Brian Dukes, Web Developer

[Personal] Purple Lemon Photography is on the web!

2009-06-30T03:48:00Z

Earlier this year, my wife, Nikki, and I started her own photography business, Purple Lemon Photography. We've had a lot of fun getting setup and figuring out how to run a busines, as well as seeing how people respond to the images that Nikki takes. Tonight marks a special night for us, and myself especially, because we finally launched her public facing website! Go take a look . This was a lot of fun for me, since it was the first site where I've been fully responsible for most every aspect. I've...(read more)

Embedding JavaScript and Other Resources In a .NET Assembly

2009-06-08T16:21:00Z

.csharpcode.embedding-javascript { font-size: small; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; /*white-space: pre;*/ } pre.csharpcode.embedding-javascript { color: #000; background-color: #fff; } .csharpcode.embedding-javascript pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode.embedding-javascript .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode.embedding-javascript .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode.embedding-javascript .rem { color: #008000; } One concept that I don’t see people using, understanding, or...(read more)

Engage: Rotator 2.0

2009-05-04T15:12:00Z

We just released a major update to our DotNetNuke content rotation module, Engage: Rotator. You can read all about the release on my Engage Software blog ....(read more)

Packaging Modules for DotNetNuke 5

2009-02-17T15:00:00Z

We just released Engage: Events , and realized that our DNN 4 compatible package might not work exactly as we'd like when used in DNN 5. If you're a DNN module developer, you probably already know that there have been a ton of changes to the module installer in 5.0. It will still accept the old module packages, but you'll miss out on a lot if you don't provide an updated package. So, the first thing I noticed when testing Events in DNN 5 was that it seemed like some of our shared base assemblies...(read more)

Engage: Events 1.1

2009-02-12T20:45:00Z

The first major update for Engage: Events has been released! Engage: Events is the event management module for DotNetNuke from Engage Software . Many of the users of the 1.0 version of Events wanted to display a small, simple list of events in a prominent place on their site, like the home page. To address this scenario, we created three new templates that look great in a smaller pane, and present a simpler view of the events. We also recognized that many of our users needed to have access to the...(read more)

Understanding Module Isolation in DotNetNuke

2009-01-21T20:55:00Z

Also known as "Why Did My Skin Just Change?" and "Why Doesn't NavigateURL work?" When navigating to between controls within your DotNetNuke module, you have many options (and would do well to read Michael Washington's Module Navigation tutorial on the subject). If you decide to use the built-in navigation mechanisms, when you want to navigate to your control with the key "EditItems", you'd get the URL by calling EditUrl("EditItems") (or one of its overloads, depending on what other information you...(read more)

Engage: Employment 1.4 for DotNetNuke

2008-11-20T19:14:00Z

Have you heard of our Engage: Employment module for DotNetNuke ? I'm talking about our module for posting job listings on your website and allowing folks to apply for them. We have today released a new version of the module to fix a number of bugs that have been discovered, while completely revamping the administrative experience. Where before it took about a million clicks to get the module setup and to get a good understanding of how it was setup and what had already been setup, now you're initially...(read more)

Get Module by Module ID in DotNetNuke

2008-10-29T19:14:00Z

When building DotNetNuke modules, a number of times I've run up against the issue of trying to instantiate a ModuleInfo instance with only a module ID. However, the GetModule signature on ModuleController takes both a module ID and a tab ID. In this latest instance where I've come against this issue, I was actually trying to get a tab ID based on the module ID, so I obviously didn't already have one to provide. As I started to move down the road of writing my own query to get this simple thing done...(read more)

Check your CSS for DotNetNuke 4.9.0

2008-10-16T22:10:00Z

I started on an update to one of our modules for DotNetNuke this week, and was surprised to see many of the administrative pages looked like they had no styles applied to them. Tables were jumbled, with no differentiation between header and or row content; things just didn’t look right. As I tried to adjust some of those styles, I came to realize that the issue was, in fact, a change in the behavior of DNN . While before, when I accessed a control in the admin directory of my module, the module...(read more)

Tulsa TechFest 2008 Wrap-Up

2008-10-13T20:58:00Z

We at Engage spent the end of last week in Tulsa, presenting and participating in the 3rd annual Tulsa TechFest . My colleague Ian has written up a great review, with links to all of our presentations on his blog . I presented on Building a DotNetNuke Module , walking through the Visual Studio project template that we just released , demonstrating what DNN requires of and offers to developers of modules. We had a great time and really enjoyed the turnout for our sessions. We hope that those of you...(read more)

C# Compiled DotNetNuke Module Template

2008-10-07T15:15:00Z

It shouldn't be hard to get started writing a module for DotNetNuke , but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of help especially when you are wanting to use C#. At Engage , we have created a Visual Studio project template which will get you started developing a C# DotNetNuke module, using a Web Application project (rather than the, in my opinion, much more cumbersome Web Site project). It is available for free on our downloads page after registering on the site. The template will get you started...(read more)

Introducing Engage: Events 1.0

2008-10-02T16:30:00Z

After three public pre-releases, and weeks of wrestling through user-submitted bugs and those we found (so that you don't have to!), we are now ready to release Engage: Events to the eagerly awaiting public! After we cemented our feature-set in the Beta release, we have hunted down no less than 15 bugs, ranging from grammar to complete show-stoppers. We are very thankful for the support of the community as we worked together to create a DotNetNuke module that fits your needs, from the ground up,...(read more)

DotNetNuke Gotcha: Upgrading DotNetNuke Modules

2008-10-02T14:40:00Z

I was recently tasked with investigating a mysterious error on a customer's site, which I finally tracked down to an oversight in the upgrade process of a DotNetNuke module. The error threw up a YSOD , (though in later testing on a different site, it also showed up in a regular DNN red triangle error message), with an error message like "Multiple controls with the same ID 'ctr376' were found. FindControl requires that controls have unique IDs." Talking it through with Chris , we figured out that...(read more)

Engage: Events Alpha.2 is released!

2008-07-24T14:31:00Z

We've released the next Alpha release of the Engage: Events module for DotNetNuke. Try it out and let us know what you think and what you'd like to see from this module. ...(read more)

Announcing the Alpha release of Engage: Events!

2008-07-15T19:19:00Z

We've been hard at work to create a new DotNetNuke module to manage your website's events. Take a look and let us know where you want us to go with it....(read more)