When you run a user group, or any other event that has one or more people presenting topical information to others, you know that your presenter is coming prepared with some great information.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t have asked them to come, right?

At the very least, your speaker is knowledgeable in a specific area, has real-world expertise, is able to communicate to others, and will come prepared with a slide deck, or other visual presentation tools. 

However, that’s only half of the battle.  Those are simply the things that we as recruiters or leaders should expect and maybe event take for granted in terms of setting these events...

I see user groups of all kinds and types, all over the place.  They all serve a purpose.  Typically, that purpose is to gather like-minded individuals together in one place, to network and learn about whatever it is that brought them together.  For pretty much anyone that reads my blog, this common thread is probably DotNetNuke.  However, I could just as easily be talking about SQL Server, .Net, PHP, Java, etc.  Name the technology or cause, and that’s the only thing that changes.  The principles remain the same.

These same user groups usually get created...

I just successfully upgraded this website from DotNetNuke version 05.04.04, to version 05.05.00.  Fortunately, I didn’t run into any hiccups at all.  Everything just upgraded as expected.

The upgrade view show all successes, and the Event Log didn’t show any upgrade related errors.  Whew!  (Yes.  Make sure you check your Event Log as a Host user upon upgrading.)

Should you upgrade?  Absolutely!  There are at least a few must-have features:

Enhanced performance in the default URL provider Dynamic content localization Prevention of a DoS attack Send HTML e-mail again There are a large number of other stabilization updates as well.  What are you waiting for?

DISCLAIMER:  As with any other release, and with any other software, 3rd party software that is integrated with DNN can affect your upgrade abilities.  Back-up your site and database diligently, and test the upgrade in an offline site first.

Technorati...

This book review will serve as numbers 2 and 3 in the three total that I promised you in my review of Confessions of a Public Speaker.  The reason being is that the first book in this review is Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. ...

I have been doing technical presentations and training for several years now.  Like any level-headed person though, I know that I don’t know everything, and that I can always use more training myself, and do plenty of other things to make myself better at what I do.  So, I came across and read a few books about presenting.  This is the first of three book reviews.

One of the first books...

Someone on the DotNetNuke Forums asked recently how to add a Like Button for Facebook to their blog.  They mentioned something that I had also found out – the Windows Live Writer plugin that’s supposed to do it, but doesn’t work.  So how can us DotNetNuke users add a Facebook Like Button to our blogs?

What is a ‘Like’ Button? A Like Button is an interactive button provided by Facebook, which allows you to instantly “like” a page, and reflect this in your Facebook profile for all of your friends to see.  These buttons look something like the image below.

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The default editor in DotNetNuke has been the RadEditor (by telerik) since version 05.02.00.  This editor is very robust and feature rich, including things like spell check, XHTML formatting, and many other advanced features.  It is considered by many to be the best web-based WYSIWYG HTML editor available.  I tend to agree.

With all of those features, it is very possible that some less advanced end-users might not enjoy the toolbar in its default state.  For example, you might want to remove functionality from the default toolbar.  Imagine removing advanced functionality like image maps, code validator, flash manager, etc. 

The editor allows you to customize this user experience very easily.  Unfortunately, there isn’t an option to do this through any of the administration of the website at this time.  You have to have file-level access to modify the files.

DotNetNuke...

It doesn’t matter what kind of user group you’re running, it’s a must for you to evaluate how your user group meetings are ran.  Even if you’re not the leader of the user group, the group exists for you.  So, if you have input on how the meetings will work better for you, speak up! 

When I think of user group related things, I first force myself to think, “How will this add value to the attendee?  Will they want to come back?  Will they...

A long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away…  There was an affiliate program that allowed for great flexibility and provided features for DotNetNuke® vendors and others to make money easily and quickly.  People were rolling in the dough!  Money was raining from the sky, and we were all bathing in tubs full of gold coins!

A ‘Bit’ of History Okay… That’s not entirely true.  This story took place in OUR galaxy!  Fine, fine…  Maybe no one was bathing in gold coins either.  Okay, okay…  But people were...

Running a user group has many responsibilities.  You’re recruiting and creating speakers, recruiting attendees, finding sponsors, getting venues, finding topics, managing attendance, and more.  One of the least trivial of these tasks is getting a website hosted for the user group.  Sure, you might work at a company that’s willing to allow you to host it, but what happens when you leave that company? 

With the average IT employee staying at company for only 3 years, this leaves one more thing to worry about, even if it is only every 3 years.  But even worse,...

When I agree to come onboard at DotNetNuke® Corporation, it was understood that I’d have to move to San Francisco.  This excited me, because I knew I would be able to change my commute of 30+ miles (when not telecommuting) to “Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain!”

Anyhow, I made a commitment of walking and using public transportation as much as possible, with the possibility of upgrading to a bicycle and scooter in the near future.  As a result, I am walking my Nike cross-trainers to death.  The soles are coming loose now.

...

There are all kinds of polls, surveys, and awards that all of us try to get at some point in time.  Since DotNetNuke® first got popular, it was no different.  DNN has been honored by a wide variety of sources, including aspnetPRO Magazine (now called DevProConnections), and Visual Studio Magazine. 

These awards have been getting more and more prestigious in nature.  For example, Shaun Walker blogged not long ago about DotNetNuke being named a 2010 Cool Vendor by Gartner.  That is easily one of the greatest honors to-date.

 

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As part of one of my overall themes in my blog, I want to once again speak about user groups.  User Groups are excellent resources.  If you’re interested in any technology, like DotNetNuke as an example, then user groups can be an invaluable resource if you let them.  However, user groups wouldn’t exist without, among many other thins, meetings.

(in the front, you can barely make out Nik Kalyani...

DotNetNuke, since its very beginning has always relied on the community for all levels of involvement.  The core code base has never been, and still isn’t any different.  It is, after all, still an open source project, albeit a very large one now. 

There are numerous bugs that are in the code base right now.  Thankfully, most of them are small ones.  The larger bugs require a significant amount of time and resources, and more importantly, extensive testing.  Those bugs are the ones where the DNN Corp engineers really shine now, as they tend take the lead on those bugs.  However, that amount of time and resources does leave many of the smaller bugs leftover, waiting for someone like you to help with.

As a result, I often see statements in forums and twitter resembling something like, “This is such a simple and easy thing to fix. I cannot believe that DNN Corp hasn’t fixed it yet.”

I have heard many different reasons why various...