An article was recently written by CMS Critic, where they interviewed Navin Nagiah.  For those of you who don’t know, Navin has been the CEO of the DotNetNuke Corporation pretty much since it got funded.  Those events happened just around the same time anyhow.  CMS Critic thought highly enough of DotNetNuke and Navin to write...

While running a DotNetNuke user group for quite a while, I did all of the management of it myself.  Right or wrong, I wanted to set a tone, a precedent, and basically know everything around how it was going to work before adding on more help.  In doing so, I learned a great deal that rounded out my leadership experience in terms of user groups.

Am I saying that you need to do that?  Absolutely not.  I am simply giving you a bit of background about how I began.  Everyone is different and handles tasks and responsibilities differently.  You should only do what you feel comfortable with, and maintain a level of involvement that keeps you and your family happy, and that won’t lead to you being burnt out.

That really sets the stage for what to expect the first few months of managing a user group.  What do you expect during this time?  That very question is what keeps the majority of people from even starting a user group.  However, I will tell...

In what used to be a utility to exclusively generate an XML SiteMap for the DotNetNuke core Blog Module, is now called an XML Utility for the DNN Blog Module.  This change was made to more accurately reflect what this utility does.

There have been two versions released over the past week, with the latest being this evening, for version 01.02.00.  Version 01.02.00 is basically a stabilization release for the previous release.  There wasn’t anything show-stopping, unless you use Feedburner.  But more on that later…

What’s New? In version 01.01.00, I added RSS feeds as a feature, along side the existing SiteMap feature.  There were two main motivations behind adding this feature to this...

Part of running any user group is to hold regular events where the members of the user group can gather at a single location to learn something new about the topic at-hand, and to network with each other.  The value of the user group meeting increase each time you return, until you reach a kind of snowball effect.  Eventually, user groups will become part of your routine – something that you just have to make sure you do and plan your vacations around.

Well, that doesn’t always happen, but believe it or not, it really does happen to many people out there.  But how did they get to that point?  What made them come to that first user group meeting?  I will speak to one of the first areas that answer that question in this post.

While I am going to talk about this in the context of DotNetNuke, be aware that most of this information can be applied to nearly any user group in the world.

Drafting Event Information The first thing you need...

One of the most common questions throughout the DotNetNuke community and ecosystem overall is, “Where can I learn about DotNetNuke?”  Of course, this question has several variations like, “How can I learn to skin in DNN?”  There are many places and ways to learn DNN, as with any other software out there.  I hope to be able to point you in the right direction for DNN with this post.

There are going to be more resources than the few I list here, so feel free to leave a comment with your favorite learning resources (even if you are the resource).

On the DNN Website There are several areas on the DNN website itself that offer you various ways to learn about DNN.  Some you probably already use, but they are viable resources just the same.

Online Help  this is a non-downloadable...

Ever since I first found the DotNetNuke community, I have fallen “in love” for a lack of better words.  (Perhaps those are the right words though…)  Now, I get to give back to the community I have fallen in love with more than ever before, and in a much more influential way that I’d ever thought was possible.

Will Strohl being a Dork at an Orlando DNN User Group After Party 

I was pretty active in a handful...

For a long while DotNetNuke has been having public betas, allowing you, myself, and everyone else to give the new versions a test run before it becomes an official release.  Unfortunately, few people ever do download the betas, much less test it, but I am hoping that I can change your mind about this, this time around…

It is well-known that DNN serves as both a website framework, and a programming API.  However, there are many modules that have been incorrectly using the database itself as an API, which was never intended.  This basically means that if you make changes or reference the DNN database directly, your extension can possibly break on every single DNN release.  The best practices in terms of an API perspective is to use the controller classes to access DNN data – not the database itself.

That’s not to say that you should never reference the database directly, it’s just not a best practice.  There are numerous reasons that you might...

Unfortunately, it has been quite a while since I have been able to dedicate any time to this module.  Luckily, that changed this past week.  A new version is now available for you to download and use to your heart’s content!

What Is It? If you’re not familiar with the Lightbox Gallery module, it’s a module that allows you to specify folders in your DotNetNuke website to display thumbnails in regions called “albums.”  The great thing about that is that the thumbnails are generated for you.  All you have to do is tell the module where to find each album (folder).

Lightbox Gallery Module Version 01.03.00

This is an open source (and FREE) module released under the New BSD license through the DNN Forge and CodePlex.

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I was asked today how to use the Text skin object in DotNetNuke.  Instead of writing a long tutorial or e-mail about it, I tried looking for an existing blog or article describing this.  I would’ve been happy to recommend such a resource, but I was unable to find one despite several web searches.  This leads me to the post you’re reading.

FYI – If you have such an article, feel free to let us know in the comments below, but also know that the site where your article is needs better SEO.  ;)

What is a Skin Object? First of all, a skin object is an ASP.Net user control that is used in DNN skins to provide a limited feature.  For example, the search box, menu, login link, copyright statement, and more, are all skin objects.  They allow a skin designer to include dynamic content without having to know how to build the content itself, or knowing any programming.

Other than the previous description, this post will assume that you know how to create and package your own skin.

Text Skin Object The Text skin object itself is a very useful feature in skinning, as it allows you to include localized text, while not having to create a copy of the skin for each language, or using any other number of workarounds.

For example, if you have static text next to your login skin object that says, “Welcome, “ then you might want to have alternatives for another language, if you plan to support it.

I am going to use that example for the rest of this post.

The Code There is minimal code needed to implement the Text skin object.  If you’re using an HTML skin, then you would simply need to do the following:

object id="dnnTEXT-Welcome" codetype="dotnetnuke/server" codebase="TEXT">...

Since there is an impressive following in Yelp, I promise to not post reviews on my blog as much, but rather limit those postings to time where a restaurant really impresses me.  This is one of those times. 

I happened upon a restaurant named Mana Restaurant in San Mateo, CA, just south of San Francisco.  It’s located on 25th street, just off of the main El Camino road, where you’ll find several other ethnic cuisines.

Giving You Some Context The thing that really intrigued me enough to walk into this eatery was that the sign said it was a “traditional Filipino restaurant.”  If you don’t already know, my family is from the island of Guam.  This makes me partially a pacific islander.  In fact, if you look at one of our family photos below, I think you’ll get the “picture.”



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