Just under 2 months ago, I posted a blog about what I have been up to that included some details about an upcoming module upgrade. Although it's been a long time coming , I am pleased to announced that we just finished up upgrading the forum here on dotnetnuke.com. If you follow the project at all, you know that we have had to delay the upgrade here many times due to many different things (which my previous blog post touches on). While the reasons for this vary, the main issue we were facing is the large number of users along with posts here, not to mention the amount of traffic this site sees. These factors along with the need to keep dotnetnuke.com running with minimal interruptions dictated that there needed to be some type of load testing done on the module prior to the upgrade. 

The past 3 months I haven't blogged much here on dotnetnuke.com. I still continued blogging on my AppTheory blog with misc. tips and tricks around DotNetNuke but instead of spending my free time blogging here I have been working on several things for DotNetNuke. Well, as things are getting closer to Open Force my time sees to be freeing up a bit. While I can't go into details on everything, I figured it is worth touching on a few. 

In previous blogs I discussed the User Control Panel and the Moderator Control Panel. Now, it is time to discuss the Admin Control Panel. I spend a decent amount of time using the admin control panel. The reasons for this vary, from me being the developer who tests this most, but also I am responsible for the administration of several sites that use the module. Most things in the admin control panel don't change once they are set, however, you should always review the control panel and all options when you update the module or just installed a new version (or instance on a portal).

In my previous blog I discussed the User Control Panel and the reasons why we decided to make the changes we did as well as what we brought in terms of new features. In the Moderator Control Panel, the topic of this blog, the reasons are very similar. Being a moderator here on www.dotnetnuke.com allows me to spend time here moderating and using the module just like any other moderator would (instead of just being a person who posts or develops the module, I have to deal with moderation as a real user and experience the same dififculties they do - unlike simple testing). Beyond the reasons written in my previous blog, one of the things that came to my mind was all the information collected that is useful but NOT displayed to moderators.

In 4.5.3, one of the primary goals was to minimize post backs. This goal was across the entire module, from end users to moderators and module administrators. For moderators and module administrators, finding areas to enhance via Ajax was pretty easy, all we had to do was look at where those users spend a large portion of their time within the module. However, for typical end users the areas a developer can expose an Ajax experience quickly is very limited because of the nature of forums and SEO.

Forum version 4.5.3 is now available for download. This release is huge, so please make sure you really check this out (ie. test) before diving into production updates as the interface has changed somewhat and there are many more options available than in previous versions. Overall, this release is a great step forward and fixes many (if not all) the previously verified issues. This release will work with DNN core versions 4.8.1 or greater.

The forum module documentation is being updated for the module's 4.4.4 release. The previous version of the document is really out of date now but was definitely a large help to the community when it was current and even for a few versions beyond that. As with the previous versions, the document starts with the module installation process and then makes its way into the administrative configuration options. All other aspects of the module are covered as it progresses, including moderation as well as simply using...

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It's been awhile since I posted a blog here so I figured it was about time to catch peeps up. While I have been busy finishing up a book, I also have had a rather hectic work schedule which kept me pretty occupied. During this time, however, I did find some time to adjust the track along and fix bugs in the forum module as they were reported. The result over the past 3.5 months is Forum 4.4.4; which will be hitting the DotNetNuke release tracker this week and will require DotNetNuke core 4.6.2 or greater.

If you haven't noticed, the Forum 4.4.3 has finally been released to the community. If you would like more details about the release, please read on to find valuable reasources.

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As a both a consumer and developer, I understand the importance of being able to find various resources online besides a support forum. In the past, the forum project has attempted to offer downloadable User Documentation, which we will continue to provide, but we never really offered anything else beyond that and online forum support. This is all about to change!

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In my previous blog post here I covered Forum Behavior. If you recall, Forum Behavior is how a forum 'behaves' in terms of posting and viewing access which are all controlled via a forum permissions grid or the module's permissions. If you need further details on this. please visit my previous blog post located at: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Blogs/tabid/825/EntryID/1550/Default.aspx.

Another item that...

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To help breakdown what each of the Forum Behavior items mean, I decided to post a brief explanation of how they work. The reason I have combined these items and now use a drop down list is to make setting up a forum a more intuitive process instead of having several checkboxes that each require a postback. While I will gladly listen to any conversation around potential changes, I don't see this ever being completely overhauled.

Public - Users who can view the module can view Public Forums (Must be logged in)...

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I am not even sure what to write about with regards to the upcoming release. I have covered several things over the past months, written updates on www.dnnforums.com in posts and updated the project page to post details about the release. Because I am stumped here, just leave a comment on what you would like to hear about and i will blog details about suggested items. Here is a list you can choose from:

Release Notes:

Version 04.04.03 of the core Forum module....

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As I was waiting for the forum module to go through the release process, I found a need to add polling. Since the module barely made it thorugh the release tracker, I decided I might as well re-submit the latest package as it also included several minor bug fixes that were reported by beta testers. It didn't stop there, I also found that I could add the "No replies" option in threads view so that users can easily identify those posts with no replies rather easily.

To explain how users will be able to do this, I have provided a short walk through. Please note, this is only available in the 04.04.03 release of the module which is currently in the DNN Release Tracker. Another note, polls are enabled at the forum level and are only availble to registered users. Assuming that you meet the requirements, here is how users add a poll.

...

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Last night, or early this morning depending on your view of today/yesterday, I had to do a production push for a client. Since the time I was able to do this was limited, for good reason being its a very active site, I had a couple hours of down time waiting for it. So, I decided to take Shaun's advice and do some SQL Profiling of the previous forum release vs. the current one (going through the process) using a copy of dnn.com data.

My initial results were pretty good. The time it took to view a previously...

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The 04.04.00 version of the forum module has been submitted to the DotNetNuke release process. I am not sure how long it will take to complete the process, but I don't think the module will fail any part of it. The reason for my thinking is the high amount of testing done by myself and a group of team members on www.dnnforums.com. This beta site really allowed us to test changes as I made them and also allowed team testers access to the module to test the various usage...

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I was looking around for some details on the xml node available for an installable DNN module labeled compatibleversions. I was able to find a forum post in our private team forums where Shaun talks about this (from back in November) and I figured I would share with the community. This node can be placed in the .dnn manifest file, used by the DotNetNuke module installer,  and can set the minimum required DotNetNuke core version a module requires.

For example, the next major forum release requires DotNetNuke...

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Earlier this week I released the Beta 2 version of the Forum module. As with the previous version, I expect there to be bugs. The module is definitely feature complete at this point, but we are fine tuning a few other things during this beta period in addition to tracking bugs.

We want to...

Change some of the css classes to make use of existing skin css classes via subclassing. Ability to render iconbar as a styled text link instead of icons. Correct any outstanding usability...

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As someone who works with DotNetNuke six days a week, I think I have a pretty solid understand of the framework and developing modules for it. Sometimes, however, I am developing so much that I miss information about new features or new items that I as a module developer should be aware of. Even if a full list of changes were given to me, I do not necessarily know by reading this list what things will effect my work or what new API items are available to me and how to make use of them.

Although it may...

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For those who have been following the project at all, the past seven months I have spent doing a major overhaul of the module. If you see some of my previous blogs I explain some changes around permissions, adding email templating, bringing a designer onto the team, and a few other things over this time period. In addition to these items, the major item I added was an email notification scheduled task. This allows all email sending to be pushed into a seperate thread and increases the performance of the module...

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I have spent a decent amount of time with the forums module recently as I have been looking at integrating it with another project at work. While I am not really going to touch on that topic much, but I do want to say that with the next release this module will have the ability to and an example of how to: integrate with other modules. The reason I brought this up, however, is because I am sick of the UI. (This happens to me with anything I spend a significant amount of time on.)

I was working on the forums this weekend trying to not only finish what I started with the recent changes covered in previous blogs, but to also work on performance a bit where possible. While I was doing this and reading posts in our forum here on DotNetNuke.com, I decided to throw a new feature in simply because I feel it is needed for this site so badly. What I came up with is Thread Status.



(Not a new concept) I am still working on smoothing...

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Well, I haven't had much time this past week or so to work on anything involving the Forum project. I did, however, want to show a glimpse of what I did just before that after getting the permissions in check. Based on community feedback one of the biggest issues with this module is email notifications. This is actually divided into two seperate major enhancements, one of which I began now as its the easiest.

From the Forum Administration Control Panel you can now see how Gallery/Smiles has become Avatars,...

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I have spent a bit of time working on some of the core items of the module. I started a vote to see what the community wanted and offered three choices:

Permissions Enhancement Email Notification Enhancement Skinning Enhancement While seeing the trend so far going towards email, I decided to look at what it would take to re-write permission control since I said the winning vote will not be in the next release. This was what seemed to be the most critical out of the options in my opinion. I realized...

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While there were many changes included in the latest series of DotNetNuke releases, there were a few that even I overlooked. When I was going through the code today, I was reminded of a few of them and figured I should share with the community in case they too have overlooked these.

One of the problems I have found with DotNetNuke over the years is that lots of the functionality is dependant on items being available in the querystring. What I mean by this is these very forums, for example. When I receive...

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The latest forum module version 3.20.06 is available for download. It is also included with the latest DotNetNuke x.3.1 source installs. This module has only been tested in Core versions 3.2.2, 4.0.3 and the x.3.1 lines. There was the 3.20.05 version which was available only with the 3.3/4.3 downloads, but we found a couple minor issues we wanted to fix immediately.

The user guide will not be published for this release, please see the previous doc as most of the functionality is the same. (Although there...

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To help explain some of the recent changes in the latest DotNetNuke Core release, I decided to blog about the Membership Services Provider abstraction. While this will not go into great detail for you to start creating your own set of providers, it should provide some guidance to help you understand what has changed and some history behind it to help understand why. To help make sure all levels of readers can follow along there are a few fundamental things to understand before moving on:

An abstract...

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I have released the forum beta to the private testing members of the community. This is all project leads, Core Team members and of course the project team members. I also invited a few others who are members of other projects of DotNetNuke to get involved.  This is not a public beta as the module will be released within one week from Friday. Yes there is a solid deadline for this, unlike most project announcements involving release dates which are vague.

There is a pretty extensive list of fixes and...

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The next gallery version needs to be talked about in public. I hope that with this communication it will ease some of the frustrations of the community who use this module. I also want to state at this time the next version wil require DotNetNuke Core 3.3 or 4.1 or greater. We are too much into this version to be able to back out of the dependancy on 3.3. The reason is the core file server/manager integration.  

Gallery Version 03.20.05:

This will be released probably towards the end of June. (We...

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If you would like a full status report as to what is going on you may want to review my Forum blog with the same date. To add to it, Nestor has taken on the DAL setup for this module while I continue to push forward on other items currently on my plate. (As I said, see the forum blog for more details.) I will be getting together with Nes here in the next few days so we can discuss and hopefully get the team together as a whole on this major change.