Leigh Pointer

Openforce Europe 2010

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:07:57 GMT

The year moves very fast or is it because I am getting old! Anyways, OpenForce Europe is again in the Netherlands. As all ways, this is a good event and something not worth missing.

Location : Zeist
Cost: €695 (This is the regular entrance fee)

Coverage:

Custom Authentication and Authorization in DotNetNuke
Secure Module Development
Exploring DotNetNuke?s Extension Points
The Art of Unit Testing DotNetNuke Extensions
Advanced jQuery & DNN: Putting the Asynchronous back in AJAX
Consistent Quality: Automated Extension Packaging
Mobile websites with ASP.NET and DotNetNuke
DotNetNuke installation manifest file (.dnn) explained!
Using SQL Azure as DotNetNuke database
Making ASP.NET Testable with WebformsMVP
Designing for the Mobile Web
Future of DotNetNuke Design with HTML5 and CSS3

Speakers: (Currently)

Shaun Walker
Brandon Haynes
Vicenc Masanas
Ian Robinson
Cuang Dang
Stefan Kamphuis
Erik van Ballegoij

More information can be found on the main conference page:
The OpenForce page is: http://www.sdn.nl/openforce
Registration is here: http://www.sdn.nl/sdcregistration

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Category: Community

Category: Events

.Net Framework - 3.5 and 3.5 Client, as well as 4.0 and 4.0 Client?

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:04:00 GMT

A question arose today about .Net Framework - 3.5 and 3.5 Client, as well as 4.0 and 4.0 Client. In Visual Studio 2010 you are able to select your Framework target. This is not new, but which one to select! So what is the difference between the Framework and the Framework Client?

The differences are the components that are installed. The "Client" profiles are intended to be slimmed down releases that include only what is needed by client/desktop applications. For example, it doesn't include the ASP.NET (web) assemblies, etc. The "Full" (or non-Client) profiles include everything.

Normally, the "Redistributable" packages are the distribution of the Framework itself and each profile should have its own installer package. For example:

.NET Framework 4 [Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer)]

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile [Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile (Standalone Installer)]

Whilst this will rarely play a part with DotNetNuke I thought I would just give the heads up!

Happy coding!

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Category: Development

Save time in Visual Studio by skipping the splash screen

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:57:00 GMT

Visual Studio, by default, displays a splash screen on start-up. I have noticed through the versions this is getting longer and longer. The splash screen just displays the branding information of Visual Studio and also includes information (if supplied) for all packages installed. This information can take sometime to display and I and my fellow developers do not want to see this every time Visual Studio is started. It is basically preferred instead to get right to the job at hand and start coding.

The display of the splash screen can be turned off by passing the /nosplash parameter to devenv.exe. The difference I have seen (as to my machine spec) is considerable and on other machines it will vary.

I have also tried this with the SQL Server Management Studio with the same effects. So, don’t splash! play sensibly !

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Category: Development

Continuous Integration Scripts

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:19:15 GMT

One of my main tasks working at the United Nation and the European Commission Joint Research Centre was to get all developers on the same page with developing in DotNetNuke. This is a difficult task in itself as everybody has their own flavour. So the best way to tackle this was to introduce the DotNetNuke templates. I used the ones from Chris Hammond on CodePlex both C# and VB to do this. They ran straight out of the box and with some minor customisations we are all on the same page, until! Moving over to Visual Studio 2010 an issue arose which would not build the package.

The main difference, is that in the Visual Studio 2010 version, the 42353,42354,42355 value has been added; Inside the IDE, this manifests itself as the following setting in the Project Properties | Compile section as:

"Function returning intrinsic value type without return value" = None

This isn't a problem when building code inside Visual Studio 2010, but when trying to build the code through our continuous integration scripts, it fails with the following errors:

[msbuild] vbc : Command line error BC2026: warning number '42353' for the option 'nowarn' is either not configurable or not valid

[msbuild] vbc : Command line error BC2026: warning number '42354' for the option 'nowarn' is either not configurable or not valid

[msbuild] vbc : Command line error BC2026: warning number '42355' for the option 'nowarn' is either not configurable or not valid

Now you could just edit *.*proj project file and delete all occurrences of 42353,42354,42355 which isn’t the sweetest of options.

This solution is more simple than I first thought, but when it is right in front of you nose it is not that obvious.

As we are using visual studio 2010 we have you changed the build script file in the template to use the 4.0 version of MSBuild?

To fix this, follow Chris’s blog Using and Customizing a C# Module Development Template and add this step.

Open up the ModuleName.build in a text editor and locate the line (line 45)

v3.5\msbuild.exe" failonerror="true">

and change to

v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe" failonerror="true">

Save the file and repackage.The templates run great and I will be doing a few more customisations to meet our development needs.

On further reflection, adding a few more configuration items to the template to create a more robust solution.

In the prj file remove the version number of the DotNetNuke Reference. This is load the DotNetNuke.dll from the defined folder.
Also in the prj file at the add the framework tag v3.5

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Tags: Continuous Integration,NANT

Category: Development

The DotNetNuke Dashboard

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:25:00 GMT

… The Dashboard was introduced to DotNetNuke sometime ago. It details information about the Web Server, Database Server, Host, Portals, Modules and Skins. It can also be extended. Well I always thought that this was useful information but when would I need to refer to it.

A few weeks ago I was having some issues with my hosting provider. My DNN solutions had been migrated to another platform. This all being said, :

I was not notified
My Email was not working as it did before
My FTP was inaccessible
My Database Server had moved

Due to the fact that the platform had moved to a different host, my solutions was displaying :

“You are using an unlicensed and unsupported version of DotNetNuke Professional Edition. Please contact sales@dnncorp.com for information on how to obtain a valid license.”

I of course called support and raised a few tickets with them. I then thought I would have a look at the Dashboard ! To my horror, I saw that I was running on Windows Server 2003 after being told it was Windows Server 2008 platform. I dug a little deeper to also find that I was running on a shared IP Address which also is not a preferred solution.

I have now changed my hosting provider and very happy . My solution is now running on a dedicated IP address and the Dutch DotNetNuke User Group site is performing a lot lot better.

I guess the real point of this blog post is not to rant but to make sure you are getting what you have paid for and check with the DotNetNuke Dashboard to make sure it is just so.

Handy Resource:
You can easily check if you are on a shared IP Address simply by entering your IP address into http://whois.domaintools.com/xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx the tool will tell you if the IP address is shared.

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Category: User Groups

Category: Community

Category: Quality

Small post

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:05:01 GMT

I like facebook and it is a good place to promote. so here it goes http://www.facebook.com/pages/DotNetNuke/33477132954 just become a fan!

Vault and Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2005/8

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:38:38 GMT

After reinstalling the Vault software used for source control of DNN I started to receive this error!

TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
------------------------------

Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IServiceProvider'. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID '{6D5140C1-7436-11CE-8034-00AA006009FA}' failed due to the following error: No such interface supported (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004002 (E_NOINTERFACE)). (Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop)

OpenForce Europe closed its doors...

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:28:28 GMT

OpenForce Europe closed its doors on Tuesday evening and I must say it was a great event even though CH drank all the JD in this small country! Meeting new faces is always nice. It is always great to hear the passion for DotNetNuke rather than read it.

OpenForce Booth

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:15:08 GMT

OpenForce 2008 (Europe)

Leigh.Pointer@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:29:33 GMT

After some jigging and poking the Dutch DotNetNuke User Group will have their own booth at the OpenForce Europe 2008 event in the Netherlands (www.sdc.nl).