On Tuesday March 9th, I presented at the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group (ODUG) and had a great time.

The fact that I was presenting added to the fun and enjoyment of the night, so I thought I would share a bit of the experience.  Primarily I want to encourage other DotNetNuke Users to pass along their knowledge.

So, here is my story…

I ran into an interesting situation last night.  I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed this in the past.  My blog site was originally one of many in a single DotNetNuke® installation or instance.  Since it has grown in popularity and traffic, I had to move it to it’s own standalone DNN instance.  The quickest way to make that happen was to move a copy of the original instance, and delete all of the other portals that came with it.  In doing so, this left all of the users from the other portals still in the Users table in the database.

WARNING!!! Don’t just run the queries here. Read the post in detail first. Also, BACKUP your database before manually changing any data.  You may severely mess up your site. You’ve been warned!

At first, I kind of panicked, because I was looking at the users in my Superusers Account module.  It was 100+ pages of users!  We all know that there is probably not a single site out there that has 10 super users, much less 100+ pages worth of super users.  In the first page, there were several test accounts, so my first thought was that I had been hacked at some point.  However, I didn’t take the history of the portal into account. 

As it turns out, I had learned in a very scary way how DNN handles user accounts when portals are deleted.  I am not sure of the thought process behind it, but the users are soft deleted from the portals that get deleted.  In this situation, this has a couple of distinctive attributes to take note of.

• The IsDeleted column in the Users table is 1
• The PortalId column in the UserPortals table is NULL

You can see these attributes by running the following query:

   1: SELECT up.[PortalId], u.[UserID], u.[Username], u.[FirstName], u.[LastName], u.[IsSuperUser], u.[Email], u.[DisplayName], u.[IsDeleted] 

   2: FROM [databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users] u 

   3: LEFT OUTER JOIN [dbo].[UserPortals] up ON u.[UserId] = up.[UserId] 

   4: ORDER BY up.[PortalId], up.[UserId];

   5: -- OR --

   6: SELECT up.[PortalId], u.[UserID], u.[Username], u.[FirstName], u.[LastName], u.[IsSuperUser], u.[Email], u.[DisplayName], u.[IsDeleted] 

   7: FROM [dbo].[Users] u 

   8: LEFT OUTER JOIN [dbo].[UserPortals] up ON u.[UserId] = up.[UserId] 

   9: ORDER BY up.[PortalId], up.[UserId];

At first glance, this appears to be an easy fix.  That is, if you’re not paying attention.  Just delete all of the users that are no longer associated with a portal.  Let’s try it!

   1: DELETE FROM {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users] 

   2: WHERE [UserId] IN (

   3:     SELECT u.[UserId] 

   4:     FROM {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users] u 

   5:     LEFT OUTER JOIN {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}UserPortals] up ON u.[UserId] = up.[UserId] 

   6:     WHERE up.[PortalId] IS NULL

   7: )

   8: -- OR -- 

   9: DELETE FROM [dbo].[Users] 

  10: WHERE [UserId] IN (

  11:     SELECT u.[UserId] 

  12:     FROM [dbo].[Users] u 

  13:     LEFT OUTER JOIN [dbo].[UserPortals] up ON u.[UserId] = up.[UserId] 

  14:     WHERE up.[PortalId] IS NULL

  15: )

Well, that didn’t work so well.  What I failed to notice is what you might not have as well.  Super User accounts are not associated to a portal.  So the previous query would have deleted all of those users as well.  D’oh!  Luckily, I backup my database before I do anything like this, so I just restored it real quick. 

To delete all of the soft deleted users from the other portals, we need to adjust the previous query to filter out the super user accounts.

   1: DELETE FROM {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users] 

   2: WHERE [UserId] IN (

   3:     SELECT u.[UserId] 

   4:     FROM {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users] u 

   5:     LEFT OUTER JOIN {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}UserPortals] up ON u.[UserId] = up.[UserId] 

   6:     WHERE up.[PortalId] IS NULL AND NOT u.[IsSuperUser] = 1

   7: )

   8: -- OR -- 

   9: DELETE FROM [dbo].[Users] 

  10: WHERE [UserId] IN (

  11:     SELECT u.[UserId] 

  12:     FROM [dbo].[Users] u 

  13:     LEFT OUTER JOIN [dbo].[UserPortals] up ON u.[UserId] = up.[UserId] 

  14:     WHERE up.[PortalId] IS NULL AND NOT u.[IsSuperUser] = 1

  15: )

Viola!  That did the trick.  All of the goodness, none of the oversights.  I hope this helps you too!

As I indicated last week, I am pleased to announce the Call for Speakers for the 2010 DotNetNuke Connections conference.  Once again, this years conference will be held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas from November 1st through the 4th with pre and post-conference training available as well. 

We could not do this show without our speakers and we have been fortunate in the past to have had some great session proposals by many well respected speakers.  Some of those speakers have been selected to present their sessions and unfortunately some of them have not been.  Such is the nature of any conference.  As usual we will continue to look for new speakers to bring fresh new topics to the conference.  So if you have submitted sessions in the past then I would encourage you to submit again.  If you have public speaking experience and some great ideas for sessions then I would invite you to submit your sessions as well.

Remember that all speakers will be required to present at least two sessions.  So make sure you submit plenty of session abstracts to improve your odds of getting selected.

Speaker Benefits

Every speaker at the DotNetNuke Connections conference will receive 4 nights of lodging at the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel along with free conference registration. Conference registration will allow every attendee full access to the expo hall, and all sessions at the DevConnections and DotNetNuke Connections conferences. (Pre and Post conference training days are not covered in the complimentary registration).

I have blogged about some community things here and there, and I will begin blogging about them more starting right now.  My first meaningful post in this area talked about how to run a user group, and it was more generic in its discussion.  It could apply to any user group.  This time, I am talking about how to start a user group, and I am focusing this discussion on DotNetNuke® user groups specifically.

Honestly, I had forgotten that I wrote the blog post I just mentioned.  I was only recently reminded about it by Bill Walker.  That may sound like it came out of left field.  Why would Bill Walker, of the DotNetNuke® Corporation,  remind me about that specific blog post on my site?  It’s because I have been working with Bill Walker and Scott Willhite to help develop a program where the DNN Corp will be lending a helping hand to user groups that focus on DNN.  What began as an excellent idea has already had action.  Together, we formed a user group leaders committee with other user group leaders and just had our first meeting a couple of weeks ago.  But that’s all I can say about that for the time being.  You can be assured that I will let you know how this is going as soon as I can.

I get comments and e-mails all of the time from people who want to have a DNN user group in their area, and they all begin by asking the same thing.  “How can I start a DNN user group?”  This question is simple enough, but it appears to always generate fear within the person asking this question.  This is okay and it’s expected.  After all, fear comes from the inside of us when we do not know what to expect from a situation.  I hope to lower that level of fear for you with this blog post.

Plant the Seed

You have the idea.  You want the idea to become something more.  You want a user group in your area that you can attend and help yourself and other DNN community members.  But what’s the first step?

The first step is to look on the DNN user group wizard to see if your area already have a user group created.  If not, create one.

In many areas, you will find that a user group was created but nothing was done with it.  There are numerous user groups that were started in the wizard, but for any number of reasons nothing else was done.  In these instances, it is necessary for you to attempt to contact the person listed as the leader.  If you cannot get in touch with them, let me know until there’s a better system in place.  I can help you move this step along.

Setting up the user group in the wizard is not a requirement though.  Do not let this stop you from moving forward with your planning.

Begin announcing your intentions to start the user group in the DNN user group forum and on any social networks you’re on.  You never know where your fellow DNN’ers are going to come from.  Make sure you let people know that you want to start the user group and gather the names and e-mail addresses of anyone interested.  If you were able to start the user group in the wizard, have them sign up there.  If you are able to start a user group website even before your first meeting, have them register there too.  Basically, you are building the foundation to hold your first meeting.

Be diligent with this step.  In the first year or more of a user group’s existence, you will need to be the walking, talking billboard advertisement for the user group.  Do not be afraid to talk about it to everyone, and never assume that you’re talking about it too much.  It’s like most traditional media.  One commercial is never enough.  You have to repeat the commercial over and over again to get the desired effect.  If no one tells you that you’re talking about it too much, then you’re not doing your job.

Mark Off the Garden

I find that the previous step is the easiest, and most people I talk to can handle that step just fine.  The excuses and other problems begin with the next step – holding your first meeting.  The most common excuse I hear with this is that people are not sure if they have enough people to hold the first meeting.  This is just silly.  There’s no rule to how many people that you need to hold a meeting.  Just set a date and advertise it everywhere you can, as often as you can.  You will reach different people at different times.

Another reason I head behind not holding the meeting is not having a place to meet.  While this is not an easy task, it is probably easier than you think.  There are a variety of ways to get a meeting place.  First, begin by asking those who are already in your mailing list if they have a venue that they can offer.  If you are unable to find one, just meet at a coffee place or sandwich shop for the first couple of meetings.  Once you are ready to have a speaker, you can often find places to meet through the local technical recruiters, library, and other businesses that have large conference rooms.

At the first 1-3 meetings, talk to those people that show up about what they want out of the user group.  Pay special attention to what areas of DotNetNuke® they specialize in and what their talents are.  They are the people that you need to plan meeting topics for, and are potential speakers.

Fertilize the Seed

After the meeting format is determined and you begin to schedule speakers, you will have other things to worry about.  New and important questions will start to arise.  Should I charge a fee for the meetings?  Do I need a sponsor?  How do I get one?  How do I recruit speakers?  How can I get door prizes? 

There is no one-size-fits-all formula to starting and maintaining a user group.  The success of the user group depends entirely on those people that attend the meetings.  You need to plug-in to those people, and those at other user groups.   You will need to become a talker.  You will need to let everyone you talk to know about what you’re doing.  Your passion will show, and they will begin sharing your conversation with others in the .Net and DNN community. 

It is my opinion that you should never charge a fee for the user group meetings.  This will stifle the growth of the user group severely.

You do not need a sponsor for the user group unless you want either of two things: (1) free food and drinks, (2) door prizes.  Sponsors are typically very easy to find and get involved.  Begin with local technical recruiters for the food and drinks.  They love to get their people and branding in front of technical audiences, no matter how small.

Recruiting speaker is not easy since most people have a fear of speaking in front of an audience.  This fear for those people just gets more powerful when that audience is full of your peers.  It is for this reason that many user groups begin with the leader speaking a lot, and have chalk talk meetings. 

The secret to getting speakers is once again talking to people.  Find out what your members are doing in their day jobs and for recreational programming.  They love to tell people about their newest projects.  This is a perfect ice breaker to ask them to show everyone in the user group what they just told you at the next meeting.  Presentations do not have to last through the duration of your meeting.  Sometimes having more than one speaker can be better than just one.

Watch the Seed Grow

Once you have an idea of how the meetings are going to be, begin also asking for volunteers.  You may want people to help with the prize raffles, sending of newsletters, getting sponsors, getting speakers, and so on.  Getting these people involved and giving them a sense of ownership over the user group will only help grow the group and encourage other members to help in various ways.  You shouldn’t be doing everything yourself.

If you follow this advice, you should be seeing your user group membership and activity grow more and more each month.  I hope I have inspired you to start your own user group.  Please let me know by leaving a comment below.

I will be presenting a webinar later this month titled, “DotNetNuke® Essentials: Simple Solutions for Building Your Website.”  I have been very excited for quite some time to be able to announce this.  The webinar will focus on DotNetNuke® from the beginner’s perspective.  This is not meant for the module developers, programmers, skinners, etc.  This webinar is more focused on your content management and website administrators.  However, they need not have had any DNN experience to participate or follow along.

This webinar is meant purely for the beginners, and those who are interested in using DNN.  Out of all of the presentations and training with DNN that I have ever done, this is the type of presentation I love the most.  It is so much fun and rewarding to see the reaction people have when they see what DNN can do!  You can almost see them leaning out of their seats to go and try it that very moment.

Unfortunately, you don’t get the same kind of instant feedback during webinars since I cannot see you, but it’s still a blast!

The DotNetNuke® Essentials webinar is broken up into 3 sections.

How To Get Started

We will begin where everyone does, with installation.  I love this area too.  It’s so cool to get feedback from people that had been told or thought that DNN was just too difficult to install.  It really isn’t.  The concept is just not easy for some people to grasp.

Once DNN is installed, we are going to walk through the common ways that you would need to use to update your DotNetNuke® website.  We are going to change the design of the DNN site, and then wrap this first section up with an upgrade.

Managing Content on a DNN Created Site

The next section goes a little deeper in detail in terms of managing DNN website content.  It takes much more than just adding some text to a page.  There are various situations where your content needs to do a little more than just display some words.  You might need to move it, export it, import it, and more. 

Once we go over the common ways to manage content, we will explore the Admin menu in detail.  There are several nooks and crannies in the  Admin area that many new DNN administrators may not get to for a while.

Best Practices for Website Administration in DotNetNuke®

We will be wrapping this presentation up by reviewing some of the best practices out there for administrating your DNN websites. 

The webinar will end with a question and answer period where I will answer any questions that you may have about DotNetNuke®.  Go ahead.  Throw me a curve ball!  :)

If that sounds good to you, then make sure you sign up.  But your benefits don’t end there.  You will also be receiving a downloadable handout that outlines everything we will be talking about, and can be used as a cheat sheet following the webinar.

Does that sound too good to be true?  It’s not.  The webinar is not free – but it’s cheap.  For $199.00, you get 90 minutes of exclusive and interactive DNN training in the comfort of your home or office.  You will have the opportunity to ask any DNN questions that you want.  You’re going to have a DNN cheat sheet that you download before the webinar and can use as much as you want after the event.

DotNetNuke® Essentials: Simple Solutions for Building Your Website

I hope to see you there!  In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions.

File this one under ‘you learn something new every day’.

I may be the last person to know this, but example.org, example.com and example.org are domains reserved for use in documentation.

I tend to use ‘mysite.com’, ‘domain.com’, ‘yoursite.com’ and anything else.  I usually try and remove automatically generated hyperlinks because I don’t like to feed link juice to the owners of these domains.  But it still happens.

Then today I accidentally clicked on an automatically generated example.com Url, and found out it’s reserved for documentation.  No more link-juice bleeding from documentation and discussions about Urls.  Try it! http://example.com

I’m off to do some find/replace.

One of the new features in the updates in my website is the “Most Popular Entries” area at the bottom of each page on my site.  It gets attention for a few different reasons.  First, everyone wants to know how I did it.  Next, people want to know what determines the most popular blog entries.  Finally, people want to know if I would blog about it.  I had always planned to, but since you asked…

First of all, I need to give a quick disclaimer.  I had long forgotten the power behind the XML and Reports Modules.  I used to use them all of the time, but I have been in development mode for about a year now, leaving little room for playing with these two modules like I used to.  Luckily, Joe Brinkman brought it all back to me with his recent visit to the Orlando DotNetNuke® Users Group (ODUG). 

Let’s answer the easiest question first.  The most popular entries are determined by the number of comments left on a blog.  So, if you want to “hack” the results in this module, leave a ton of useful comments on one of m blog entries.  (I say “useful” because I won’t approve any comments that appear to be spam or link builder comments.)  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice any existing queries that will feed me back the information that I need, so I wrote a custom query to be used with the Reports Module.

   1: SELECT TOP 5 

   2:     b.[BlogID],b.[EntryID],b.[Title],b.[Entry],b.[AddedDate]

   3:     ,b.[Published],b.[Description],b.[Copyright],b.[PermaLink], 

   4:     (SELECT COUNT(c.[CommentID]) FROM [dbo].[Blog_Comments] c WHERE c.[EntryID] = b.[EntryID]) [Comments]

   5: FROM [dbo].[Blog_Entries] b 

   6: WHERE b.[Published] = 1 

   7: ORDER BY [Comments] DESC

Hopefully, you’re still paying attention.  I say that because this query has a limitation that you may or may not care about.  It pulls the entries from the entire site, and not just from a specific blog.  You’ll have to adjust the query if that’s what you’re looking for.

Next, I chose to “View XML Source” in the module to show me the output that I’ll be dealing with.  This is an incredibly powerful feature in the Reports Module. as it allows me to write XSL against a known datasource format.  You simply click the link for it, and then begin using your favorite XML/XSL editor.

Here is an example of my XSL using the same methods, and Visual Studio as my editor.

   1: xml version="1.0"?>

   2: <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

   3:     <xsl:template match="/DocumentElement">

   4:         <ul class="wns_news_list">

   5:             <xsl:for-each select="QueryResults[position() < '6']">

   6:                 <li class="Normal">

   7:                     <a href="{PermaLink}">

   8:                         <xsl:value-of select="Title" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>

   9:                     a>

  10:                 li>

  11:             xsl:for-each>

  12:         ul>

  13:     xsl:template>

  14: xsl:stylesheet>

The XSL is used in conjunction with the datasource to render out an unordered list (UL) to the web browser.  You can notice that I make sure to include class names to make the UL manageable through CSS.  Which leads me to the next snippet!

   1: ul.wns_news_list li { 

   2:     border-bottom:1px dashed #FFFFFF; 

   3:     list-style-type:none; 

   4:     padding:2px 0 5px; 

   5: }

The CSS used with this function is actually very simple.  All we do is remove the bullet points, add a separator, and a bit of padding for aesthetics.

Finally, it’s time to put this all together!  Save the CSS in your skin, or the Portal.css.  If you choose to save it in the Portal.css, you can use the Site Settings to update it.

Now, add an instance of the Reports Module to the page.  Paste the T-SQL query from above into the Query field in the module settings.  Further down, you are given the opportunity to select XSL Transformation Visualizer.  When you do, you can upload or choose XSL to run against the query.  I would suggest saving the XSL from above into a local file, and upload it here.

Click the Update link to save your changes.  With the CSS, T-SQL, and query in place, you should see a pretty nice looking list of your most popular blogs!

DotNetNuke recently moved to an Open Repository that is hosted on CodePlex.  As Phil Beadle recently noted, the synchronization process is now fully operational and is running nightly to ensure that the CodePlex repository mirrors our internal version control system.  Of course, having access to the source code and understanding how to use the source code to get to a working build is two different things.  The source code package that we deliver with each release is slightly modified from our own internal repository in order to minimize confusion for the community.  Over the years the core team has become accustomed to these steps, but for new people, getting DotNetNuke up and running from source code can be a bit daunting.  Hopefully I can help dispel the mystery and make it a little easier to understand why DotNetNuke source code is packaged in this manner.

NOTE:  For the remainder of this post I will assume that you are familiar with DotNetNuke and that your system is already configured.  The source code version of is not intended for people who are just getting started with DotNetNuke.  If you fall into this category then I would recommend starting with one of the install packages to better acquaint yourself with DotNetNuke.  If you use the install version with the Web Platform Installer, then it will ensure you have all the necessary pre-requisites installed.  For more information on installing DotNetNuke you should review the Installation Instructions or watch the Installation Webinar which are available on the downloads page.

The first step in configuring your system is to download the source code.  There are basically three methods for getting the source code:  1) Download the source code package from a packaged release (you can do this from the DotNetNuke Downloads page), 2) Download a specific changeset from CodePlex (each changeset includes the complete source code), 3) Download a version using SVN or TFS (see CodePlex for more information on how to configure your specific version control client).  Regardless of how you get the source code, once complete, you will have everything you need to get DotNetNuke up and running.  Once you have the source code, you will need to extract it to a directory on your system.

After you have downloaded and extracted the source code, you will need to configure the project website.  By default, the included solution file includes a reference to an IIS website at http://localhost/DotNetNuke_Community.  If you don’t want to alter the solution file then you will need to configure IIS with this application.  Open IIS Manger and add the DotNetNuke_Community application to the Default Web Site.  This application should point to the Website directory inside the directory where you extracted DotNetNuke as shown below.

If you are going to use a different IIS website name then you will need to edit the Solution file to change the website reference.  You really only need to edit the full website URL but I like to keep everything consistent, so I edit all of the locations shown below (click to enlarge).

With the IIS application configured, you are now ready to open the solution file with Visual Studio.  Currently, we only support Visual Studio 2008.  We are working to ensure that DotNetNuke will work correctly with VS 2010 when it launches, but for now you will need to stick with 2008 unless you are comfortable with doing some exploration on your own.  The Source Package should work with Visual Web Developer 2008 without issues.

As Phil noted in his blog, the CodePlex source code version includes references to MSBuild community tasks and will show a warning dialog when first opening the solution file (technically, the error occurs when the individual project files are opened).  If you downloaded the source code from one of the official repositories, then you can safely ignore these warnings.  If however, you received the source-code from a third party, then you should proceed with extreme caution as running external tasks can pose a potential security risk.

Out of the box, the source code does not include a copy of web.config.  This often trips up new users.  Over the years we have changed the standard source code configuration to minimize the chance that someone would accidentally overwrite critical system information that is stored in web.config.  The source code package supports both new installations, as well as upgrading an existing source code installation.  As a result we exclude web.config from the package.  However, we do include both a development.config and a release.config.  The development configuration file is setup to run DotNetNuke in medium trust, with debugging enabled and with a “dnn_” object qualifier in the SqlDataProvider.  These settings will aid in development by ensuring that your code is portable across different DotNetNuke site configurations.  Any changes you make that run in this configuration are likely to work in any other supported DotNetNuke configuration.  To get up and running, you will need to copy either the development or release configuration files to web.config.

The last required step is to build the solution.  We do not include compiled assemblies for core projects in the versioned code. As a result, if you try to run the installation wizard before building the solution you will receive a compilation error.

If you have followed along and completed every step, you should now have a working version of DotNetNuke open in Visual Studio and ready to begin developing your own modules, providers, skin objects or other extensions. 

WARNING: While technically possible, you should avoid changes to the DotNetNuke core application source code.  Any changes you make may be overwritten by subsequent DotNetNuke versions and may result in the inability to upgrade to later DotNetNuke versions due to incompatibilities.