After working with UDT - User Defined Tables - which is now call Form and List in DNN V5.0+, I was looking for a way to convert the UDT into a conventional table.  By convention table, I mean a table with multiple data column and a single row per data item.  UDT have simple structure that places one field per data item on a row, so if you have 10 data fields then the UDT will have 10 rows per data item.  Compounding the issue is the there is only one UserDefinedTableData table.

Having developed a strong reporting module - SQLGridSelectedView (aka SGSV) - I wanted to be able to access the data in a UDT.  To do this I created a stored procedure that would generate the appropriate T-SQL and then execute it to return the flatten data.  The flatten data has one row per data item and a column for each data field.  So, instead of 10 rows per data item I have one row with 10 columns. 

This article is cross-posted from my DotNetNuke blog.

On August 18th we kicked off the Mobile DotNetNuke Hackathon at the St. Louis DotNetNuke User Group.  During the kick-off we had a great demonstration of Appcelerator Titanium from Kevin Whinnery.  Kevin is an Appcelerator Engineer and Product Evangelist and it was clear from his presentation that he was both passionate and knowledgeable about Titanium.  Almost everyone we spoke with was extremely interested in giving Titanium a try and the Hackathon was the perfect opportunity to kick the tires and build a great mobile application.

If you have been following the voting this last week, you know that we had 5 great Hackathon entries, 4 of which were built with Titanium.  The voting has ended and Scott Willhite should be announcing the results shortly.  Regardless of which mobile app is declared the Hackathon winner, the real winner is the entire DotNetNuke community.  We have gained valuable knowledge about a great tool that can aid in extending the reach of websites and web applications that we all build.  We have also added 6 more Open Source applications to the DotNetNuke forge which will provide great starting points when developing new mobile applications.

If you haven’t built a mobile application yet, I highly recommend that you give it a try.  With tools like Titanium, it is not nearly as difficult as you might think.  Even if you want to get closer to the metal, and regardless of whether your mobile platform of choice is iOS, Android or Windows Phone 7, mobile development is still pretty straight forward and very rewarding.

As Jason Graves says in the video below, this Hackathon was Hacktaculous!  I couldn’t agree more.  I look forward to our next Hackathon where we will have an opportunity to further expand our development skills.

JUST FOR FUN:  There are 12 products or product logos pictured in the image at the upper right of this blog?  Can you name the 12 products all?  I am looking for specifics (e.g. DotNetNuke XXX Edition and not just DotNetNuke)  Leave your guesses in the comments on my blog at dotnetnuke.com.  I have a special gift for the first person to correctly get all 12 products.  If you guess and are not correct, I will only tell you that it is not correct but will not provide any further hints.

One of the great strengths of DotNetNuke is the fact that you can host as many sites as you’d like, from a single installation of DNN.  Did I confused you?  Imagine that you are currently managing 5 or more websites, each with its own web hosting plan.  If they are each DNN, or otherwise a .Net and database enabled website, you’re easily spending over $7,000.00 just in hosting fees.  Imagine being able to spend a fraction of that amount by consolidating all of your websites into a single instance of DotNetNuke – leaving you to manage just a single hosting plan.  You can!

Just so you know, I am just going to talk about how to add new sites to an existing DNN site in this post.

The Web Host

The first thing to consider when planning to host all of your sites into a single installation of DNN, is your web host.  While DNN places no restriction on you in terms of how many sites you can host, and the number of domain names that those sites have, your web host may. 

Check with your web host immediately to see what limitations you might have.  For example, your web host might tell you that you’re only able to have up to 5 domain names associated to a single site in your account.  There are ways around this, but it’s a common and real-world example.

The Steps

There are three (3) basic steps to adding a new site to your instance of DNN.  They are outlined below:

1. Update DNS
2. Update IIS
3. Add a New Portal in DNN

Update DNS

When you have a new or existing domain name, you need to point that domain name to a server.  This is what the Domain Name System (DNS) does for you.  It allows you to have a domain name that people can easily remember, but point it to an actual address on the internet.

The exact method of how to do this varies, as web hosts use a variety of different methods to add or edit a DNS entry to your domain name.  In general though, you want to make sure that you have an Host or A record in your DNS settings.  Simply specify the IP address of your web server to tell the DNS where to point requests to that domain to.

Update IIS

Internet Information Server (IIS) is the web server that allows websites to work on the Microsoft platform.  It accepts requests from the internet for a website, and then responds with the requested web page and files.  In the world of DNN, it also is the final link to allow you to host multiple websites in DNN, before adding a new portal.

In order to add your new setting in IIS to accept requests for new domain names, you need to add an entry for the website called a Host Header.  This tells IIS all of the domain names that a single site will respond to. 

Once again, if you’re doing this through a web host, there could be any number of ways that they have you do this.  In IIS 7 though, it’s easier than ever. 

1. Select your website in the list of websites.
2. Click on Bindings in the right pane.
3. Click the Add button.
4. Add the new domain name into the new window that appears.
5. Click OK to save the new domain name.
6. Click Close to exit the Bindings dialog.

That’s it!  IIS is now all configured.

Add a New Portal

Most of you already know, but the word “portal” and “site” or “website” are interchangeable in DotNetNuke.  When we speak of adding a new portal to DNN, we’re also saying that we’re adding a new site.  It’s easy to do this in DNN. 

1. Login using a Host or Superuser account.
2. Go to the Portals page in the Host menu.
3. Click the Add New Portal link at the bottom of the module, or in the actions menu.
4. Fill in all of the information in the form on the next page.
5. The Portal Alias is your new domain name.
6. Click Create Portal to create your portal.
7. Visit your new website!

It’s really that simple to add a new portal to your site.

At this point, you technically should be able to see, access, and log into your new site.  However, you should note that DNS settings take time to spread across the internet.  For this reason, you and other may not be able to get to the site using it’s URL for up to 24 hours.  People in different regions of the country and world will also be able to use the URL at different times.  For example, you might be in Orlando, FL, and be able to see the site immediately.  In contrast, someone in the state of Washington might not be able to see the site for two more hours.  Additionally, someone in the UK might not see the site for 6 hours after that.  It really does vary.

This past Saturday, I played with DNNGrid and ultimately wrote a blog about it.  On Sunday I returned to the site to see if any comments were present.  What I got was a dead web-site and the DotNetNuke Error page telling me that there was an error on my site.  Yikes! 

So now what?

I did the first and most important thing -- blamed someone else! I wrote a note to my Hosting Company asking what was wrong.  But the reality started to hit me - so I didn't send the note ... good thing!

So with the latest release of DotNetNuke, the support for Telerik controls has stablized.  I have been waiting to play with the Telerik Grid that is now available via a wrapper class.  Not much as been said about these wrapper classes so I was a little reluctant to play with them until I knew DotNetNuke was using them.  With the Version 5.5 release of DotnetNuke, I believe I would be safe to give it a try. 
 

When you run a user group, or any other event that has one or more people presenting topical information to others, you know that your presenter is coming prepared with some great information.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t have asked them to come, right?

At the very least, your speaker is knowledgeable in a specific area, has real-world expertise, is able to communicate to others, and will come prepared with a slide deck, or other visual presentation tools. 

However, that’s only half of the battle.  Those are simply the things that we as recruiters or leaders should expect and maybe event take for granted in terms of setting these events up.  However, it wouldn’t hurt to know those things so you can prepare your venue accordingly.  Sometimes, your presenters require a little extra knowledge or preparation.  A prime example might be a sound system or room layout.  Is there a lectern or a table?  There are many questions.

That’s the point!  While you as the meeting or event coordinator need to worry about all of the venue minutia, you also need to provide some details and information to your presenters.  The quality of the presentation depends on it.

Your designated speakers need to have a set number of expectations and background information.  Otherwise, they are walking into the unknown.  Yikes!  If you’re anything like the other 99% of the humans on the planet, the unknown is a scary thing. Think about the millions of people terrified of things like ghosts – when we still have literally no idea if they even exist!  They simply don’t know what to expect, so human nature sets in.  We let fear seep in.

At the very least, if you’re doing your job, your presenters should know:

• What time is the meeting?
• What time do I speak?
• How long do I have?
• What is the background of the attendees?
• How many people will be there?
• Are there any projector concerns? (resolution, connectivity, etc.)
• Will I have wireless internet access?
• What is the layout of the room?
• Will I need sound support?

There are many other potential questions, but you should have a template-driven e-mail laying out the answers to these kind of questions once you have a speaker ready to commit to your event.

You might be asking yourself, “Why?”  You could be asking that question for any number of reasons.  First and foremost, speakers are people just like you.  Even the most prominent and well-known speakers like John Chambers (CEO of Cisco) are not 100% confident when they first stand in front of their audience.  Sure, they look like it, and you presenter hopefully will look that way too – but the fact is, that look is only because they are well-prepared.  This is what you have to facilitate.

Never assume that the speaker will look all of that information up on their own.  You should assume the opposite.  Every question that you answer ahead of time will simply give your presenter that additional edge that they need to put on a thrilling presentation.  Ask any speaker that you know.  It’s true.  If they don’t need to sit there and wonder the answers to those questions, or go digging around for them, they can focus on making you look like a rock star for bringing in such a top-notch presentation!

Disclaimer

Out of anything I have ever blogged about, this is probably the one area where I wish I had paid more attention to.  With the exception of the Day of DotNetNuke event that I created, I will be the first to admit that I have traditionally sucked at making this happen.  Thankfully, I have been lucky enough to recruit some outstanding speakers that were able to answer those questions on their own.

It is official I (Stuart Hilbert) will be attending this year’s Dotnetnuke Connections conference.  Looking forward to meeting many of you and having chats with what you are doing with Dotnetnuke in your circles.  Follow me on Twitter for the latest news from the conference.

In previous posts I described how WebMatrix can be used to download DotNetNuke and install it on your local computer and how you can use WebMatrix to publish your DotNetNuke site to a Hosting Provider.

Some of you have probably already been asking the question – “Does this ability to publish allow me to update my remote site from my local version?”, and the answer is a qualified yes.

Lets first modify the local site. 

I have modified the content on the home page to show an image.  I won’t show all the steps to do this as most of you know how to do this, but Figure 1 shows the resulting updated Home page.

Figure 1 – The Updated Version of the Home Page on the Local Site

Now that my local site has been updated I select Publish from the WebMatrix toolbar (Figure 2) – in exactly the same way as I did to initially Publish the site.

Figure 2 – Publishing the updated Local Site

We are now presented with the same Publish Preview screen (Figure 3), although the list of files is much smaller.  In this case I have a new File in the Portal Home Folder – the image I uploaded and added to the Front Page), and two Module Caching files.  By default all the files which are different are selected , but in this case we don’t need to Publish the caching files (although it doesn’t actually hurt).

Figure 3 – Updating the Remote Site

Clicking Continue will deploy all the modified files and update the database.

That’s it – your changes have been re-published, and the live version will reflect the changes you made – so why was my answer a “qualified” yes.  The reason for this is the comment in yellow in Figure 3 – “Publishing will overwrite any remote databases” – i.e. your remote database is dropped and the data replaced by the data on your local database.

This is fine if all changes are made from your local site, but if you have any updates on the remote site (new users, forum posts, comments etc.) these will be lost when you re-publish.

If Microsoft ever offer the ability to do differential updates to the database then my answer would be much less qualified. Having said that, if your site is a simple content only site you may be able to use this approach to maintain your site.

In case you missed it, there is a Hackathon that is going on right now (the submission deadline is tomorrow so you still have time to throw a quick mobile project together).

As part of the Hackathon event in St. Louis last week I gave a brief presentation on how to quickly and easily add a RESTful JSON webservice to your modules, or even create a simple module to do this yourself. I have the source code for this presentation on Codeplex under the dnnweb project, http://dnnweb.codeplex.com/

Overview

Last Wednesday night we kicked off the DotNetNuke Mobile Hackathon in St. Louis.  The focus of this hackathon is developing applications that span the DotNetNuke and mobile application space.  Participants have until the 6PM CST on August 25th to submit their entries.  As we mentioned at the user group meeting, we have been working on a community application that allows DotNetNuke users to stay connected even when they are not in front of their computer.  Starting today we are distributing the source code for DNN Pulse on the DotNetNuke Forge.

DNN Pulse is being built with Appcelerator Titanium and takes advantage of Xmlhttprequests, geolocation and mapping services to connect the user to the DotNetNuke community in their local area and on DotNetNuke.com.  During the coming months we will continue to add new features and functionality to the app so that no matter where you are, you can always stay plugged into the community.  Titanium was a natural fit for us since it allows us to target multiple mobile platforms with a single codebase, and because all of the code is written in Javascript we can re-use our existing coding skills without needing to learn a new language.

The initial code release is still beta quality code.  After the hackathon is complete we will incorporate a few remaining features which are not in the current codebase and clean up some of the error handling.  If you plan to use some of this code in your own app, then keep that in mind and code appropriately.

The Application

DNN Pulse Beta includes a User Group locator and a blog reader.  The forums and active contributors sections will be available in the final application that we release in the Android marketplace and iPhone app store.  The User Group Locator provides a great way to find user groups in your area.  Enter a search distance and hit the search button and DNN Pulse will show you every DotNetNuke User Group that is located within the search radius.  Once you find the group you want, you can drill down to get more information about the group, visit their website, twitter, facebook, linkedin or DotNetNuke User Group profile on DotNetNuke.com.  You can even see the upcoming meetings for the user group.

The user group feature highlights the ability of mobile applications to communicate in near real-time with your DotNetNuke website and to present your data in a form factor that is highly tailored to mobile devices.  By using a native mobile application, you can present a highly tailored user experience that takes advantage of the unique features of each mobile device.  Your application feels right at home on the mobile device and is not just a webpage with a different layout.

The blog reader feature allows you to checkout the latest blog posts on DotNetNuke.com.  In future releases you’ll also be able to post your comments using your DotNetNuke.com account.  The blog section of the application demonstrates the ability to embed web pages directly in your application without needing to send users over to the full web-browser.  You are able to provide a branded and tailored experience to your user and eliminate some of the extraneous browser features which do not add to your users ability to consume your data.  When using web-views within Titanium, you have the ability to provide additional enhancements which are not available in the standard mobile browser.  For example, in our blog reader we may want to add a direct link to the author profile along with the Profile image for the blog author.

Over time the Pulse mobile app will grow to incorporate many different methods for staying in contact with the DotNetNuke community.  I hope you take a chance to look through the code and see how easy it can be to develop rich mobile applications that talk to the DotNetNuke platform.

You can download the Pulse source code and compiled application from the DotNetNuke Forge.