So it’s been way too long, 6 months to be pretty exact, since we had a new release for Engage: Publish. Well last Thursday it finally came! We released Publish 5.4 on our website, though without announcement because of everything else we have had going on. Well here’s the announcement!
5.4 has a lot of changes, bug fixes, and new features, you can see the full list here. I’ll cover some of the major enhancements below.
Article Attachment, meaning you can attach a file to an article and it will now show up in the “enclosure” section of the RSS feed. This was implemented with Podcasting in mind (gee I wonder why I would want to add that –> www.dnnvoice.com). We’ll likely add more functionality to this feature in the future.
Author Name Text entry, you can now define the author name as a text field, rather than only choosing from a dropdown list of DNN users.
Comment Notification (to author) and auto Approval for comments from admins
DNN Token replacement functionality added to the Engage: Text/HTML module
New breadcrumb functionality
There is a lot more functionality included, and a whole list of bugs that have been squashed for this release. Check it out, and if you have any questions be sure to let me know.
So it’s been a long time coming, but finally, today, there is a stable release of the next step in the evolution of DotNetNuke. Version 05.01.00 was released today on www.DotNetNuke.com
If you’ve been under a rock, DotNetNuke 5 has been coming for quite some time, in December 5.0.0 was released, with 5.0.1 coming in February. Unfortunately both releases had a number of breaking changes that caused problems for third party modules. Well 5.1 resolves all of those known issues and moves the platform that next big step forward.
If you’re running older versions of DNN I recommend taking a look at the upgrade to 5.1. Here’s a list of features in 5.1 from Joe Brinkman.
You can also check out the latest DotNetNuke Podcast from www.dnnvoice.com in which Tom Kraak and I talk about the 5.1 release, as well as cover the Day of DNN event.
I’ve updated my personal website, car website, and my DNN Community sites (www.dnnvoice.com and www.dnnblogs.com). I’ve got a few more sites to upgrade tonight, but those are the most trafficked sites for now.
As with all upgrades/installs for DNN I highly recommend you backup your file system and database prior to upgrade, just in case. If you’re looking for how to perform an upgrade, check out this blog post I made a while back.
A huge thanks to everyone in the DNN community who provided development, and testing for the 5.1 release! This is a big day for DNN!
Note:
If you’re upgrading from DNN 4 you might run into an error with the 05.01.00 SQL script during the upgrade process, it’s not a big deal as your site will function fine, but you can find the fix for it here, run this from the host/sql page once your upgrade is complete.
So I meant to get this post put together yesterday, but was totally busy getting a number of other things done, so here it goes for today!
Day of DNN
So this weekend (Saturday 6/13/2009) is the big event for DNN so far this year, the first Day of DNN (http://www.dayofdnn.com) in Tampa Florida. What is the Day of DNN? A free day long event being held at the Microsoft offices in Tampa. There are 30 different sessions going on throughout the day, you can check out the agenda here. If you are in Florida and haven’t signed up, you should! Go to http://www.dayofdnn.com/ for more info, it’s free and there are a number of prizes to give away, so why not sign up? There are people coming from all over the United States, North America, and even other continents!
I will be presenting three sessions, “Handing off a DotNetNuke Site, Training Your Customers”, “Extending Your Web Applications Utilizing the MetaWeblog API”, and “Extending the DotNetNuke Installation Process Using Templates and New Installation Packages”.
Day of DNN Pre/Post Workshops
Even though the Day of DNN is on Saturday, Cuong Dang, Dang for short, and I are heading to Tampa on Thursday morning to get ready for our DotNetNuke Workshops. Through a partnership with the Day of DNN, Engage is providing pre and post Day Of DNN training classes. On Friday I’ll be teaching our DotNetNuke Essentials class, and on Sunday Dang and I will share in the duties of teaching our DotNetNuke Best Practices class. There’s still time to get signed up for the workshop sessions, they are $399 each, which is well discounted from our normal training class rate of $595.
We’ll have some Engage “hunter orange” t-shirts to give away, and maybe even a copy of our DotNetNuke Training DVD that I recorded with Carl Franklin to showcase.
DotNetNuke Voice Podcast
Last night Tom Kraak and I recorded and releases Show #8 of the DNNVoice. You can get the RSS feed into your Zune software by visiting http://www.dnnvoice.com and clicking on the link on the right side of that page. Give it a listen and let me know what you think, Tom and I really enjoy putting the podcast together.
I’ll be taking some of my recording equipment for DNNVoice and hopefully get a few, if not a whole lot, of interviews at Day of DNN. So if you’re going to be in Tampa, watch out I might hunt you down and ask you some questions for a future show.
Another special event this week, at least for me, is that I’ll be getting a few copies of the book that Patrick Renner and I wrote for Wrox. The book is a guide into how to get started with using DotNetNuke, from the first installation, to configuration of your first website. We talk about how to create a few basic types of websites, from a personal website, all the way through an enterprise level system.
The book is just about ready to ship (I think next week) to the major suppliers, and Wrox, our publisher, was kind enough to get me a few copies to take to Day of DNN this weekend. I’m anxious to see how it turned out, I believe that our book might be the first of the “new covers” that Wrox is going to be using.
Here’s the original cover design that was going to be used
and the new cover
Hopefully the book design will update on Amazon soon! I still have to figure out how to decide who gets a copy of the book! I feel like I need to keep two of the first three distributed copies, one for myself and one for Pat, my co-author. But I think we’ll get copies later on from Wrox, so I might just give all three away.
See you in Tampa!
Back in January of this year I took a trip out to Connecticut and spent a week recording some of our DotNetNuke Training on DVD with none other than Carl Franklin of .NET Rocks fame. It was a fun week, Carl has an amazing studio going out there. What came of it is a two volume DVD collection.
I hope you find the DVD useful, I know I had a blast creating it! I look forward to recording more sessions with Carl soon.
http://www.engagesoftware.com/Training/DVD_Training.aspx
In this series:
- Learn the basics of DotNetNuke and how it all works
- Get up to speed with how to install, maintain, and manage DotNetNuke websites
- Understand how to manage portals, users, and security roles within your website
- Learn how to effectively work with different modules including core and third party modules
- Understand the essentials of DNN design and skinning
- Get introduced to module development for DNN
Volume 1: Administration
- Introduction/Installation
- Portal Overview and Admin Settings
- Security Roles
- Users
- Administration
- Host Settings
- Host Portals
- Host Administration
- Module Overview
- Module Installation
- Working with Modules
- FAQ Module
- iFRAME Module
- Survey Module
- Third Party Modules
- Blog Module
Volume 2: Design and Development
- Skinning Essentials
- Exploring a Skin Package
- Skin Usage
- Containers
- Design and CSS
- Developer Environment Configuration
- Module Template Overview
- Module Manifests
- Module Code
- Module Packaging and End Notes
So there's a lot going on in the DotNetNuke world this week.
First, DotNetNuke 5.1 Beta was released, get it now and start testing! Only you can make it better by testing it to make sure all the bugs are squashed before the release!
Second, a milestone was hit and I think most of us missed it. I was conducting a DNN webinar today when I went to DotNetNuke.com to show everyone that Users Online module in action only to notice that DotNetNuke.com surpassed 700k registrations in the past couple of days! Congrats to all of the community for the growth, I can't wait to see it when it hits 1million registrations!
The OpenForce call for speakers finished up last week, and the Day Of DotNetNuke call for speakers ends today! Get your submissions in!
Nik Kalyani is at TechEd giving a presentation on DNN and Live Services too
So Tom and I finally recorded Show #6 of the DNNVoice Thursday evening. I didn’t get a chance to edit until this evening. Below is a copy/paste of the show notes from www.dnnvoice.com
Here’s a very nondescriptive overview of Show #6 of the DNNVoice. If you want to know what it’s all about download and listen!
Length: 53:51
Size: 29605617 28.91mb
MP3 Download
Sponsored Intro
What happened to April?
DNN Reactor / Corp News?
DotNetNukonomics / News
Listener Questions
- I would like to learn all of the necessary steps to migrate code from my laptop up to an ISP. I have migrated the database, copied myDNN code up to my ISP, edited the PortalAlias table in the DB, and edited my Web.Config to hit my database at the ISP. Unfortunately, everything I’ve done fails and I keep seeing the following message, “An error has occurred. Object reference not set to the instance of an object.” Have I left any steps out? Please note, I did not do a clean install at my ISP but instead am doing a migration. Submitted By: Richard Boschulte
- With DNN offering proffessional support where does that leave the small fry independent developers that are providing support? Does, or has, DNN indicated that they are going to be creating a work force to help with the support tickets? Whats the word? Thanks, Herb Submitted By: Herb Benton
- what is difference between dnn 4.9.0 and 5.0.1 Submitted By: prasad
- To the issue of Parent & Child portals, Where the desired behavior is to provide a clean URL for a client ( a salon in the example) Such as www.myperfectsalon.com/Kraakwigs to www.Kraakwigs.com Wouldn’t it be possible to create a clean URL with a portal alias or a URLrewriter? I have provided this functionality using Frame Redirect (redirects to a URL within a frame to preserve the original URL) provided by the domain registar. Submitted By: Cliff Nelson
Featured Topic
Upcoming Events
- The Day of DotNetNuke, June 13, Tampa, FL
- SDN June 26, in Houten, The Netherlands
- Send meeting info to meetings@dnnvoice.com
Call for Questions
Early last year we at Engage started putting together our training materials for DotNetNuke. We’ve been delivering DNN training for almost 5 years now, but had always done it customized for individual clients, starting in 2008 we began offering Classroom training here in St. Louis. We’ve had a good turnout of attendees for our classroom training, mostly from the United States, but a few from Canada. We’ve had a number of inquiries over the years about training outside of the states. Training has given me the opportunity to travel to far off places, which is definitely fun, but for some individuals and companies having one of our trainers fly to their office, or sending someone to St. Louis, Missouri for training is just too expensive.
We’ve finally put together a few solutions for people who don’t want, or can’t afford the classroom or onsite training offerings from Engage.
We are now offering DotNetNuke Webinar training classes. We held our first class on April 22nd and had an excellent turnout and feedback for this first free session called “Introduction to DotNetNuke”. We are offering this free webinar again on May 6th, 2009, you can get signed up for the class by visiting our Virtual Classroom page. The Intro to DotNetNuke course is one hour long, and runs from 12pm CDT to 1PM CDT.
In addition to our free course, which we will offer each month, we have three other courses available at a price of $199, these courses will be held two hours each day on Tues/Wed/Thur of their respective weeks.
You can register for these classes by visiting the Virtual Classroom page
- DotNetNuke® Essentials May 12, 2009 thru May 14, 2009.
- Portal Administration class May 19, 2009 thru May 21, 2009.
- Skinning Essentials class May 26 thru May 28, 2009.
If you have any questions let me know
If you caught Show #5 of the DNNVoice (www.dnnvoice.com) you have probably already heard this information, but for those of you who haven’t DotNetNuke 04.09.03 was released this week. This release has a number of bug fixes from the 04.09.02 version, you can read more about the fixes in Shaun’s blog posts at dotnetnuke.com.
I’ve upgraded all of my personal website projects that were running on earlier versions of DNN. You can download the latest version at www.dotnetnuke.com. If you’re on DNN 4.6.2 or greater the installation process is pretty easy. Backup your website and database. Copy the contents of the 4.9.3_Upgrade package over your website files, then access the site. DNN will handle the rest of the upgrade process for you. BE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR SITE AND DATABASE first.
On a related note Pat and I are doing a few final reviews for our upcoming book, DotNetNuke A User’s Guide. Hopefully we won’t find anything major in the last few changes that are undergoing review so that the book can meet it’s date of a June 2009 release.
DotNetNuke is up for a few award competitions in which you can vote! Get out there and vote, support the best open source platform on the .NET Framework.
The Microsoft Canada Ignite IT Awards voting ends on 3/31, so you can vote today and tomorrow.
http://www.microsoft.com/canada/igniteit-awards/view_submissiondetails.aspx?id=247
The asp.netPRO awards allow you to vote once and have a little more time left
http://www.aspnetpro.com/awards/default.asp
Here are blog posts from the DNN Corporation about each of the contests
From Shaun http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Blogs/tabid/825/EntryId/2211/Ignite-IT-Awards-Only-1-Week-Left.aspx
From Scott http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Blogs/tabid/825/EntryId/2207/Make-DotNetNuke-Your-2009-Readers-Choice.aspx
We are having another round of DotNetNuke classroom training here in St. Louis in early April, if you’re interested in attending check out the special offers that Rich posted earlier today in the DNN Forums. These offers include discounts on multiple days of training, as well as a hard copy of our Best Practices Guide.
Our classroom training offers great access for students looking to soak up as much information about DNN as they can. You’ve got direct access to the instructors and often can get your specific questions answered above and beyond the training you receive.
If you have any questions check out our DotNetNuke Training page.
Here are the sessions we’re offering for the week.
Mon-Tues, Apr. 6-7 - Module Development Wed, Apr. 8 - Portal Administration Thu-Fri, Apr 9-10 - DotNetNuke Skinning The St. Louis Cardinals are in town playing the Pittsburgh Pirates that week, if you’re a fan of baseball you should go check a game out.
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