DotNetNuke 4.9.1 and DotNetNuke 5.0 included a new feature called the DotNetNuke Dashboard which is available from the Host menu. The Dashboard provides access to numerous stats and settings from a single location which simplifies finding the information which is often needed when troubleshooting problems.
One necessary evil with some websites is to put preventative measures in place to prevent web "bots" from attempting to log in to your website. CAPTCHA attempts to provide a solution to this problem.
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That’s right, I said releases, plural! For the Xmas Holiday DNN released version 4.9.1 and 5.0 on Xmas Eve. The 4.9.1 version includes a number of bug fixes for the 4.9 platform, a security fix, as well as a new HOST menu option, Dashboard. The 5.0 version...(
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Since DotNetNuke framework operations are so intertwined with database engine communications you will occasionally get some pretty sporadic error messages when this communication is interrupted. One such red herring will present itself when your database has no free space left. You will usually get two symptoms when your database has become full.
The core DotNetNuke Blog Module has obviously grown by leaps and bounds. However, there are a few things that I have wanted to change about it. One thing is the social bookmarking badges.
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A really great trend that is moving through many modules out there is the use of templates. One of these modules is the DNN core Survey module.
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The Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group (ODUG) newsletter was just out to all members.
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Sotiris Filippidis
12.27.08
All my attempts to use custom templates when creating new DNN pages for my portals were frustrating. Even though I exported the template from a page using the Export feature, the new template would not show up at all in the combo box when creating a new page, although it existed in the file system. Even the default template wouldn't show up!
Sotiris Filippidis
12.27.08
I found this in Kevin Southworth's blog and I think it's worth mentioning since it may save your life in case you have forgotten your superuser's password. Using SQL, you can promote a regular DNN user to a superuser like this:
Sotiris Filippidis
12.27.08
So you want to create a simple custom module. At first, it seems easy. Just two or three settings to take care of, no need for complicated, custom tables and unistall/uninstall scripts. DNN's built-in module settings API seems to be enough. But suddenly, needs grow a lot. There are some large values you need to store and the ModuleSettings table won't allow large chunks of information per row. It seems that you have to switch to a custom table which will be holding your settings...
...or use my class :)
Sotiris Filippidis
12.27.08
Sometimes, when you're doing something programmatically, like moving tabs around, you really don't want caching in your way in any form, since there's a great danger it'll affect the outcome. For some reason, programmatically clearing the cache may not be enough - you just don't need any caching around when you do certain stuff, and you don't want to oblige any host user to manually clear the cache. Here's a really simple way to disable caching programmatically.
Sotiris Filippidis
12.27.08
Following a previous article of mine, The dbo.tabs.IconFile field issue, I would like to share an easy way to resolve any field that holds values of the type "FileID=xxx" (where xxx is the primary key of a record in the Files table) into the actual file path. This is especially useful when you deal with the IconFile field in the Tabs table, as well as with fields of type Image in a User Defined Table, and probably in a lot more places too.
I have created a UDF (User Defined Function) which accepts a string value and looks whether it's of type "FileID=xxx". If it is, it constructs the full path (including the portal number) and returns that, otherwise it just returns the initial string with no modification at all. You can use this scalar-valued function inline, in your own SELECT statements, like this:
EXAMPLE
SELECT
tabid,
tabname,
dbo.ResolveFileField(iconfile)
FROM tabs
CODE
CREATE FUNCTION
dbo.ResolveFileField
(
@file varchar(1000)
)
RETURNS varchar(1000)
AS
BEGIN
declare @retval varchar(1000)
declare @portalid int
if patindex ('FileID=%', @file) >0
begin
declare @fileid int
set @fileid =
convert(
int,
replace
(
@file
, 'fileid='
, ''
)
)
select
@retval =
'Portals/'
+ convert
(
varchar(10)
, files.portalid
)
+ '/'
+ folders.folderpath
+ files.filename
from
files
left outer join folders
on files.folderid = folders.folderid
where
files.fileid=@fileid
end
else
begin
set @retval = @file
end
return @retval
END
GO
I've updated DotNetNukeBlogs.com to try and handle some issues we've had consuming Feedburner feeds, randomly they would work, a few times a day, where in most cases they wouldnj't work.
Actually the change that was made wasn't part of the module on the website, but more of a change with the RSSToolkit, the change is outlined here.
We'll monitor the feed consumption and see how the new changes work out.
Why DotNetNukeBlogs.com? Our goal is to be the premier aggregator of DotNetNuke related materials. DotNetNukeBlogs.com was started by DotNetNuke Core Team member Chris Hammond with the intention to provide a place for the leaders in the DotNetNuke Community to push their content to those needing it most, the users.
Stay tuned as we continue to grow. If you're a DotNetNuke Expert be sure to get your feed added into our aggregate system.
You can read more about us here.
So a few weeks ago I released a DNN Module for www.community-credit.com . Today I am happy to announce I've put together another release! You can find it here. http://www.codeplex.com/S8RCC/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=21088 We've updated the...(
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A shiny new toy appears in DotNetNuke version 4.09.01. It is called the "Dashboard", and it is back-ported from version 5.00.00.
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Every once in a while, I face an error installing DotNetNuke that completely frustrates me. It is only because it forces me to start over with the installation process.
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Christmas Eve was very busy for the DotNetNuke Team as we did a double release of both DotNetNuke 4.9.1 and 5.0.0. This was my first time handling a double release and it was a lot more work than I anticipated. Not only did we do a double release, but we also changed where we are hosting our downloads. That is a story for another blog post. Unlike 4.9.1, DNN 5 was a massive change that involved hundreds of bug fixes, changes and enhancements. A large number of the bug fixes and a few of the changes were backported to the 4.8.x and 4.9.x branches, however there are still many bug fixes and enhancements which are only available in DNN 5. At this point there are not plans to port any other changes back to the DNN 4.x platform as we will once again shift our focus to maintaining a single product branch.
DotNetNuke 5.0 is the culmination of over a year of development and testing. Without a doubt this is the most tested version of DotNetNuke ever released. That is not to say there won’t be bugs found, but just that we spent a lot of time in this release trying to make sure we were not breaking anything in our efforts to refactor the codebase.
As we have said many times in the past, DotNetNuke 5.0 is not intended to encompass the entire Cambrian Vision which we first laid out at OpenForce ‘07. However, DNN 5 does include many fundamental changes in the architecture which will make it much easier for us to incorporate and test future features. With that said, there are still a number of great enhancements that we were able to include in this release.
As always you can see a complete list with all the details of each fix/change in the ChangeLog.
Major Highlights
- Added jQuery support to the core platform. jQuery will now be distributed as part of the DotNetNuke installation and will be available for use by module developers.
- Added support for Internet Explorer 8 Web Slices. Administrators can configure any module to use IE8 Web Slices including the ability to set time-to-live and expiration values.
- Removed distinction between admin modules and pages and normal pages. This allows administrators to easily delegate access to any portion of the application to any group of users.
- Updated the installation services to support manifest files for all extension types. Now skins, containers, providers and modules are all first class citizens that can be installed and uninstalled.
- Expanded XHTML, WCAG and ADA compliance.
- Refactored core to improve support for Unit Testing. Refactored several core classes to use interfaces and added a simple component factory to provide dependency injection support.
- Added ability to deny permissions in the permissions grid. This new feature extends the permission framework to give administrators greater flexibility in defining permissions.
- Added Widget framework. The new Widget framework allows you to quickly add JavaScript/html widgets to your site with very little effort. The framework supports the use of a simple object tag based representation which means you don’t have to know JavaScript in order to add the widgets.
- Added new Object notation for using skin objects in Skins. Skin designers will no longer need to include separate XML files when creating and packaging skins. No more funky “[SKINOBJECT]” tags littering your html. This significantly simplifies the process of creating skins and further opens up skin development to a broader group of designers. If you include a simple JavaScript reference in your HTML skin, you can even get a full WYSIWYG experience when designing your skin.
Security Fixes
- Includes a rollup of all 4.x security fixes
Updated Modules/Providers
The following modules and providers have been updated in the 5.0.0 packages. Please see the specific project pages for notes on what bugs or enhancements were corrected with each release.
Providers
The DotNetNuke 4.9.1 package was released on Christmas eve. This is an special date in the history of DotNetNuke as the original release was also on Christmas eve. 4.9.1 is a minor stabilization release, although we did add a few small enhancements including the new dashboard which I will cover in depth in a separate blog. Below is a list of the major items included in 4.9.1. As always you can see a complete list with all the details of each fix/change in the ChangeLog.
Major Highlights
- Fixed issue with the cache which was preventing proper operation of the scheduler.
- Fixed issue with web crawlers which could cause thrashing in the cache
- Fixed issue with the EventQueue to remove events that result in an error. This prevents an event from filling the event log with errors.
- Fixed issue with the RoleController.GetUserRoles method which introduced a breaking change in 4.9.0.
- Added a new column to the version table to distinguish between Community Edition and Professional Edition installs
- Added a new feature for logging server restarts in a web farm environment.
- Added a new admin Dashboard page. The dashboard provides a single page where hosts can view an overall snapshot of their site.
Security Fixes
Updated Modules/Providers
The following modules and providers have been updated in the 4.9.1 packages. Please see the specific project pages for notes on what bugs or enhancements were corrected with each release.
Modules
Providers
There appears to be a change in DotNetNuke 5 that affects all versions of Active Forums. This change will prevent Active Forums from loading on DotNetNuke 5.
We have released a BETA patch to our Enterprise 4.x customers and plan to hav