Every month, DotNetNuke’s got a brand new look on Facebook! Do you Like it?

May is a month of “Festivals” the world over! From the Strawberry St. Festival in Richmond, VA to Sposalizio dell’ Albero (the Wedding of the Trees) in Vetralla, Italy people find reason to celebrate this glorious month.  And at DotNetNuke we believe we have reason to celebrate too!

That's right, spring is upon us. It's a time of rejuvenation, revitalization, a waking up of the senses as the sun creeps higher and higher into the sky. Flowers are blooming, winter's grip is receding and kids (young and old) the world over anticipate the sharp "crack" of the bat as April ushers in the start of baseball season! Like our new Baseball theme on Facebook!
 

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.

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?

As I sat to write my column for this month’s newsletter the news reached me that Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, Pixar visionary, husband, father, had died; a solemn moment to be sure.  Steve, still a young man of only 56 years had lost a private struggle with pancreatic cancer.  What does this have to do with DotNetNuke? Nothing. Everything. Something at least.

DotNetNuke in French or Spanish?  How about German, or Farsi or Simplified Chinese?  Historically DotNetNuke has been installable only in English.  But when we teamed up with Microsoft to install DotNetNuke through the Web Application Gallery, we knew it would create opportunity to better serve and support our international community.  We’re currently working with a few key volunteers to establish ongoing publication of a few localized versions of DotNetNuke.

Barely 3 weeks since the release of DotNetNuke 6 the response has been overwhelming!  Dramaticimprovements in the user interface, cost effective SharePoint integration, cloud folder providers and numerous other features are piquing the interest of business and technology users alike.  But not only does DotNetNuke 6 delight users, it also has some capabilities which are going to delight extension developers!

Buzz? Bees know that 6 is a magic number. And there’s much buzz about DotNetNuke version 6, recently released in its second beta.  DotNetNuke 6 promises to be a game changer for web based content management, or CMS as redefined by Shaun Walker… Cloud, Mobile, Social.

DotNetNuke 6 development has been underway for quite a while and the user interface has been getting a huge overhaul.  One of the key components of a website user interface is its menu.  And for DotNetNuke 6 we’ve chosen to work with Mark Allan...

As a kid, I remember the giddy feeling of anticipation as I crossed the threshold into Walt Disney’s homage to global unity, “it’s a small world”.  I’m starting to get that feeling again... DotNetNuke World 2011 is approaching!

We are very happy to announce the winners for this years DotNetNuke Design Challenge!  A field of 16 designers submitted 20 entries which have been reviewed by a panel of qualified judges. This yearscategories include Smartphone (mobile) as well as Traditional and “Zen Garden”.  Additionally, from amongst all the entries, a Community Favorite has been selected by your votes!

Some of you may have noticed that the Design Challenge voting for Community Favorite has been extended for a few days.  You may also have noticed that there are a few additional entries in the field. Early last week I received a cordial email, anxiously inquiring why submitted skins were not on display in the contest.  Our immediate response was that the submission date had passed and that...

Wow! It may be cold outside, but summer at DotNetNuke is seriously heating up!  And we’ve just made available a number of sizzling desktop backgrounds to keep you fired up until the thermometer catches on!  From our first excellent hires in The Netherlands and China to free mobile skins for your site and hints of a huge UI makeover in the latest 6.0 CTP (due any day!)… the blistering pace of progress means big wins for your DotNetNuke website!

Today is the first day of the MIX11 conference in Las Vegas.  And to help celebrate the Open Source Fest this evening, we're proud to launch a completely redesigned version of the DotNetNuke Extensions Forge!

 

Don’t take your eye off the stove! DotNetNuke is preparing an impressive array of tasty morsels for users of all interests and skills. Employees and Community members alike are doing everything they can to prepare for a summer feast! Are you hungry?

The Core team meets IRL (in real life) via conference call every other week.  These are a few notes from today's meeting.

On January 13th, Microsoft unveiled a new weapon in the Microsoft arsenal at CodeMash… WebMatrix!  And Shaun Walker and Joe Brinkman were onsite to show off DotNetNuke using the long anticipated release of Razor!

DotNetNuke is the business engine behind a vast number of websites across the globe.  Many of those websites power local, regional, federal and even international government agencies.  In a webinar on January 20th, at 10 AM PST, you'll have the opportunity to hear "live" from the team that created an award winning government website.  Can't make it?  Register anyway to receive access to the recorded version.

All I can say is “wow”!  We were very excited to use Microsoft’s Razor technology as the theme for this Hackathon programming contest and our entrants did not disappoint!  The winning entry from Ian Robinson, “Razor’s Edge User Map”, features integration of DotNetNuke’s user profile data with Google’s geolocation API to produce driving directions from a users location to a local business!  And using Razor technology in DotNetNuke made this amazingly simple to do!

If you’ve seen www.dotnetnuke.com today, you know what I mean!  As of today we’re sporting a brand new look, an extreme reorganization of our website content and increased visibility of community activity!  The change in our homepage alone should tell you a lot about what we’ve done and where we’re going.

The DotNetNuke Mobile Hackathon, conducted in cooperation with the St. Louis DotNetNuke User Group, Appcelerator and HyperCrunch, has been an awesome event and generated some really nice applications!  Typically, the short duration of the event (only a week of development) results in applications which are small, limited or even simple examples.  But this event has drawn some really terrific talent and produced some very interesting, very functional entries!

I got my wife an HTC EVO last weekend (way cool, by the way).  Her first stop?  The Android Market to load up on all of her favorite apps for getting information and staying connected. But why is that interesting?

At our current rate of registration, we expect to cross the 800K user mark soon... very soon... we're talking imminently!  For all you diehard DotNetNuker's out there, I'll give a $50 Amazon gift certificate to the one who makes the closest guess to the exact date and time of the 800,000th registration!  And I'll through in a promise for DotNetNuke t-shirt to boot (considering designs now)!

I'm very pleased to announce that as of today, DotNetNuke has an official community wiki!

This video is an excerpt from the Quality Team meeting today, where Dan Gilleland demonstrates how to practically implement the concepts of the TestDrivenDNN module project by his experience.

The evolution of DotNetNuke branding is well chronicled in chapter 1 of the Wrox Professional DotNetNuke 5 book but a lot has happened since Shaun and Nik originated the current logo concepts way back in 2005. The ever increasing capability of digital media processing has increased our appetite for resolution, detail and as Hollywood has proven, dimension!

This video provides step-by-step instruction for creating a project in the DotNetNuke Extensions Forge.  The Forge is the premier destination for open source enthusiasts to publish and promote open source extensions for DotNetNuke.  Enjoy!

So last week I shared a demo by Charles Nurse of alpha code for work being done in content localization.  That was done at our “big team” meeting which we have every other week, bringing together members from all the Community Teams for information / discussion purposes.  This is our “Community Team” meeting week, where the individual teams discuss their own items of business. This video is an ad hoc demonstration that Charles gave to the Internationalization Team showing how much has transpired since Shaun demo’d for the Eurpoean Day of DotNetNuke.  It’s nice to see that things move pretty quickly in the background!

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When DotNetNuke 5.4.2 was released, it contained fixes for 35 issues, 14 of which were submitted by community members!  The following list identifies those issues and the community members who logged them.  Even more folks contributed via comments and forum discussion, which is always appreciated.

There are currently 27 items on the roadmap for version 5.4.3.

In our bi-weekly team meeting Charles Nurse gave a live demo of alpha code for work being done in content localization.  Exciting stuff, especially for our international audience, some of whom received their own live demo today from Shaun Walker at the Eurpoean Day of DotNetNuke!