Dotnetnuke

DotNetNuke conferences

Cathal Connolly — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:23:30 GMT

About this time last year I spoke at a conference organised by Software Developer network in the Netherlands. It was a windows developer conference with the usual asp.net/vb.net/c# tracks, but they'd added a DotNetNuke track as well. The sessions were all really well attended, so this time out they've expanded their coverage and there are now two dotnetnuke tracks with more than 20 sessions over the two days, as well as 80+ other topics. If you're interested in DotNetNuke and can get to Arnhem in mid-September I recommend it.

As well as our first 'official' European conference, we've also having a US based conference - this time with a couple of tracks at the devconnections conference in Las Vegas in November. It's a much larger conference with approximately 4700 expected over the 4 days. The lineup and sessions there are excellent, particularly as theres no PDC this year, and we're hoping to get a good turn-out for the DotNetNuke tracks. Personally I'm just hoping I don't get drawn in the same timeslot as one of the big hitters like Scott Guthrie :) . If anyone makes it to either of the conferences, make sure and track me down for a few beers.

Just spotted my first Irish job asking for Dotnetnuke experience

Cathal Connolly — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 18:11:00 GMT

For a long time, sites such as Monster have had lots of Dotnetnuke opportunities, but I know from the user statistics we have that Ireland has lagged behind much of Europe and the US in members.

I know theres a lot of Dotnetnuke interest locally, as after giving talks in Belfast and Dublin, I was approached by a number of Irish individuals or small companies who either use Dotnetnuke in their business, or else base their entire business on it (I also get emailed regularly). However todays the first local advert I've seen. Good to see the word is spreading.

DotNetNuke 3.1.1 released

Cathal Connolly — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 03:02:00 GMT

For anyone interested in DotNetNuke, the 3.1.1 version has just been released. It can be downloaded here , and fixes a number of bugs, as well as adding some enhancements, and performance enhancements. This is the last release, before all the core modules start to operate as subprojects, with their own project teams, and the ability to release on independant release cycles. At the minute only the install with source package is there, as the install package, which contains a runtime only version (no source code) is still being assembled. Normally we release the two packages in tandem, but this time theres also going to be the addition of the new Installer, which will contain source, docs and some additional skins & containers, so thats caused a short delay while it's packaged up.

The other difference is that the documentation has been removed from both packages, and will be a seperate download, along with release notes that contain both source control notes, and a Code Diff report.

supporting webservices under Medium Trust CAS

Cathal Connolly — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 01:43:00 GMT

For the 3.0 release of DotNetNuke, we rewrote a lot of code to ensure that the application could run under a Medium Trust policy, both as a security best practice, and as we'd been advised that as part of the Microsoft Shared Hosting inititive, some hosting providers would be running sites in a partial trust environment. Recently this has been confirmed on the DotNetNuke forums, with users of both Godaddy and Pipex indicating their sites were running under Medium. Most users don't have any application impacts, apart from those looking to use OLEDB sources such as Access, or use COM-interop, but one of drawbacks of Medium trust is that Web service permissions are limited, with the default settings only supporting calls to the current site. I spent some time writing a doc on DotNetNuke and Code Access Security, which can be found in the documentation\public folder of 3.0.10+ releases, but I thought I'd blog it here for those unaware of the potential issue.

Enabling non-local Web service access

Adding a single additional domain
It’s possible to add a single domain in your web.config file by utilising the originUrl= attribute (note: this supports wildcards so you can use url’s such as "http://feeds.moreover.com/*" to access multiple feeds).

Adding multiple additional domains
It's possible to add other allowed origins, but this requires access to the machine.config file, which is not always possible in shared hosting scenarios. If you have access to the file, then add the additional domains in the following format to the webpermission node.
<IPermission class="WebPermission" version="1">
<ConnectAccess>
    <URI uri="$OriginHost$"/>
    <URI uri="http://www.somesite.com/.*"/>
    <URI uri="http://servername/.*"/>
    <URI uri="http://127.0.0.1/.*"/>
</ConnectAccess>
</IPermission>

Allowing unlimited domains via policy changes
It is possible to alter the medium.config file to enabled all webservices. To do this open the medium.config file, and alter the webpermission block from
<IPermission
                      class="WebPermission"
                      version="1">
                       <ConnectAccess>
                                    <URI uri="$OriginHost$"/>
                       </ConnectAccess>
</IPermission>

NOTE: if you wish to enable webservices in this way, it is recommended that you create a custom policy, rather than edit the existing policy file. To create a custom policy, copy the web_mediumtrust.config file, and rename the copied file e.g. web_mymedium.config. Next, alter the file as per the settings above (or any other settings you wish to alter). Finally, you will have to edit the machine.config file , and declare the new trust level e.g.
<trustLevel name="MyMedium" policyFile="web_mymedium.config"/>
Now this policy can be specified either via the machine.config or web.config.

For anyone interested in Medium trust, theres a useful little video intro on MSDN TV called Working with Medium Trust in ASP.NET MSDN TV: Working with Medium Trust in ASP.NET

Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital....

Cathal Connolly — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 02:48:00 GMT

...said Aaron Levenstein and who am I to argue? I've just noticed that Paschal gave me a nice statistics plug and a bit of encouragement to blog more than once in a blue moon earlier. I've been wondering about whether or not it was 'polite' to clutter up an Ireland .net developers blog with an over abundance of DotNetNuke posts, but I'll take that post as an implicit thumbs-up from Paschal.

Whilst I'm mumbling incoherently about statistics, now's as good a time as any to mention that ever since we (finally) organised some of our sourceforge image linkbacks, DotNetNuke's taken a major hike up the sourceforge activity charts from position number 1592 to position 164 in the last 3 weeks, and at the minute, we're sitting at position 17 in the 7 day top project page views chart.

The official DotNetNuke book is now out

Cathal Connolly — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 02:40:00 GMT

Heres the official press release from Wrox:

Wiley Publishing is excited to announce the release of “Professional DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals,” a hands-on guide covering all aspects of administering and developing projects with DotNetNuke. Written by the creator and programmers of the DotNetNuke project, this book offers beginners and professional developers comprehensive instructions, real-world scenarios, and insightful techniques for creating ASP.NET sites quickly and efficiently using DotNetNuke.

The first part of “Professional DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals” (Wrox Press; June 2005; $39.99; ISBN: 0-7645-9563-6) gives readers a thorough overview of DotNetNuke, discussing its history and evolution as an open-source content management system. In a step-by-step manner, the authors guide users through setting up DotNetNuke on a server, and using it in different real-world hosting situations. From there, the book discusses the features that make DotNetNuke an ideal choice for creating dynamic content managed Web sites, detailing its flexible framework, its powerful set of built-in modules, and its adept management of user membership and permissions.

The second part of the guide is aimed at DotNetNuke development. DotNetNuke provides the developer with a highly flexible architecture for rapid application development (RAD) of Web applications using the module provider. “Professional DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals,” introduces the DotNetNuke application architecture, and then gets into developing modules for the framework. In addition to module development it covers developing skins for any DotNetNuke web site using some of the common tools available.

The DotNetNuke open source application is sweeping through the ranks of ASP.NET and Web developers. Whether they’ve never programmed their own Web sites before or they are experienced ASP.NET developers, readers will find DotNetNuke and this book have something to offer.

About the Authors

Patrick J. Santry (Erie, PA), Shaun Walker (British Columbia, CA), Joe Brinkman (Leesburg, VA), Dan Caron (Connecticut), Scott McCulloch (Wollongong, Australia), Scott Willhite (Seattle, WA), and Bruce Hopkins (Powder Springs, GA) are all members of the DotNetNuke development team. Shaun is the creator of DotNetNuke and Patrick, Joe, Dan, and Scott Willhite comprise the DotNetNuke Board of Directors with Shaun. Patrick and Shaun are all Microsoft ASP.NET MVPs. In addition to their programming jobs, the authors are also active in INETA (the International .NET Association), speakers at conferences, and magazine writers.

About DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke is an open-source content management system ideal for creating and deploying projects such as commercial websites, corporate intranets and extranets, and online publishing portals. It is also a project with a vision: to evolve its software through human participation and the sharing of knowledge.

DotNetNuke is provided as open-source software, licensed under a BSD-style agreement. In general, this license grants the general public permission to obtain the software free-of-charge. It also allows individuals to do whatever they wish with the application framework, both commercially and non-commercially, with the simple requirement of giving credit back to the DotNetNuke project community. http://www.dotnetnuke.com

About Wrox Press

Written by actual programmers, Wrox books offer the benefits of real-world experience and road-tested examples that really work. “Beginning” books provide a complete working knowledge of the subject, using hands-on lessons and proven training techniques. “Professional” and “Expert One-On-One” books are loaded with practical, focused information from leading technology experts. “Programmer’s Reference” books are invaluable for their detailed, on-the-job reference support. “Problem-Design-Solution” books analyze development problems programmers encounter and supply solutions that work. Wrox books, an imprint of Wiley, help programmers get the job—then do the job better. For more information, please visit wrox.com.

new dotnetnuke sub-projects

Cathal Connolly — Mon, 02 May 2005 23:00:00 GMT

For those interested in dotnetnuke, theres a few new sub-projects in the offing. First out of the traps is the blowery compression module (which has been re-branded as the "DotNetNuke Compression Module"). It adds http compression to dotnetnuke, which will allow sites to substantially reduce the amount of bandwidth they use, as well as speeding up the delivery of content. The press release can be found at http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Default.aspx?tabid=812 . For those who can't wait, or wish to use it on non-dotnetnuke sites, Scott McCulloch's posted a useful guide to integrating it on existing sites @ http://www.smcculloch.net/Home/tabid/35/ctl/ArticleView/mid/363/articleId/46/EnablingHTTPCompressionforDotNetNuke.aspx

A second sub-project, which is a bit further off from release, is the popular Santry Resource Directory manager. It's previously been available as a DotNetNuke 2.x commercial module, but will now be a free sponsored sub-proect avaialble under the BSD licence. Patrick Santry, the original developer, posted confirmation of this @ http://forums.asp.net/898696/ShowPost.aspx .You can see a pre-release version in action on the dotnetnuke.com site.

Creating Subscription Based Sites in DotNetNuke

Cathal Connolly — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 14:51:00 GMT

At the recent INDA talk I gave, someone in the audience asked about using the paypal integration in DotNetNuke to build subscription based sites. I had to hold my hands up and admit I'd never used it, and said I'd try to put together some notes and post them. However, I see that one of the other coreteamers (Scott McCulloch) has done the legwork already, and published a comprehensive article on this at his site here .

Note: He's recently changed his site to be subscription based (but still has lots of great free content), and judging by his past quality work, I've no doubt that the small subscription fee would be well worth it for anyone interested in DotNetNuke.

slidedeck from last nights Dotnetnuke presentation

Cathal Connolly — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 02:14:00 GMT

I've sent Paschal a copy of last nights slidedeck, and he'll be make it available to INDA members, along with an audio copy of the presentation as part of the session materials. I've also added a copy of it to my website @ http://www.cathal.co.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=81 for anyone who's interested.

Dotnetnuke & Continuous Integration with Nant build files

Cathal Connolly — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:40:00 GMT

Last night I gave a talk on Real World .NET: Building a Portal with DotNetNuke to Ireland .Net Developers Alliance. I enjoyed it, despite running an hour over, as I was employing my usual gonzo-style freeform presentation technique, where my talk bears little resemblance to the slide deck.

During the talk, I mentioned that we use Nant (a free .net build tool) build scripts to support continuous integration of the source code changes. Recently, one of the coreteam members, Joe Brinkman, has put a lot of effort into beefing up our build script capabilities, so they now support the ability to create source and binary versions, and even automate the compression into zip files. We'll be using this in future to provide two distributions, one with all the code, and one with the minimal files required to get up and running. I was asked if I could get a copy of this file, and after checking, I see it's made it's way into the current distribution on dotnetnuke.com (3.0.13).

How to use the DotNetNuke.build file.

Note:One shortcut in nAnt is that if you only have one .build file in a directory then you don't need to specify the build file name when executing commands, so you may want to remove the DotNetNuke.all.build to simplify matters.

Some useful commands with this build file:

See the help:

>nant -projecthelp

Create the binary file (no source):

>nant CreateBinZip

Create a source zip file:

>nant CreateSrcZip

Compile the app (in release mode) and create both the source and binary zip files:

>nant

Compile the app in debug but don't create the zip files:

>nant -D:debug=true Build

Compile just the core solution in debug mode and don't create zip files:

>nant -D:solutionName=Core -D:debug=true Build

There are a number of other combinations, take a look through the help to get ideas. One item missing at present is integration with nunit tests, but this is on the roadmap for future inclusion.