One of the most common questions that I get via the forums on this site, or via e-mail is "How do you get your sites to run so fast". Although not perfect, my sites typically run a bit faster than your average DotNetNuke sites. Previously I have kept the exact specifics of my changes to myself, however, with a litle encouragement from the community I have decided to share the full context of the changes that I make to a default DotNetNuke installation to get better baseline performance, as well as extra items that I do to help when I really need that "boost".
In this podcast we cover DotNetNuke latest news. We discuss DotNetNuke Corporation latest funding and new CEO, blog comments from the community, importing large quantities of data into DotNetNuke modules, DNN authentication, as well as a special module offer from OnyakTech.
In this issue we explore DataSprings Dynamic Forms module, this is a very powerful module for quickly and easily building complex forms in DotNetNuke.
We begin with a Quick Start Guide, where we show you the basic principles of the Dynamic Forms module and how, in a matter of minutes, you can create simple forms for collecting data from your website visitors.
So it’s 2009 now, almost 5 days in already. I’m going to compile a quick list of website statistics for ChrisHammond.com. Read the full post for more info
Often times when developing DotNetNuke modules or any other asp.net application an easy way to modularize certain sections of your application is to create user controls for section(s) of functionality and then load them dynamically based upon some environmental criteria. To achieve this in DotNetNuke is not much different than your standard asp.net application. The primary difference you need to account for is the way DotNetNuke handles localization. The key is to override the init event so that the resource file is hooked up high enough in the application life cycle. Below is some sample code to illustrate the process.
Michael Washington
01.04.09
Christmas day was when I had a chance to review the final release of DotNetNuke 5 which was announced Christmas Eve. I quickly reviewed what I wrote about in my chapters for the new DotNetNuke 5 book and realized I had to add more and delete some information as well. I quickly shot off an email to the Wrox editor and begin to update my chapters.
The first was What's New
Under Admin/What's New, you'll find a new setting which gives you a summary of the major features for this DotNetNuke release. You can view Major Highlights, Security Fixes, Updated Modules/Providers, along with a link to the official change log.
Changes had to be made in the Host, Skins as well because the earlier releases had a link called Upload Legacy Skin which was taken out of the final release of the product so it needed to get deleted from the chapter.
Dashboard
This was new to the final release and real slick too!
DotNetNuke Release 4.91 and 5.0 has a new feature under Host,Dashboard. See Figure 5-59 Information about your setup is given in several different categories. Under Web Server, there is information about your server setup. Database Server provides Server Information along with Database Backup History and Database Files. Host gives full detail of Host Settings. Portals gives information about the Name of the Site, GUID, Pages, Roles and Users. Modules will list the module name, version, and used instances. Finally, under Skins are the installed skins. All of this information can be exported as an XML file.
I was glad I was able to add these into the chapters. Needless to say, it was a challenge trying to keep up with the changes that happened with the final release of the product. I'm glad it's over!
I am honored to receive this award this year. I heard the news on January 1. This is the fifth year that I have received this award and I have learned a great deal every year.
Co-author of the new DotNetNuke 5 book, Stan Schultes will be coming to the Orlando DotNetNuke user group meeting on Tuesday to show you how.
Topic: DotNetNuke 5 Module Development
When: Tuesday, January 6th @ 7:00-9:00 PM
Where: ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, Inc. Corporate Office
Address: 8989 South Orange Ave., Orlando, FL 32822
Description: Stan Schultes will begin with a quick technical overview of DotNetNuke, and a discussion of why you might build a custom DNN module. Demos will include how to install the DNN portal on a development machine, and how to install a custom module into the portal. Then we'll dive into setting up Visual Studio 2008 for module development and demonstrate how to install a module source package and run it in design mode. Finally, we'll walk through the process of developing a custom module using the sample module to provide details, and we'll see some development tips & tricks along the way. This is a 300-level session - some experience with DotNetNuke will be assumed.
We are only two days away from the next ODUG meeting. This one will be a biggie!
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The secret to a successful install is getting the prerequisites right first before you start the install. If everything is prepared correctly first, then installation is straightforward and painless!
Installing dotnetnuke is easy if you know how , yet there are a large number posts on the dotnetnuke "Install It!" forum from people who are having install problems ranging from mild to severe. Why is this? The answer is that many first time installers do not get the prerequisites right before they start to install.
This guide to dotnetnuke install prerequisites assumes that you have direct access to the computer - for those using a hosted account, instead of installing these prerequisites, just ask your hosting provider if these prerequistes are ...
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The DotNetNuke project, with the release of DNN 5.0 and DNN 4.9.1, officially moved our project downloads to CodePlex. There were some questions in the DotNetNuke Forums about this and when my response started growing, I thought I would blog about it instead.
To address some specific questions:
Q: Was this an impulsive decision?
A: This is something that has been in planning for many months and was not something done out of impulse.
Q: How do I find all of the related projects on CodePlex? All the downloads were available on the same page at SourceForge.
A: If you look on the DotNetNuke page on CodePlex, all of the other official DNN projects are listed. You can also click on the DotNetNuke tag in the tag cloud (visible on the CodePlex homepage) to see a complete list of all DotNetNuke related projects on CodePlex (there are currently 88 listed).
Q: Are all of the core projects on CodePlex?
A: Yes. Scott Willhite and Shaun Walker worked with the CodePlex team to move over all of the official DNN Projects. Not only did they move the project downloads, but they also moved the project’s historical data as well. In addition, since CodePlex is also the official Forge repository, all past and future projects created from the DotNetNuke Forge will also show up on CodePlex. So now we will have all of our projects consolidated in one spot. There will still be some community projects which choose to use other repositories, but over time, you will see CodePlex becoming the first place people look for Open Source DotNetNuke related projects.
Why do I think CodePlex a better home for us?
- We have more control over advertising - On SourceForge it was not uncommon to see companies like Kentico targeting ads to our SourceForge listing. I personally thought that was over the top. SourceForge was selling ads which were harmful to the very OS projects they were hosting. On CodePlex, this cannot and will not happen without the project's consent. There is an ad network available, but the project must sign-up for the service and the project derives revenue from those ads. Microsoft is pretty financially stable and doesn’t rely on a few ad dollars from CodePlex, so we don’t have to worry about this changing anytime in the near future. Quite honestly, if they did start putting up ads, I would want to move off there as well.
- We have better access to project stats - On SourceForge, access to project stats were very erratic this past year. In fact there were whole periods where the stat server was down and the stats were not collected. In addition, the stats required manual processes to collect, which didn't make it easy to track them. CodePlex provides us access to our stats in a more automated manner so we can use them to help monitor the health of the project (these stats are but one of many that we use for measuring health).
- CodePlex is more responsive - As anyone who has been on SourceForge for very long knows, they are not very quick to add features or to fix bugs. It is only in the last year or so that they have started updating SourceForge to be a little more modern. I had a long talk with the CodePlex program manager, Sara Ford, at CodeMash this past year. Within a week after returning from CodeMash she had written up my suggestions and added them to the Issue Tracker. Within a few weeks after that, I started seeing some of my suggestions implemented. That never happened on SourceForge. When members of the .Net community asked for SVN support - the CodePlex team got to work figuring out how to provide it. When the first cut wasn't sufficient, the CP team went back and updated the feature. This is great customer service and something that CodePlex team obviously takes very seriously. This is a tradition that started under Jim Newkirk and which Sara has continued.
- CodePlex is targeted at our main user community – As the leading Open Source repository, SourceForge hosts projects for lots of different operating systems and development platforms. It is not targeted at any one community. The same is not true of CodePlex. CodePlex is very squarely aimed at the Windows community and the .Net community more specifically. Almost everyone who visits CodePlex is a likely candidate to be a DotNetNuke user. The same is not the case for people going to SourceForge.
- CodePlex provides us better exposure – Lets face it – it is highly unlikely that DotNetNuke will ever have the download numbers of a project like Azureus or eMule. On SourceForge there are much larger projects than DotNetNuke and those projects receive the bulk of the exposure on SourceForge. Whereas on CodePlex we are at the top of the heap. This necessarily affords us more promotion opportunities. Whether it is our position on the top downloads page, the page views listing, or even within the project tag cloud, there are lots of ways for people to easily find us on CodePlex that were not available to us on SourceForge. In addition to the exposure from our relative size, we also receive exposure from the branding provided for DotNetNuke related projects which are listed through the forge. Any project listed in the forge automatically gets a DotNetNuke logo included on the CodePlex project page. This makes it easy for users to tell that a project is associated with DotNetNuke and provides further exposure to the DotNetNuke project.
- The CodePlex team has a good working relationship with the DotNetNuke team – 2008 saw the launch of the DotNetNuke Forge which allowed DotNetNuke related projects to be listed on CodePlex and DotNetNuke.com. While preparing for the launch of this program, we had an opportunity to work with the CodePlex team. We were very appreciative of their assistance and their willingness to work with us to add features which we found crucial to helping our projects stand out and succeed. Having worked with the CP team, we are confident that if there were significant problems our concerns would not be brushed aside. I believe that had the Stats server gone down on the CodePlex site, like it did on SourceForge, they would have been much more responsive to fixing it, and they would have been better at keeping us, and their other hosted projects, informed of the issue. I know that CodePlex will never give us everything we want or could hope for, but at least I know that they are listening, and are willing to help when and where they can.
In summary, I am confident that our CodePlex experience will be 1000 times better than our foray onto GotDotNet several years ago (I would include a link but alas GDN is no more - Sara can you still get me my old files on GDN?) and I am looking forward to continuing to forge a much stronger relationship with the CodePlex team. They are a great group of people who really want to help the .Net Open Source community and I for one am happy to be associated with them.
Host Commander is a host specific module for system scheduled jobs, portal statistics, users online (Live), global time chart, site logs, server logs, portal pages & modules and web site snapshot generation for user profiles. It takes scheduled jobs to the next level by including additional jobs you can execute, run SQL statements or stored procedures with email notification of its status and easily manage all schedules and view web server space and database size for all portals. An extra great feature to Host Commander is it's ability to take the web site address in user profiles, go to the site, take a snapshot and save it as a thumbnail image on your server with the option of having a direct URL stored in the users profile for use with other modules like H2O, Axon and Soma Elite (or any module that accesses the custom user profile fields).
Features:
- Schedule Jobs to execute stored procedures and SQL.
- DotNetNuke Scheduled Jobs Manager: Easily manage all DotNetNuke Scheduled Jobs with History and current status.
- Database Manager: Complete listing of all Tables, Views and Stored Procedures in your database with the ability to view records in Tables, Views and the ability to execute Stored Procedures with the ability to enter parameter values.
- Email Notifications of SQL Jobs: Optionally have the results of your job emailed to a list of email addresses.
- Includes Additional Jobs: Send email notifications of portals expiring in one week, send email notifications the day a portal expires, delete portals once they expire, delete portals that the administrator has abandoned for 60 days, delete portals that the administrator has abandoned for 10 days and remove expired roles from users.
- Portal Site Log Charts: View Site Log Charts for any Portal and zoom in or out by setting a minimum and maximum range. Charts are available for the following Site Logs: Page Popularity, Site Referrals, User Agents and User Frequency.
- Portal Statistics showing Total Users, Space Allocated, Space Used, Total Page, Page Quota, Space Remaining for each portal and the total database size of your entire DotNetNuke installation.
- Easily Expire web sites or add additional time.
- Web Site Snapshots: Host Commander will open each users web site (specified in their user profile), take a snapshot and save it as an image with the option of have a URL to that image stored into a custom profile field of your choice. You can then reference that image from any module that accesses the custom user profile fields in DotNetNuke.
- Users Online (Live): View online users in real-time with drill-down showing each page they visited and where they are now
- Server Logs: View the current servers Application Event Log
- Site Log: The same as the current Site Log tool in DotNetNuke, provided in Host Commander for easy access.
- Portal Pages: View each portals pages as well as the modules listed on the page and module information.
- World Clock: Showing the current time for 87 locations around the world.