With any software product you will occasionally have a release that you wish you could take back.  Microsoft had Windows Vista, and Tuesday we had DotNetNuke 5.3.0.  We had a couple of significant bugs which slipped through the QA process and which resulted in a major impact to customers.  Rather than continue to compound the problem we have made the decision to pull the 5.3.0 packages from CodePlex and from DotNetNuke...

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A "low" security issue was fixed in 5.3.0 that can affect older browsers (netscape navigator 8.1 and firefox 2.x)

I am happy to announce that the DotNetNuke 5.3.0 release is now available for download.  This release marks the fourth month in a row where we have hit our targeted release date.  That is a huge accomplishment for the project as the DotNetNuke Corporation engineering team is really starting to gel.  During this release cycle we also had a number of significant contributions by core team members. 

Over the past year, as our development methodology has undergone change and we have hired more members for the engineering team, the core team contributions have dropped off.  This was mainly because it is very hard to manage contributions when our own internal processes are not well defined.  Now that our DotNetNuke Corp. engineering team finally has some stable processes in place, it will be even easier for core team and community members to contribute to the project.  We recognize that sometimes you need to take a step back in order to re-evaluate and re-engineer your processes.  Having spent the last year doing just that, we are now in a much better position to work with the core team and the community to continue evolving the platform at a much more rapid pace to keep up with the ever changing web application landscape.  This is definitely a great time to be a part of DotNetNuke Corporation and the DotNetNuke Community.

Over the last few days I have been refactoring my TDD Module to use the new Web Forms MVP code that is now baked into DNN.  The structure of my TDD module was based on the MVP pattern so the refactoring hasnt been too difficult.  With a bit of help from Charles I have it nearly converted.  The next step is to rewrite the tests.  Im going to be using Moq as the mocking framework so there will be a lot less code as I wont have to worry about the hand coded mocks I had before.

After that I'll address the automation tests giving a complete example of how you can build a fully tested and testable module. 

You can download where Im up to from CodePlex, email me if you'd like to contribute.

In a break from the normal we're reporting on an issue which is not a DotNetNuke problem, but rather an IIS (internet information server) problem. The reason we're doing this is that we've had a few reports of it being exploited in conjunction with very old DotNetNuke websites - specifically versions 3.0 to 4.8.2 that are running on Windows 2003/IIS6 and that have not followed Microsoft security best practices. We'd also like to provide some advice and guidance to the community and not allow any incorrect reports to cause undue concern.

The 5.3.0 development cycle has been unlike any in our 7+ year history.  In some respects this is good and in others – not so much.  As I explained in my Just Like Clockwork post, we are working hard to make monthly releases a habit and to have release schedules that are predictable.  DotNetNuke 5.3.0 marks the first major release we have attempted since splitting our engineering group into feature development and maintenance groups.  As always, doing anything for the first time can be challenging.

The maintenance group has gotten into a pretty good grove with our monthly releases, but adding an external group into the mix has added an additional level of complexity.  The maintenance group is able to make our changes in a single branch and quickly test, package and release our monthly stabilization releases.  Unfortunately, the feature dev group works in a separate branch which means code merges, integration testing, lots and lots of regression testing and in general a more complex testing and release process.  We certainly have learned quite a bit from this first cycle which we’ll apply to future major releases.

 If you are anywhere in the San Francisco Bay or Silicon Valley area this post is for you. Others are welcome, but you might find the drive a little long depending on where you are.

On 3/23/2010 we are going to be holding our first DotNetNuke User’s Group here in the DotNetNuke Corporation’s Headquarters in San Mateo, CA. All are invited and encouraged to attend, it doesn’t matter if you know DotNetNuke or not yet, user groups are a great way to learn about the software, and get to meet other people using the platform for a variety of different things.

You can get more information from our website, but there is some basic info on the full blog post ->

We've been working on introducing content localization enhancements for a while now. Back in 5.2.0 we started to add some of the API pieces and other supporting framework that we would build on and the original aim was for 5.3.0 to contain support for localisation portal settings. However, this has proved more tricky than it would originally appear, so rather than rush out an imperfect solution with 5.3.0, we've pushed it back a month to the 5.3.1 release.

This article is cross-posted from my personal blog.

A year or so ago I wrote a series of blog posts about building testable modules using the Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern. ...

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As I indicated last week, I am pleased to announce the Call for Speakers for the 2010 DotNetNuke Connections conference.  Once again, this years conference will be held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas from November 1st through the 4th with pre and post-conference training available as well. 

We could not do this show without our speakers and we have been fortunate in the past to have had some great session proposals by many well respected speakers.  Some of those speakers have been selected to present their sessions and unfortunately some of them have not been.  Such is the nature of any conference.  As usual we will continue to look for new speakers to bring fresh new topics to the conference.  So if you have submitted sessions in the past then I would encourage you to submit again.  If you have public speaking experience and some great ideas for sessions then I would invite you to submit your sessions as well.

Remember that all speakers will be required to present at least two sessions.  So make sure you submit plenty of session abstracts to improve your odds of getting selected.

This article is cross-posted from my personal blog.

One of the tenets of Unit Testing is that in order to test a piece of code we often need to create some alternate implementation of one or more of the Interfaces involved in a test.  This concept is generally called a Test Double.  However there are many types of Test Double, and there is some degree...

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At the last Microsoft MVP summit, I was eating lunch with Jeff Paries who I had collaborated with on previous Silverlight projects, but had not met in person until that week. I commented that I had not used the Silverlight gauge he created about a year ago because it was too big...

The last three weeks I have found myself extremely busy with the Skinning Contest. First, I built a module for the voting portion of the contest (with the help of Joe, thanks Joe!). When originally deployed, we found some problems with allowing everyone to vote so I apologize to those who initially couldn't vote (we have corrected this as of last week), so I spent a bit more time investigating that. Next I started preparing a skin object for public release (also for the skinning contest). Finally, I spent a good portion of this week re-packaging the 25 submissions for public consumption (this requires proper licensing, structure, naming, etc.)...

Over the past several months we have been making some significant changes in our release process.  We have made a commitment to monthly releases, opened up our code repository and in general have made a move to be more transparent.  During this same period we have also made some changes to our development processes to separate our feature development from our bug fixes.  The DotNetNuke 5.3.0 is our first quarterly feature release that is benefiting from this new development process. 

In addition to splitting out our feature development, we are also using a more formal Scrum methodology and have broken down our features into different code sprints.  This process allows us to deliver a set of features that can stand alone  and be tested independent from other features or enhancements which might be delivered in later sprints.  This flexibility also enables us to be a little more fluid with our quarterly releases which are often timed to coincide with major marketing events.  This Alpha release is a merge between the 5.2.3 codebase and DotNetNuke 5.3.0 Sprint 1 development branch and includes the following features:

We are once again in the heart of the planning season for the DotNetNuke DevConnections and SDC conferences. It is that time of year when we ask all of you to submit your session abstracts for this years DotNetNuke North American conference.  Later this week we’ll be opening up the official Call for Speakers on DotNetNuke.com, but I wanted to take the opportunity to give speakers a heads up so they could start preparing their abstracts so that they are ready once we open the submission form.  Like the last three years, we are accepting  session submissions in 4 different topic areas:  Development, Design, Administration and Open Source.

DotNetNuke recently moved to an Open Repository that is hosted on CodePlex.  As Phil Beadle recently noted, the synchronization process is now fully operational and is running nightly to ensure that the CodePlex repository mirrors our internal version control system.  Of course, having access to the source code and understanding how to use the source code to get to a working build is two different things.  The source code package that we deliver with each release is slightly modified from our own internal repository in order to minimize confusion for the community.  Over the years the core team has become accustomed to these steps, but for new people, getting DotNetNuke up and running from source code can be a bit daunting.  Hopefully I can help dispel the mystery and make it a little easier to understand why DotNetNuke source code is packaged in this manner.

So it has been over five and a half years since I started a job. I forgot how nervous one can get! I’m excited, but nervous at the same time. New people, new places, new things to do. Fortunately for me, I know some of the faces, less so some of the places, and have an idea of some of the new things to do. I’m starting up at DotNetNuke’s Headquarters in the morning.

While you will find a bunch of free DotNetNuke modules with source code...

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Today the German DotNetNuke User Group meets at Berlin

Here is my disclaimer, Cathal has a post explaining the correct way to install DotNetNuke on Windows 7 so that you can use the “cross-app pool isolation feature”.

However, I posted a tutorial that explains how to install DotNetNuke the “old way”...

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Over the last several years DotNetNuke has maintained a policy of providing an upgrade path for users running previous versions of the platform.  Only in rare instances will we intentionally break a feature or an API or do something that would cause 3rd party extensions to break.  Customers have expressed to us over the years how important it is to maintain an upgrade path.  This concept is not unique to DotNetNuke.  Various projects and companies will take a different stance on the topic.  I was reminded of this recently with the Windows 7 launch where XP users were forced to make a tough decision – go through the hassle of installing a clean version of Windows 7 and then installing all of their old software and migrating their data (I hope grandpa had good backups), just stick with Windows XP, or move to a competitor.  Even Apple recognized the problem with the Windows 7 approach as evidenced by their Mac vs PC commercials.

It has been a goal of the DNN project to be able to allow developers and anyone interested to download the latest source code from CodePlex without affecting our internal operations.  To do this I have created a CruiseControl.Net project that synchronises the source code in our internal system out to CodePlex on a daily basis.  If you check out the Source page for the project you will see the following today:

Each time the source is updated by the CruiseControl.Net project you will an entry from dnnsvn user. 

The source code in the repository is slightly different from the downloaded source package.  The downloaded source package has the automatic packaging of the modules and providers removed so that when you open the solution you don’t see this security prompt:

This prompt shows up because I have used the very cool and useful MSBuild tasks available from the MSBuild Community Tasks Project.  The task I am using is the zip task which is used to package up the files for the installation packages.   So if you do download the code please select “Load Project Normally” when you load the solution.  The packaging only happens when you build in Release mode.  Also don’t forget to change the name of either the release.config or development.config to web.config before you build the solution.

This years DotNetNuke Designer Challenge has been a resounding success and now its your turn to participate!  Twenty-five skins have been submitted by 19 different designers in 4 categories.  But now its time for you to pick the Community Favorite and win yourself a free book!

In my spare time, I often find myself playing with ideas for enhancing the DotNetNuke (DNN) core.  Most of the time I am developing prototypes as a “proof of concept” – i.e. they are not complete, and may never be completed.

One example of this is my recent blog series on developing modules for DNN using ASP.NET MVC.  So far I have demonstrated that the default MVC Application created using the ASP.NET MVC version 1 template can be converted, with little effort, into a DNN module.  In order to accomplish this I had to create a framework that sits on top of the DNN core.

The automation tests now have the ability to test if an email was sent correctly. To run the Email Configuration test you will need to update the “TestEmailPath” value to match the name of the subfolder you created eg  “D:\Tests\TestEmails”

For the Email Configuration test you will need to add a file to the “Packages” folder. The file is called “mailDrop.xml” and is located in the “Support Files” folder within your project. Copy this file into your “Packages” folder. Open the xml file in a text editor, update the value for “pickupDirectoryLocation” to match the path of your “TestEmails” folder, ex. “D:\Tests\TestEmails”. Save the mailDrop.xml file.

Please download the project from http://dotnetnukeautomation.codeplex.com/ and join in.

When under extremely heavy load there is a possibility that Microsoft ado.net classes may return "stale" data i.e. the results of an old query rather than the result of the query that was just executed. This is quite a rare case and only exhibits under extreme load or/and insufficent resources. As the error comes from code external to DotNetNuke i.e. somewhere within the .net framework, ado.net or the database drivers themselves our options were limited. A change introduced in 5.1.1 to mitigate this issue introduced a problem that may be seen by some users running 5.1.1 - 5.2.3. Whilst this has been fixed in 5.3.0, there is an optional workaround that users experiencing timeouts when upgrading/install modules might consider.

The DotNetNuke Automation Testing project is available on CodePlex at http://dotnetnukeautomation.codeplex.com/ and is welcoming testers and developers and anyone else who would like to contribute to try it out and write your won tests based on the style we have set up.  To get started you will need to set a few variables and create some folders.  Stefan did a nice post on it a few weeks back...

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The Automation Test Project is well and truly underway now.  You can check out the progress we are making and the suite of tests that have been written to help with the Build Verification that now happens on every release here http://dotnetnukeautomation.codeplex.com/.  These tests test a set of scenarios that we need to ensure work every release, hence they get executed on a very regular basis which is tedious if you have to do it manually every time.  If you check out the project you will see there are...

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I'm proud to announce that 25 skins have entered the second DotNetNuke Skinning Contest.
A large variety of well designed, high quality skins have been submitted.
I would like to thank all the submitters for their contribution to the community.
I'm sure the results of this contest will be a boost for both DotNetNuke and the submitters.

You are probably thinking “Didn’t he already post a free DotNetNuke Silverlight file Uploader ?”. Well yeah I did, but this one is different.

This one allows a DotNetNuke portal administrator to place an instance of the module on a page and upload files. Each file has the ModuleID saved in its database record. The module will only show files for that module instance.

...

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