In this next part of the series, we’ll take a look at how the combination of Entity Framework and WCF Data Services gives you an awesome data access layer in no time flat, Quick, Easy and Powerful.

After working with ASP.Net Webforms for the past decade, the time has come to move on. I have enjoyed using Webforms and I was pretty good at bending ASP.Net to my will. Having recently tried some newer web frameworks I find that I am more productive than ever before. Over the past couple of years I have dabbled with ASP.Net MVC, jQuery and even WebFormsMVP but none of them truly held my interest for long. I never felt like they really offered solutions to problems that I was worried about. Because of my involvement with DotNetNuke, and the fact that it relies heavily on Webforms, I found that I couldn’t justify the use of some of these technologies. Things like WebFormsMVP added too much friction to the way I was used to working. ASP.Net MVC couldn’t really work in any meaningful way with DotNetNuke. And jQuery was a nice add-on, but it didn’t fundamentally change the way I developed modules.

I’m pleased to announce that DotNetNuke 6.1.3 and 5.6.7 are officially released. These maintenance releases contain several updates which further emphasizes our commitment to making the 6.X version of DotNetNuke the highest quality version ever. We will continue to release maintenance updates as needed while we continue to see more users upgrade to take advantage of the features included in 6.0 and 6.1.  

The next version of the Media Module for DotNetNuke is once again here! In previous releases, ground-breaking features like oEmbed were added. In future releases, expect to see mobile rendering and HTML5 to be in the mix. Today, there were a handful of things that needed to be taken care of before taking this module to the next level.

First, I would like to thank everyone for the feedback and support since the original release of this module. It’s been quite interesting. This module has many things planned for it, but I did want to make sure it lived in the wild for a bit to fix any issues that have been found before I begin adding more features. As it turns out, there were two significant fixes that were required.

A few weeks ago I was having dinner with some non-techy close friends (this group is made of medical doctors, cancer researchers and a photographer – definitely an interesting mix). The conversation was about the economy, the situation in Europe and at one point we started talking about social media / social networking. One of my friends said: “I really don’t get what the big deal is about social networking, I’ve been socially networking since I was little, actually, we’re socially networking right now”.

The Gooddogs DotNetNuke Technology Template includes the Blueprint CSS Framework, and this blog post / video will show you how to use the framework to control the formatting of your module’s output.

The Gooddogs Technology Project Template for DotNetNuke module development is now available in an early form for you to download and try out. This Visual Studio 2010 project template is pre-configured to allow you to build DotNetNuke modules using the latest technologies like Entity Framework, WCF Data Serviced, popular open source frameworks like Knockout,js, AutoMapper and the Blueprint CSS Framework

Step 6 – The road to success is not a straight line

I remember once hearing a phrase that made a lot of sense to me: “going from start to finish in a straight line takes a lot of luck, but going through the winding road until the finish line takes a genius”. This is true for creating successful smartphone websites with one additional complexity: the finish line is a moving target. In this section, I’m going to assume you’re a genius and not just an incredibly lucky person.

Many of you are not even aware that the Open Graph Protocol even exists. However, it has been the backbone of inter-connected websites ever since social sharing of content and web pages has existed. This is the standard that Facebook, Google+, and others have adopted to properly connect, share, and display content from site to site when a visitor decides to share it. Of course, like any other standard, every site varies on how well they adopt this particular standard.

One of my favorite features in DotNetNuke 6.1 is the new Client Resource Management capabilities.  This is a feature that I wanted to see as part of the core a few years ago.  As a commercial module developer and DotNetNuke website owner, I was constantly keeping track of overall page output with each DotNetNuke release. DotNetNuke 6.0 introduced several new components that greatly improved the user interface, but unfortunately also added more to the overall page size. We knew we needed to get better control over the number of resources needed for each page and we knew it needed to be done for DotNetNuke 6.1.

Good news! Version 6 of the DNN Events module will at last support Daylight Saving Time.

Ever since the current project team took on the module in 2008, the inability to accurately display dates in the users timezone and to export iCal (.ics) files that are 100% correct, has been a major frustration. With version 6 that frustration will be put to rest.

I’m working on a new Visual Studio 2010 Project Template, that I am calling the Gooddogs DotNetNuke Technology Module Template.  My goal is to develop a template for building DotNetNuke Modules using the latest technologies. Let’s face it, it’s 2012 now, and I’m tired of building modules the same way I did back in 2003. I want to be able to build modules using the latest cool stuff.

It’s once again been a while, but this version of the Media Module for DotNetNuke has been sitting in the hopper for a while. Since before DNN 6.0 was released! As of this moment, I am proud to say that the next version of the Media Module is available to you in the form of version 04.01.00.

In March of this year I made some blog posts about my intentions with FAQ and I have (or I should say, we have, since Torsten Weggen joined the FAQ team) reached a serious new target: a complete conversion to C# and some major enhancements. The result: FAQ 05.00.00, which available for download on CodePlex.

This month DotNetNuke Corporation put some extra muscle behind community reported issues.  And comparing issue logs with Wordpress and Drupal the difference is impressive.  Check it out.

The Events team is proud to announce that Events 05.02.01 has been released. Events 05.02.01 will work for any DNN version 5.5.0 and up. The downloads can be found on the Events Project page on CodePlex.

December has been an exciting month for the social collaboration market.  Jive Software went public, Telligent acquired Leverage Software and Facebook announced a new feature for Pages.  What does this tell us about social media and what does it mean to DotNetNuke?

If you’ve been in the DotNetNuke community for as long as I have and attend any event, you have undoubtedly run into people that haven’t used DNN in years. In fact, the most common type of person I run into with this situation is someone that last looked at DotNetNuke when it was version 3! I wanted to take some time and generate some videos to hopefully invite those people back to take a new look at what is essentially a totally different platform today!

Any of you that attended DotNetNuke World this year would probably agree… There were few moments when you didn’t see me holding a camera. Most often, I was pointing it at you too, hoping to catch you having the fun time that we all know you were. While I am not a professional photographer, I definitely do my best to create the best images possible. Hopefully the pictures below reflect that.

I’m pleased to announce that DotNetNuke 6.1.2 and 5.6.6 are officially released.  These maintenance releases contain several updates which emphasize our commitment to security and overall quality of DotNetNuke 6.

When it comes to open source licensing the discussion usually falls to either complete, nonchalant dismissal of concern or full-on crusade style battle to the death.  Why is that?  And should you be concerned?

Step 5 – Testing Smartphone Websites Using Emulators

I am by no means an expert on open source licenses. I am not a lawyer. I have, however, been part of the overall open source software community since roughly around 1999 or 2000. During this time, I’ve dealt with open source software almost exclusively. It’s a blur at this point. I began at a time where PHP was king, and Microsoft’s (now Classic) ASP was trying to get in on the party. Long story short, I found out immediately that I loved open source software and I never looked back.