, search engine-friendly and accessible skin that takes advantage of the features that CSS layout designs provide: accessible, flexible, search-engine-friendly, small file size, and cross-browser compatible. You will also become familiar with issues that need to be considered when creating skins that meet accessibility legislation and are XHTML compliant. We will take a freely available XHTML- & CSS-based skin, convert it to a DotNetNuke skin, and configure it to ensure that it renders compliant markup. In addition, we'll look at transforming non-compliant portions of markup, and look at techniques to ensure that your site remains compliant. DSD101: Introduction to DotNetNuke SkinningTracy WittenkellerThis session will give you a better idea of how to create great-looking and flexible skins for DotNetNuke that utilize CSS. First we will review how to create properly formatted and flexible HTML and CSS for DotNetNuke skins and containers. Then we will take a closer look at XML attributes and the important role they play in defining skin and container functionality. The session will also touch upon customizing the default DotNetNuke menu and its CSS styles. Finally, we will review the proper process for packaging DotNetNuke skins and containers. DSD202: Menu Controls for DotNetNuke SkinsPeter SchotmanIn this session we will compare and review various free and commercial menu controls for DotNetNuke skins. We will use a range of examples to understand best practices, advantages and drawbacks of the various menu controls.  This is a session for the intermediate to experienced skinner who wants to expand her/his toolbox. MODULE DEVELOPMENT DMD303: Advanced DotNetNuke Module Development ConceptsCharles NurseThis session will focus on some advanced module development topics, including: module skinning/templating techniques, DAL+ and database agnostic tips, module plug-in architecture, use of the property editor and other...

EDIT: Originally posted by Shaun Walker in the benefactors forum..... DotNetNuke 4.5.2 has been released and is available for download from www.dotnetnuke.com here's a list of fixes/changes - added new DateTime Edit control which can be used in the User Profile ( and other Property Editors ) for collecting date and time information - modified automatic upgrade processing to force the Database check to happen before the MachineKey check. This will help prevent a fringe situation where the application would think it was a new install and would overwrite the MachineKeys. - added new Request Filter feature which allows blocking based on IP as well as a number of other server variables - removed alert box which would be displayed when callback fails during populate on demand from the DNNMenu control. This would only happen in situations where the users session had timed out and they hovered their mouse pointer over the action menu in their browser - added UpdatePanelUpdateModeType AJAX enhancment. This was necessary in order to set the UpdatePanel.UpdateMode to Conditional - which is now the default ( it was mistakenly set to All in the previous version ). - Added RegisterPostBackControl AJAX enhancement which allows for exclusions of controls from UpdatePanel async processing. This was implemented in the UrlControl to prevent partial rending when uploading files ( stream operations do not work with partial rendering ). - Added WrapUpdatePanelControl AJAX enhancement which allows you to easily take any control on the page and have it wrapped by an UpdatePanel. - Added CreateUpdateProgressControl AJAX enhancement which creates an update progress control. This was implemented in Skin.vb so that the update progess control is automatically injected by the framework for modules which support partial rendering. - when installing dynamic modules, there was an issue identified when trying to write to the web.config file. The issue was caused in situations where the Microsoft Web Admin Tool had added a namespace to the web.config file. The code was modified to ignore the namespace if it exists. - DNN-5510 fixed Permissions Fill* controller methods which did not load the RoleID value properly and would result in data corruption when the Permission Grid was saved repeatedly. - created update SQL script to repair permission records which may have been corrupted when using User Level Permissions. This could have only happened if the permissions grid was loaded and saved multiple times when using User level Permissions. - added SQL script to clean any potential duplicate records from all Permissions tables and then add a unique constraint to preserve referential integrity - UrlControl overhauled by Mauricio Marquez so that it works in dynamic loading and postback scenarios. A problem introduced in DNN 4.5 where the UrlControl would always display a type selector, even if there was only one type option available, was also resolved. - modified logic in Module Definitions and Host Settings so that when the application is running on localhost ( Request.IsLocal ) it does not check for upgrades. This prevents broken image links when developers are working local without an active Internet connection. - added more defensive coding in Module Output Caching to deal with situations where no content is retrieved from the cache for a module - in Page Settings, moved the Hidden? option to Basic Settings and changed its name to Include In Menu? for improved usability - in Site Settings in the Usability section, added an option so that the administrator can specify Control Panel Security for either Page Editors or Module Editors. Setting the option to Page Editors provides the same Control Panel behavior which existed prior to the enhancement in this area in 4.5. - in Portal Template Export, removed nodes which would cause it not to validate against the schema on import. The offending nodes were related to properties added to the...