We are extremely enthusiastic about the upcoming DotNetNuke World Conference, which will be held in Orlando, November 9-11. We expect this to be a unique and unparalleled opportunity to learn about DotNetNuke while having a great time in one of the happiest places on earth. I would like to thank our customers, partners, sponsors and community members for the overwhelming support they have already shown for this event. DotNetNuke World 2011 is already on track to be our largest event ever!

In order to give everyone a chance to get back from their summer vacations and make their travel plans we are extending our discounted summer pricing until after labor day (September 14, 2011). However, If you are planning to attend the event I encourage you to register now. The conference price is now only $499 and the 3-day conference package that includes a full day of pre-conference training on designing, developing and administering DotNetNuke sites is only $799. After September 14th, prices will increase to the regular rate of $599 and $949 respectively.

So this year will be my 3rd year, (would be my 4th if I hadn’t bailed at the last minute on year 1), that I will be speaking at the St. Louis Day(s) of .Net. If you haven’t been to the STLDODN you should definitely check it out. It is a great two day event, and at $125 (if you register by 7/8/2011) the price can hardly be beat!

The event is being held this year on August 5th and 6th, 2011. Again at the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles, MO, about 10 minutes from where I used to live (two moves ago now).

Read the full blog post for all the details.

Have you ever installed a piece of software but weren’t sure where to go from there? Have you struggled to find that feature that you know is there, but you’re not quite sure how to turn it on?  Have you occasionally had problems just getting some complex piece of software installed?  These are challenges faced by the average user of almost every piece of software ever created.  Few software applications are so straight forward and simple that no documentation is required.  As software becomes more and more complex, the documentation and training requirements increase as well.  You need documentation and training that caters to the beginner as well as the expert.

I have heard many DotNetNuke users recite these same challenges.  Like every content management system or application framework I have ever encountered, DotNetNuke is a complex system, so it is not unusual that some new users will find it challenging to get started.  It is also not unusual that many experienced DotNetNuke users and developers will find new features and capabilities that they never knew existed.  The biggest hurdle for many users is the perception that DotNetNuke is not well documented or that the only place to find information is in the forums.

Over the last 8 years, the DotNetNuke team, and the DotNetNuke community has created a wealth of documentation, videos and books covering all aspects of DotNetNuke.  As an Open Source project, DotNetNuke has relied heavily on community members not just for coding and design skills, but also for providing much of the documentation that is available for the platform.  Unfortunately, we have not always done a very great job of making that information easy to find for users.  Some of the information is available on DotNetNuke.com, but often you may need to venture out to other websites to get information provided by the broader DotNetNuke community.

My purpose with this post is to provide a good starting point for anyone who is new to DotNetNuke, and even for many long-time DotNetNuke users, administrators, designers and developers.  This list is far from exhaustive, but will provide a very solid foundation that should answer a lot of questions.  I have used everyone of these resources and know that they are all provide high quality material that is fairly up to date.  If you have been using DotNetNuke for any period of time, I am sure you have your own list of resources that you find valuable.  Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what documentation and training resources you have found helpful.

So if you’ve been under a rock lately you might not have heard that the annual DotNetNuke conference is coming up. While in the past it has been branded as OpenForce, this year it is just simply DotNetNuke Connections, to better fit inline with the DevConnections banner.

This years event is once again going to be held in conjunction with DevConnections in Las Vegas Nevada, November 1-4. The conference is at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, a great venue that has been the amazing home to the DotNetNuke conference for the previous three years.

So this is the third and final post in the module development series of blogs I started last week. The first two covered

1. Configuring your development environment
2. Customizing and installing a C# module development template

This post is going to tell you how to utilize an open source project called NAnt to package up your modules quickly and easily, so that they can be installed on various DotNetNuke sites. The C# module development template that I released last week comes with a NAnt BUILD script included, so when you create a project using the template (as we do in blog #2) you are ready to use NAnt to package the module, you must get NAnt configure though, so let’s walk through that process.