As most of you know I was at the DotNetNuke World 2011 event in Orlando Florida this past week, and I thought I would give a quick recap of my experience with the event and share how much different I felt this event was in comparison to the previous DotNetNuke Connections events.  To help try and give proper justice to the topic, I'm going to break my review out in a few different categories to help make it a bit more understandable, and without further delay, here we go!

A while back I released a tool called Secure My Install that was designed to help people take existing DotNetNuke sites and change the way that they store passwords to use a more secure process.  Many people have used that module successfully to convert their sites, however, I never took the time to share the few small steps that are needed to simply "secure" your site as soon as you set it up so that you can avoid all of the hassle in the beginning.  In this post I'll walk through the simple process of changing your configuration to go from Encrypted Passwords to Hashed passwords and a bit of detail as to "why" you want to make the change.

Now that DotNetNuke 6.x has been out for a while and with the recent release of DotNetNuke 6.0.1 while I was on vacation I thought I'd take the time to write a must requested blog post regarding my thoughts on the DotNetNuke 6.x platform and performance.  Keep in mind, these points are my own personal opinion and should be considered that only, so without further delay, I'll answer the most common questions that I get.

It has been a long time in the running, honestly too much time, but finally the DNN Documents Module version 05.00.00 has been released.  This release was critical as it resolved a number of issues that existed with the last "stable" version and the more problematic issues with some of the other releases that were completed in the interm.  Now that we have this milestone behind us, where does the module go now?

Like many people I have been building DotNetNuke Modules using Chris Hammond's DotNetNuke Module Template.  It is a great template set and works well in 99.9% of cases.  However, recently I have been building more and more complex module solutions for customers where within a single project I have a need to package up two or more "distinct" modules.  Therefore I have one DotNetNuke Module Manifest and it will install multiple modules.  Overall the process works great, but there is one small nuance, the filename, if you have two modules you will get xx.xx.xx.yy.yy.yy as the filename, which is the version of module 1, and the version of module two.  In my case I just want the first module to show, and in this post I'll show you how.

Almost two years ago I blogged about How To Get Design-Time Support for DotNetNuke Controls on my personal blog, and back then the solution seemed to be the easiest, just change one setting in your project and everything was just fine.  Well, as the years have progressed and people have downloaded and worked with projects I've ran into a few issues with this route and now have a better solution for this.

I'll admit from the start that it has been a long time coming, but I am working on resolving issues and handling feature requests for the Documents Module.  As part of this, I would like to reach out to the community for some suggestions and feedback on the features that you would like to see.

A while back I blogged about Creating DotNetNuke Scheduled Jobs and promised a "part two" article, this is that article.  In the previous installment I talked about the process of creating and manually installing a scheduled job.  This article is designed to take this to the next step and discuss how you interact with the Scheduler System to handle installation and other validation methods of scheduled jobs.  I will explain the finer points in regards to checking to see if a job exists and creating/modifying jobs.

So for a long time now I have been promising an article on creating DotNetNuke Scheduled jobs and finally I'm actually getting it written.  This article is actually the first in a series of two articles.  This one will start out with the programming process involved, and the general "manual" setup process to actually get the job going.  The second article will focus on using the DotNetNuke API's to be able to validate and configure a scheduled job from within a module, making the user setup process easier.

As I get back into blogging here on DotNetNuke.com I thought I would take a quick moment to answer publicly one of the most common questions that I am asked: Why do you use DotNetNuke?.  So in this posting I'll give my short description on why I started using DotNetNuke back in 2006 and why I'm still so fond of the product today!

I know that this is a little late with DevConnections being a little over a week-and-a-half ago, but I thought that it was still important that I get my highlights out here on the blog as i think there are number of incredibly good things coming in the future for DotNetNuke.  For a more detailed review I highly recommend that you check out Will Strohl's blog post, as he goes into a bit deeper discussion than I do.

Earlier this year I was made a member of the DotNetNuke core team, and with this designation I have been able to help make some of the changes that I have been encouraging over the past few years.  Since the new DotNetNuke core team structure was identified teams within the core have been established to help create smaller groups that can more easily tackle specific deliverables.  I jumped at the opportunity to work on the "Reference" team which was created to work on reference materials and documentation.

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First of all I just wanted to start off by apologizing to the community for the delay in getting a publicly released update regarding the status of the Documents Module project.  The team and I have suffered some delays due to the demands of our day jobs that have slowed the development process of the planned upcoming release of the Documents module.  At this point in time however, I am happy to report that it looks like we are on the calm side of that storm, and we are working rapidly to finish up the release.

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 After a long time waiting and a lot of unknowns regarding the actual publish/ship date I have received word that the Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming book started shipping from Wrox warehouses on Monday 2/9/2009!  The book is available for purchase from Amazon.com and many other book resellers.  I am really looking forward to the book getting out into...

I apologize for the delay in providing an update to the community regarding the progress of the Documents Module.  Given the holiday season we did not get quite as far along as we had hoped in the final quarter of 2008, however, we have been hard at work this year to get the finishing touches on the 4.2.0 release of the module.  Before I go into detail regarding the actual development I have some exciting news on the documentation side.

As I announced after forming the team last year when I was provided...

I know that I am long overdue for this posting and I do apologize to the community, but I wanted to take this opportunity to lay out the roadmap for the next release of the Documents module.  The next release will be version 04.02.00 which we are currently hoping to provide to the release tracker no later than the end of the year as long as schedules permit.

Overall we have had great feedback on the current module, and the team is excited to get started on really adding items to this module, this release...

 A while back on my personal blog site, mitchelsellers.com I provided an update and even asked for a bit of community input regarding the content to be included in my soon to be released book "Professional DotNetNuke 5 Module Programming".  I have to first of all thank all members of the community that provided feedback and suggestions as to what you wanted to see covered in the book.  I took all comments very seriously and did my best to ensure that the book can tailor to the needs of the greatest common denominator.

 Well we are about a month after the official release of the Documents Module version 4.1.0 and I thought it was about time to update the community on the status of the module development and what the planned next steps are for the next 4.2.0 release.  The following points are some highlights of what is going on current, and planned items.  As always, please comment and feel free to share your thoughts.

I am proud to announce that Version 4.1.0 of the Documents module has now been released. To many people this has been a much awaited release as it provides fixes for many "painful" issues that have plagued the module since version 4.0.0. Below you will find a listing of all fixed items for the 4.1.0 release.

DOC-7200: Issue with no category selected defaulting to country list DOC-7201: Default sort options not properly performing sort DOC-7202: Display in other languages can result in wrapped...

As version 4.1.0 of the Documents module is progressing through the release tracker I have been working to finalize the team members that will help to make the next versions of the Documents module.  As of this time we now have the team in place and roles have been identified.  Team resources have been divided into three functional groups; development, testing and documentation, and localization testing.  The following will tell a little bit about the team and each of the members responsible.

Development

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After seeing this on Michael Washington's blog, I thought it would be interesting to put this out here as well, as a personal element to my blogging here on DotNetNuke.com

How old were you when you first started programming? It really depends on what you count as started programming.  I know I started at a very young age, sitting at my dads office playing around with gqbasic and qbasic.  I'm guessing I was 9-10 years old at that time.  I think I created my first webpage when I was 12-13 years old.  I...

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has submitted their information with interest in joining the Documents module team.  At this time I believe I have enough individuals to fill the current needs of the team, stay tuned over the next week to two weeks and the new team members will be publicly announced.

Also, to provide a quick update regarding version 4.1.0 of the Documents module.  It has failed the release process for the second time, for this I greatly apologize, I have been working...

Due to other commitments I have lost the one additional team member that was part of the Documents module team.  I am looking for individuals that would be interested in helping with the development, testing, and/or documentation of the Documents module.  If you are interested please send me an e-mail to msellers@iowacomputergurus.com with information about your background!

Just a few moments ago I submitted Documents module version 04.01.00 to the DotNetNuke Release Tracker.  You can track its progress here.  This is the long awaited release that includes fixes for the most pressing technical issues that were identified in Version 04.00.00.  Below is a quick listing of each item resolved in this release.

DOC-7710 - Added compatible...

It has been a while since I have taken over as team lead for the Documents Module project and I wanted to provide everyone in the community an update on the status of the module.

I have re-formed the team which currently consists of myself and Ted Ogrean.  We are currently working on a number of items that have been identified in the current module as well as working in a few small enhancements to ensure that our next release not only resolves the outstanding issues but provides a bit of new functionality.

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It has been a little under a week since I have taken over as the project lead of the Documents module and I thought I would take this time to make a short blog post to update the community regarding the intended path for the module.

 

As of now version 4.0.0 of the module is the most current release, as we are aware of a few existing re-creatable issues. All of these items have been recorded and updated in Gemini as of last night and these items are the planned scope of the next release as we want...