There are times when you’d like to make a call to an external web service from your DotNetNuke module to process or get some data.

Add a Service Reference to your Module Project

In your module solution, right-click on the “References”, folder and select “Add Service Reference…



The “Add Service Reference” dialog will open, paste the URL of the web service you want to access in the Address field and click the “Go” button.  If the service is available, you will see the publicly available services listed in the “Services” list box on the left.



At the bottom of the dialog box, enter a namespace that you will be using to reference the service. In this example, I enter “WeatherService”.  Later on , I will be using that Namespace and the Service name as shown in the dialog to create a client proxy that I can use to execute the functions exposed by the service. Click the “OK” button to have Visual Studio add the reference to your project.



Now, back at our project, you will see the “WeatherService” listed under the “Service References” folder.



Copy the web.config generated settings to the root web.config of your DNN site

You’ll also notice that a new web.config file has been added to your project. Open the web.config file and you’ll see a bunch of settings that your DNN web site needs in order to be able to access the web service. However, these settings need to be in the web.config that resides in the root folder of your DNN web site. So copy the system.serviceModel section from the web.config in your project folder and paste it at the end of the web.config file in your DNN web site root folder, just after the closing </dotnetnuke>  tag, and before the closing </configuration> tag.

If the web.config in your DNN root folder already has a system.serviceModel section, you’ll have to “merge” the tags from your module into the root config file.

NOTICE: In the <client> section, take a look at the client endpoint configuration data, in particular, the “name” property. You’ll need that name later on, so you might want to copy it to your clipboard for later use.

<client>
  <endpoint address=http://www.webservicex.net/WeatherForecast.asmx
    binding="basicHttpBinding"
    bindingConfiguration="WeatherForecastSoap"
    contract="WeatherService.WeatherForecastSoap"
    name="WeatherForecastSoap" />
</client>

Once you’ve pasted the web.config settings into the root web.config, Delete the web.config file from your project folder.

Write the code-behind to access the web service

That’s all we need to do to be able to access a web service from our module. So, for this example, we’ll use the service to lookup a town name based on a zip code. The service exposes a method

At the top of our module, add a using statement and pull in the namespace of the web service

using DNNws.WeatherService;

In this simple example, I have a div named hw_content on my module’s ascx page. In the Page_Load() method, we’ll make a call to the web service, pass in a zip code, and grab the City name (PlaceName) from the results of the service call.

  1: private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
  2: {
  3:     try
  4:     {
  5:         using (var svc = new WeatherForecastSoapClient("WeatherForecastSoap"))
  6:         {
  7:             var results = svc.GetWeatherByZipCode("07871");
  8:             hw_content.InnerHtml = string.Format("Hello {0}", results.PlaceName);
  9:         }
 10:     }
 11:     catch (Exception exc) //Module failed to load
 12:     {
 13:         Exceptions.ProcessModuleLoadException(this, exc);
 14:     }
 15: }

On line 5, we create a proxy object that we’ll be using to access the service.

When Visual Studio added the service reference to our project, it also created a proxy class named “WeatherForecastSoapClient” that we will use. We need to pass the endpoint “name” that we want to use to access the service, so pass the value of the “name” property from the web.config client tag you copied earlier.

Once we have a service proxy object (svc), we simply call the method “GetWeatherByZipCode” and pass the required zip code parameter.  NOTE: Intellisense makes method discovery very easy, just start typing svc, period and you’ll see a list of the available methods and their signatures.

The call is made on line 7, and on line 8, we take the “PlaceName” property of the result and we create a string and set it inside our div on our ascx file.

Running our DNN site and placing an instance of our module on a page, results in the view being displayed, during Page_Load(), an instance of the web service proxy is created and we use that proxy to connect to the web service, execute the GetWeatherByZipCode method, pass in a zip code and the PlaceName property is used to construct a welcome message, which looks like this…

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

Having been busy with a small DotNetNuke-based project lately so here’s a short “how-to” for those who want to use jQuery in their own DNN-modules. This applies to DNN 5.0 and newer.

1. Installing jQuery

DNN by default includes the jQuery library so no manual installation is required. You can check the jQuery version from Host – Host settings – Advanced Settings – JQuery settings. This is also the place where you can make DNN to use Microsoft’s or Google’s CDN to deliver the library. If your module targets the version 5.0 of DNN (actually, 4.9.1) or newer, you can be sure that every installation includes the jQuery.



2. Request jQuery in code-behind

In your module, make sure to request for jQuery in code-behind class. Module’s Load-event is excellent place for this:

Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

    Try

       If Not Page.IsPostBack Then

            DotNetNuke.Framework.jQuery.RequestRegistration()

       End If

     Catch exc As Exception
       ProcessModuleLoadException(Me, exc)
     End Try

End Sub

3. Use the jQuery-word instead of $-character

For some reason the widely used jQuery-shortcut ‘$’ doesn’t always work properly inside the DotNetNuke. So it’s better to use the word jQuery instead. Here’s an example of using jQuery in the traditional way:

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function() {
        $("#featured > ul").tabs({ fx: { opacity: "toggle"} }).tabs("rotate", 7500, true);
    });
</script>

In DotNetNuke it’s better to write the function like the following:

<script type="text/javascript">
    jQuery(document).ready(function() {
        jQuery("#featured > ul").tabs({ fx: { opacity: "toggle"} }).tabs("rotate", 7500, true);
    });
</script>

And that’s it. Following these small steps you can easily use jQuery to enhance the functionalities of your custom DNN modules.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

In today's web design world, many people spend a lot of time perfecting little things on their website. It shows how detail oriented you are; whether working on your own project or well a client's. One of the design elements that does not often get much attention in the DotNetNuke world is the site’s breadcrumb.

It's not that people don't design beautiful little elements to enhance their site, but it is generally perceived that the core skin object provides for limited customization without modifying the core. Well, in this article, I'm going to show you how to be creative in working with that we have without modifying the core to implement an iconic breadcrumb design.

I'm using the breadcrumb from http://apple.com website, which has visually appealing, yet subtle elements that is actually a very user friendly way to visualize the site’s navigation trail.

Outside of Apple’s implementation, the breadcrumb is often a very useful element for content heavy site and in the e-commerce world. I’ve provided the demo and the source below. Keep reading to find out more about the details of the implementation.

Before We Start:

This article assumes that you know the basics of DotNetNuke skinning. I will walk through a bit of core DotNetNuke breadcrumb configuration as well as some styling that help accomplishing the design. The purpose of this article is to show you that it is possible to achieve cool design without modifying the DotNetNuke core or creating your own skin object.

Step 1: Adding the Breadcrumb Skin Object

Register the breadcrumb control at the top of the skin file:



Place the breadcrumb element in the desired location. It renders the basic breadcrumb path for the site.



Step 2: Breadcrumb Level Explained

There are 3 options to configure the breadcrumb behavior.

* 0: Show the entire path of the site breadcrumb and current page you're on

* - 1: Show the entire path of the site breadcrumb including 'Root' item which allows users to return to the root of the DotNetNuke instance. If you have multiple portals on your DNN instance and want to limit users just to be able to access the homepage of that portal, this is not an option to use.

* n: where n is an integer greater than 0, it will skip n breadcrumb tabs before displaying the links

In this example, I'm going to use '0' to show pages with a full path excluding the 'Root' item.



Since we select the option to display links at level 0, we need to create a way for people to return to home page. I'm going to create a simple HTML static link and give it a CSS selector for ease of styling.



Step 3: Adding Seperator

You can add a simple pipe (|) or a greater than (>) symbol to the breadcrumb as follow:



Or you can add HTML and CSS selector to allow creativity:



The above markup may look complicated, but it is really just Separator="<span></span>"  written safely in XML encoding format so DNN will render it properly. I added the HTML span tag so we can target it using CSS to display a background image for the separator instead of an HTML character.

Step 4: Sprinkle in Some Style

Now that we have the breadcrumb in place, we need to create the CSS to accomplish our design. But first, let's take a look at the HTML output so we have a better understanding of which elements we should style with CSS.



Let's wrap this breadcrumb in a DIV so I can add a background image:



Now for the CSS

Set the background for the entire breadcrumb and some additional styling:



Reset the SPAN element to behave as block element instead of inline:



Set the background for the separator and some additional styling to properly position it between links:



We want to add a little padding/spacing between links. But since they are inline elements, we need to turn them into block elements:



Set the background for the return to homepage link to an icon:



Step 5: Putting it All Together

HTML:



CSS:



Here you go! Hope this article helps to give a better understanding of going out of the box for the breadcrumb design in DNN web site.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

Another very common question that I see regarding DotNetNuke is when and how should I backup my DotNetNuke site. This topic is VERY important and requires a bit of planning, especially if you do not have direct access to your database server to perform your own backups. In the following sections I will first talk about what you must backup and why some of those items are very important. I will then discuss how to perform a DNN backup and SQL Server backup, both for SQL 2000 and 2005.  Finally I will discuss options available for third party modules for performing backups for individuals that do not have direct access to their servers.  This is a second revision of this article.

What to Backup?

Simply put, it is a best practice to backup your ENTIRE DotNetNuke directory on the web server as well as a full backup of the database. Some people will say that you can get by with only backing up the "portals" folder, this is NOT correct! To successfully restore a DotNetNuke installation you must ensure that you have all module .dll and other code files you also must have the same validation and decryption keys.  I have found that the only real method to keep your data safe is to create a backup with all files.  Given the limited file size of the core DNN installation I have not found this to be a hinderance, especially since the additional files that exist in my website are all related to the content available within and is something I must have a backup of anyway.

Performing the Backup

Performing a backup of DotNetNuke is a fairly easy two step process. First I will discuss backing up the DNN installation directory, then I will discuss options available for backing up the database.

Backing up the DotNetNuke Directory

You have two options when backing up the DotNetNuke directory. If you have direct access to the server, you can simply right click on the DotNetNuke directory and select "Send To:" -> "Compressed (Zipped) Folder". This applies for most versions of the windows operating system. You will then have a file named dnn.zip where dnn was your directory name. This zip file will contain all needed backup files, you will want to store this in a safe location.

If you do not have direct access to the server and can only access it via FTP you will have an additional step to obtain a zip file for your site. You will want to connect to your FTP site and COPY all files to a temporary location on your local computer. Once all files have been copied you will want to create a zip file including ALL files and folders that were just downloaded. 

NOTE: Depending on your hosting provider to save yourself time some will automatically zip your website up for you so you have only 1 file to download!

NOTE: if using a program such as WinZip for zipping, ensure that the "Use Folder Names" option is enabled so that the folder structure is preserved within your zip archive.

Backing up the DotNetNuke Database

To backup the database you must have access to the database server and the file system of the database server. If you are in a hosted environment you will need to rely on your hosting provider to obtain a backup, or you will need to look into a potential third party solution to backup the database from within DotNetNuke. If you have full access to the server please use one of the below sets of instructions to backup your database..

Backing up a Database with SQL Server 2000 and Enterprise Manager

Follow the below steps if you wish to create a databse backup file from Enterprise Manager for SQL Server 2000 using Enterprise Manager.

- Navigate to your specific database in Enterprise Manager
- Right click on the database and select "All Tasks" -> "Backup Database..”
- Ensure that "Complete" is selected for the backup type
- Click the "Add" button in the "Destination" section
- In this section provide a full file path to the desired backup file, typically named DATABASENAME.bak where DATABASENAME is your database name
- Click "Ok" to generate your backup, you will receive a success notice upon completion

You will now have a full backup file containing all tables and data for your database.

This process is very similar with SQL Server 2005.

Backing up a Database with T-SQL Commands (2000 and 2005)

The fastest method to backup your database is to use T-SQL commands.  You simply need to create a backup device which specifies where your backup file should go, then you simply perform a 'BACKUP DATABASE' call to perform the database backup.  The following scripts show you how to create a backup file called MyBackup.bak in your C drive which will contain the entire dnn441 database.  You will need to adapt this script to fit your configuration.

--Create Device!
EXEC sp_addumpdevice 'disk', 'MyBackupDevice', 'C:\MyBackup.bak'

--Now backup the db
BACKUP DATABASE dnn441
    TO MyBackupDevice

Regardless if you used one of my methods above or had your hosting provider create a backup for you once you have obtained .bak file you have everything you should need to restore your site to its current state. How often you perform this type of backup really depends on the amount of activity, the frequency of actual changes, and the amount of loss you are willing to accept. A full backup plan is something that needs to be considered on an individual implementation basis and includes many factors.

Third Party Modules

Some third party backup modules exist on the market that will allow users to generate SQL Server backups without direct access to the database server. Below are a few links to these utilities. I have NOT used any of these utilities and do not recommend one over the other, I am simply providing these links as a starting point for your research into a solution.

- XP Idea - Database and Site Backup Module
- Evotiva - BackupScript Module

Other Considerations

The above process outlines the common backup practices that are needed to backup your website to allow you to restore it to the same location.  If you are taking a backup to move the site to a different location it is very helpful if you add a new portal alias for the new site BEFORE you backup the database.  This will allow the restore process to be more streamlined.

For example if your production site it http://www.mysite.com and you are looking to restore it to http://localhost/mysite on your local machine, login as host and add the alias under "Site Settings" before you take the backup.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

If you're looking to try out the new DNN Cambrian package, you can upgrade previous DotNetNuke installations with the following steps. Remember, as of right now, the DNN 5.0 Cambrian package available for download is a Release Candidate and should not be used in production evironments. That said, upgrading to the new 5.0 version is just as easy as it's always been. Here's how:

The first thing you'll need to do is download the Upgrade package from the dotnetnuke.com website. As with any upgrade process, there are a few things you should do PRIOR to beginning any website upgrade.

- Backup Database
- Backup All Files
- Disable Compression Tools

Once you have done your backups and downloaded the package, you'll need to unzip the Upgrade package and upload the files on top of your existing DotNetNuke files. NOTE that the Upgrade packages do not include a web.config file  so you shouldn't need to worry about changing/modifying connection strings and other settings.

Once you have uploaded the files, all you need to do to trigger the upgrade is to browse to your website URL and you'll begin to see the Upgrading DotNetNuke screen along with the status of the process. When the process is complete, you will receive a link that will take you to the website.

During the upgrade, all the required files will be installed, but there may be additional files and features that are not installed such as optional skins or modules. You can quickly install these optional files after the initial upgrade by typing the following into your browser bar:

http://www.mydomain.com/install/install.aspx?mode=installresources . This will install all available resources that were not installed during the upgrade. For example, after my initial upgrade the above command resulted in the following resource installations:



To see what resources are available, you can look in the "Install" folder in the root of your directory where you can find the resources are organized by type. This is a great way to do batch resource installation. If you only want to install one or two items and not everything, you can either remove the files that you know do not want and execute the URL. Alternatively, you can rename the files you do want changing the ".resources" to ".zip" and then uploading the files through the default method of module or skin installation within your DotNetNuke portal or by using the new "Batch Install Extensions" feature found under the Host>>Extenstions menu item.

And that's it. You've been upgraded. Most upgrades are smooth sailing, but sometimes...not so much. Learning how to troubleshoot errors during installation can help save you a lot of headaches. Here's some tips to help you out.

Troubleshooting Upgrade Errors:

Check Assemblies

You may have two assemblies conflicting with each other as a result of the upgrade. Sometimes during the upgrade process, new assemblies are installed in the file structure, but the old ones aren't removed or overwritten. When this happens, delete or change the name of the suspect file. Go back to the browser and try again.

If you receive this error when upgrading to DNN Cambrian RC:

Method 'GetRoleGroupByName' in type 'DotNetNuke.Security.Membership.DNNRoleProvider' from assembly 'DotNetNuke.Provider.DNNProvider, Version=2.0.0.23759, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' does not have an implementation.



Check the assembly folders. Most likely, you have the following conflicting files: \bin\DotNetNuke.Provider.DNNProvider.dll - 2.0.0.23759 and \bin\Providers\DotNetNuke.Provider.DNNProvider.dll - 5.0.0.20212 . If you have both of these files, delete the file in the \bin directory and leave the file in the \bin\Providers directory.



Click the link to continue to the portal where we can view the log files to try to track down the error. 

Go to Host >> Host Settings >> scroll all the way to the bottom and select the 5.00.00 log file from the drop down list and hit Go



From here you will be able to view the errors that were encountered during the upgrade process as seen here:



From the error message on the screen, you can begin to troubleshoot what your specific error is. In the particular message seen above, I have a feeling that this has to do with the ActiveDirectory provider that I have already installed in my portal. So, now that I have been given more information from the log file, I am better able to decide what to do now to resolve the issue.

Yep...in this case, it was the provider. I removed the existing ActiveDirectory package and installed the new ActiveDirectory package for DNN 5 manually.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

The websites have undoubtedly made a very important place in the online market. But it is imperative that a website has certain features that can create wonderful results. The website should not only be flowing and appealing but have properly organized information which can be located easily and with a fast speed.

The website should be designed so that it can it can meet the needs of the owner, designer as well as the user. The DNN helps the users who do not even possess the knowledge about web designing to accomplish the task with ease. The owners of the site can manage the interface easily especially while updating the databases.

Even the visitors of the sites can avail the highly organized and smooth presentation of services and products. Since the DNN can be easily installed and has many features regarding web designing and security, it has become extremely simple to maintain as well as create a personal website. Earlier it was not an easy process and was expensive too but it is has now proved to be beneficial to any person doing the work of freelancer to create his own website. Initially he may use a simple and easy concept and then later on expand it with ideas and new modules that are available.

You can get many benefits if you host your own site along with a specialized provider of DNN hosting. The advantages can be installation in one click, easy backups and efficient technical support. Keeping in mind the present day economy the developers mostly find it critical in maximizing the revenue to stay competitive.

So what are you waiting for? Don't you want to make your website the most visitor friendly website? If yes then with other things you can select the best DNN hosting package for your website as then only you will be able to satisfy your customers in the best possible manner. We support the latest DNN, please visit our website for further information.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

Setup

Depending on your exact scripting needs you might want to configure the SQL Server Management Studio scripting options to "script drops" before the creates of stored procedures, allowing you to do a complete scripting run out of the box.  You can also work with various options to tailor the generated SQL Scripts to meet your needs.  Otherwise no special setup is needed.

Writing the Scripts

The best part about the way that I write my SQL scripts is that only slight modifications are needed to write the scripts in a manner that can be executed on any database directly from SQL Server Management Studio and then converted easily into DotNetNuke compliant scripts.  The only change that you must make is that ALL objects must be qualified with a database owner, and the object name must be surrounded in []'s.  So a stored procedure creation must be similar to "CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.[MyPrefix_InsertMyData]", this rule applies to all objects, including from clauses and joins within the stored procedures.

By doing this you have a consistent form to your scripts that still complies with the needs of a default SQL Server implementation but also allows for a very simple find and replace to prepare objects for DotNetNuke integration.  Once you have written the scripts, feel free to run them and insert the objects into a test database, this way you can truly validate that your syntax is correct and perform any other validations needed.

Creating the DotNetNuke Scripts

Once you have successfully created the scripts and validated that they are correct you can use a simple find/replace option to make the scripts DNN compliant.  You have two options when it comes to performing this step.  The first is to simply use the SQL scripts that you executed, however, those might not yet have the drop statements needed to ensure that scripts are re-usable.  The second option is to use the "Script Object As" options within SSMS to have it script the Create or Alter statements for you.  The key is to get to a point where all scripts, in their current form are inside a single document.

Once the items are in a single document simply use find/replace.  Search for "dbo.[" without the quotes and specify "{databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}" without the quotes as the replace with text.  This will sub out the hard coded database owner and will supply the DotNetNuke tokens, making the script fully functional within the DotNetNuke module installation environment.

Conclusion

Hope this posting has helped someone with the creation of DotNetNuke module scripts. In case, you’re looking for DNN hosting, you can always go with us. We always ready to help you.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

In a few of the most recent versions of DotNetNuke, major changes have been completed in the way that a user manually imports a module definition to test a manifest file.  This is specifically the process that is mentioned in my book to test a module while developing, before it has been packaged for installation on another portal.  From what we gather, the behavior might change back a bit, but for now the process is slightly different that indicated in my book.  In this blog posting we'll document the changes, and a workaround solution.

The Old Way

In the book, the documented process for importing a manifest was to go to "Host" -> "Module Definitions" then select "Import Manifest".  This option to import the manifest has been removed, therefore the instructions in the book will NOT work.

The New Way

The modifications that were included in the 5.2.x versions of DotNetNuke have made this process more complicated to complete and moved it to a new location.  We believe this is part of future plans to help improve the process.  Sadly, We didn't notice this change until individuals started writing in with complaints.  Below is a list of steps now necessary to import a module definition using the new process.

1. Navigate to Host => Module Definitions
2. From dropdown menu select, 'Create New Module'
3. Select Create Module From: Manifest
4. Owner Folder: <Not Specified>
5. Module Folder: (Put your folder here...)
6. Resource: (Put your dnn file here...)
7. Leave Add Test Page unchecked.
8. CLICK Create Module

Following these steps you will import the module definition, in the end completing the same process as what was done before with the "Import Module Definition" option.

Hope this post can help you.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

In this post we’ll walk through a few of the various options for the module action menus. In this examples, we’ll be forgoing the use of the many constructor overloads in favor of using the various properties which we think make the code more readable.

As most module developers are aware, the first step in using the Module Action Menus is to have your module implement the IActionable interface.  This interface defines a single property which returns a collection of ModuleActions.

Namespace DotNetNuke.Modules.MenuExample

  Partial Class View
    Inherits Entities.Modules.PortalModuleBase
    Implements DotNetNuke.Entities.Modules.Iactionable

    Public ReadOnly Property ModuleActions As ModuleActionCollection
      Implements ModuleActions

      Get
        Dim modActions As New ModuleActionCollection()
        ...
        Return modActions
      End Get
    End Property
  End Class

End Namespace

Inside of this property we’ll add whichever actions are appropriate for the module.  Using the module action menus, it is possible to define a JavaScript method which is called when the associated menu item is selected.  We usually use this in my own modules when we want to popup a form for the user that we have created using jQuery or some other client-side script.  This minimizes postbacks and makes for a much more responsive UI.

' JavaScript Example
Dim jsAction As New ModuleAction (ModuleContext.GetNextActionID()
With jsAction
  .Title = "JavaScript Example"
  .CommandName = ModuleActionType.AddContent
  .ClientScript = "alert('Isn\'t this cool!')"
  .Secure = Security.SecurityAccessLevel.Edit
End With
modActions.Add(jsAction)

There are times when you will want to redirect the user to some specific URL within the current site or even on another site. You might want to provide access to the latest documentation or link the user to the relevant support forum on your website. This behavior is controlled by the URL property.

' URL Example
Dim urlAction As New ModuleAction (ModuleContext.GetNextActionID())
With urlAction
  .Title = "Url Example"
  .CommandName = "redirect"
  .Url = http://www.dotnetnuke.com
  .Secure = Security.SecurityAccessLevel.Edit
End With
modActions.Add(urlAction)

While linking to a URL is good, you will probably want to open the URL in a new window so that the user doesn’t lose their place on the website where they were using your module.  To do this, just set the NewWindow property to true.

' New Window Example
Dim newAction As New ModuleAction (ModuleContext.GetNextActionID())
With newAction
  .Title = "New Window Example"
  .CommandName = "newwindow"
  .Url = "http://www.dotnetnuke.com"
  .NewWindow = True
  .Secure = Security.SecurityAccessLevel.Edit
End With
modActions.Add(newAction)

Occasionally, you will want to do some additional processing on the server-side before taking further action.  Setting the UseActionEvent will override the behavior of the URL setting and force a server side event to be triggered.

' URL Postback Example
Dim urlEventAction As New ModuleAction (ModuleContext.GetNextActionID())
With urlEventAction
  urlEventAction.Title = "Action Event Example"
  urlEventAction.CommandName = "redirect"
  urlEventAction.CommandArgument = "cancel"
  urlEventAction.Url = http://www.dotnetnuke.com
  urlEventAction.UseActionEvent = True
  urlEventAction.Secure = Security.SecurityAccessLevel.Edit
End With
modActions.Add(urlEventAction)

In order to respond to the event you will need to register an event handler in the Init event of your module control

Protected Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init

  'Add an Action Event Handler to the Skin
  AddActionHandler(AddressOf MyActions_Click)
End Sub

Once you have registered the ActionHandler you are free to process the action using whatever business rules are appropriate for your specific module.

Private Sub MyActions_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As Entities.Modules.Actions.ActionEventArgs)
  Skins.Skin.AddModuleMessage(Me, _
    String.Format(Localization.GetString("ClickMessage", LocalResourceFile), e.Action.CommandName), _
    ModuleMessage.ModuleMessageType.BlueInfo)

Select Case e.Action.CommandName.ToLowerInvariant
  Case "redirect"
    If e.Action.CommandArgument.ToLowerInvariant <> "cancel" Then
      Response.Redirect(e.Action.Url
    Else
      Skins.Skin.AddModuleMessage(Me,
        "Canceled the Redirect", _
        ModuleMessage.ModuleMessageType.YellowWarning)
        End If
  End Select
End Sub

This post highlights just a few of the hidden capabilities of the Module Action Menu. The HTML/Text module is a great place to start.

Reasons why you must trust ASPHostPortal.com

Every provider will tell you how they treat their support, uptime, expertise, guarantees, etc., are. Take a close look. What they’re really offering you is nothing close to what ASPHostPortal does. You will be treated with respect and provided the courtesy and service you would expect from a world-class web hosting business.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added- benefits you can find when hosting with us:

- DELL Hardware
Dell hardware is engineered to keep critical enterprise applications running around the clock with clustered solutions fully tested and certified by Dell and other leading operating system and application providers.
- Recovery Systems
Recovery becomes easy and seamless with our fully managed backup services. We monitor your server to ensure your data is properly backed up and recoverable so when the time comes, you can easily repair or recover your data.
- Control Panel
We provide one of the most comprehensive customer control panels available. Providing maximum control and ease of use, our Control Panel serves as the central management point for your ASPHostPortal account. You’ll use a flexible, powerful hosting control panel that will give you direct control over your web hosting account. Our control panel and systems configuration is fully automated and this means your settings are configured automatically and instantly.
- Excellent Expertise in Technology
The reason we can provide you with a great amount of power, flexibility, and simplicity at such a discounted price is due to incredible efficiencies within our business. We have not just been providing hosting for many clients for years, we have also been researching, developing, and innovating every aspect of our operations, systems, procedures, strategy, management, and teams. Our operations are based on a continual improvement program where we review thousands of systems, operational and management metrics in real-time, to fine-tune every aspect of our operation and activities. We continually train and retrain all people in our teams. We provide all people in our teams with the time, space, and inspiration to research, understand, and explore the Internet in search of greater knowledge. We do this while providing you with the best hosting services for the lowest possible price.
- Data Center
ASPHostPortal modular Tier-3 data center was specifically designed to be a world-class web hosting facility totally dedicated to uncompromised performance and security
- Monitoring Services
From the moment your server is connected to our network it is monitored for connectivity, disk, memory and CPU utilization – as well as hardware failures. Our engineers are alerted to potential issues before they become critical.
- Network
ASPHostPortal has architected its network like no other hosting company. Every facet of our network infrastructure scales to gigabit speeds with no single point of failure.
- Security
Network security and the security of your server are ASPHostPortal’s top priorities. Our security team is constantly monitoring the entire network for unusual or suspicious behavior so that when it is detected we can address the issue before our network or your server is affected.
- Support Services
Engineers staff our data center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to manage the network infrastructure and oversee top-of-the-line servers that host our clients’ critical sites and services.

Joomla and DotNetNuke are only two content management systems among many; however they are often regarded as best-of-breed for their respective technology stacks. DotNetNuke is an ASP.Net CMS written in Visual Basic, while Joomla makes use of the ever-popular PHP. Continuing in the path of our previous articles , we're going to examine the two frameworks to provide an impartial view of the advantages and disadvantages of both.

DotNetNuke  was created by Shaun Walker in 2002. Based on the 'IBuySpy Portal' code Microsoft released to promote their ASP.Net framework, the application quickly acquired a large development community. Originally named the ‘IBuySpy Workshop’, the moniker was later changed to reflect the 'Nuke' suffix commonly affected by open source content management systems. The DotNetNuke Corporation was formed in 2006 to be a steering committee overseeing development of the framework which, as of July 2010, is in active use on over 600,000 websites.

Joomla  was established in August 2005 as a fork of the Mambo CMS project. Senior developers, including Andrew Eddie, were unhappy with the direction Mambo was taking. So, in an open letter   to the Mambo community, they announced their intention to form their own development team. The new project got its name from a community vote, Joomla being an anglicized form of an Arabic word meaning 'all together'. The first version of Joomla, released in September 2005, was essentially a re-branded release of Mambo 4.5.23; but since then the previous codebase has been expanded upon at an astounding pace, resulting in it becoming one of the leading PHP based content management systems. 2008 saw Joomla 1.5 released to much fanfare, as well as one of the lead developers winning a Packt award for most valued person. Today it continues to go from strength to strength, with prestigious firms like IHOP and CitiBank making use of Joomla both internally and on public facing sites.

Core Functionality: Both DNN and Joomla offer similar functionality at first glance, but it soon becomes apparent that DotNetNuke offers much more straight out of the box. Joomla supports basic functions like polls, blog layouts and a built-in search engine. It even has some more advanced options which are not available in other PHP based content management systems, for example load balancing and a trash bin to ensure articles are not deleted accidently. However, in comparison to DNN’s much wider range of built in functionality like database replication, events management and a photo gallery, the initial selection seems a little weak. The lack of a built-in forum system can particularly hurt Joomla based websites which wish to form communities, although there are plenty of forum bridges available as extensions.

Customization and Third Party Extensions: What Joomla lacks in core functionality, it tries its best to make up for with third party extensions. The sitemaps, wikis and multilingual content which DotNetNuke supports by default are freely available as open source plugins. A common saying in the Joomla world is that 80% of any site is an add-on, which arguably means the core framework is light-weight enough to support any type of site without necessarily coming with everything and the kitchen sink installed by default. Templates for Joomla are easy to create, and this is reflected by the vast number available across the Internet. The low barrier to entry can sometimes result in wading through a morass of poorly designed themes, but higher end commercial designs are often stunningly well put together.
 
Where Joomla does fall down is in the flexibility it provides. Although there are add-ons for most things working with the framework can often feel restrictive, especially when it comes to design. The templating system is fairly proscriptive, and so themes tend to be orientated around similar basic layouts. DotNetNuke allows for greater freedom of expression, giving the opportunity to create a more unique site style. DNN’s assumption that most customers will have some development knowledge may put many off, but also allows for more flexibility in the same manner that Microsoft’s SQL Server is more flexible than Access.

Underlying Technology: In any comparison between DotNetNuke and Joomla it is necessary to take into account the different technologies on which they are built. Joomla uses PHP with a MySQL backend, a combination that is prevalent in the web hosting sphere. By contrast DotNetNuke makes use of Microsoft’s ASP.Net framework which, while arguably superior on a technical level, is also more expensive to use in a shared web-hosting environment. That said many small and medium sized businesses already have servers which run Microsoft’s Internet Information Service (IIS), which nullifies the open source software stack’s price advantage.

Both Joomla and DotNetNuke can interact with LDAP based systems like Active Directory. However DNN has an advantage due to ASP.Net’s built-in membership and role providers, which allow businesses with their own development team to tie the system into their back-end more closely. Similarly the Visual Studio line of development environments makes code modification easier than most PHP based solutions. DotNetNuke is really designed for corporate intranets which need to integrate with existing systems, and is built around this kind of functionality. By contrast Joomla is more orientated towards providing a quick but expandable web presence.

Support: The DotNetNuke framework offers several different levels of support. The basic ‘Community’ edition provides assistance primarily through developer forums, while the paid-for ‘Professional’ edition offers unlimited tier 2 online and email support. The ‘Elite’ version even incorporates live phone support with a 2 hour maximum response time. Joomla’s development team does not directly offer commercial support, but a number of third-party companies have built up considerable expertise with the system. These now offer training and support in much the same way as a Microsoft certified partner could support SharePoint.

The key issue which may sway business users in the direction of DNN is the fact that the professional and elite versions are officially tested and verified. This means they are guaranteed to be as stable as possible, making them a good choice for business critical applications. These versions also offer health monitoring and file integrity checking, which can ensure that potential issues can be detected and resolved early on.

E-Commerce: A qualitative evaluation  of the key success attributes for online sales sites, made for the 11th International World Wide Web conference, highlighted what had been known for a long time; security and integrity are essential for any E-Commerce website. When comparing DotNetNuke and Joomla it can be seen that both frameworks support similar basic security features, like SSL encryption and email verification. However the professional edition of DNN also supports some extra features, such as granular privileges and sandboxing, which just give it the edge over Joomla in terms of functionality. When considering past performance it’s best to turn to Secunia, an independent security consultancy which maintains a list of vulnerability assessments for close to 30,000 different pieces of software.

As of July 2010 Secunia’s website shows 28 vulnerability advisories  for Joomla, of which none are unpatched. DotNetNuke has only 7 total advisories , and similarly none unpatched. In both cases it seems that the teams are able to resolve their security issues, but the increased number of advisories for Joomla might make some business users wary of another potential zero-day exploit.

When considering actual E-Commerce functionality, all editions of DNN come with affiliate tracking and a shopping cart included as standard. By comparison Joomla supports most e-commerce functions through third-party extensions, and hence isn’t ready for Internet marketing out of the box.

Integrating some of the available shopping carts into Joomla can be difficult, and may result in them looking tacked onto the design. This likely isn’t an issue for smaller businesses just starting to dip a toe into online sales, but may become a limiting factor when looking to upgrade a few years down the line.

Ease of Use: The inline administration model of DotNetNuke allows for quick and easy editing of content, whereas Joomla requires you to sign into a separate area of the site before making changes. DNN’s use of the drag and drop paradigm when modifying the position of modules is especially useful compared to Joomla’s more clunky back-end system. Beyond that the two frameworks share similar ease of use features with mass uploading, built in macro languages and search engine friendly URLs available by default.

In a comparison between Joomla and DotNetNuke, several things become evident. DNN arguably has an advantage in core functionality, however is lacking some of the third party extensions which make Joomla so appealing. Joomla’s style of administration is not as elegant as DotNetNuke’s in-line editing, and generally the framework is not as flexible. However it can be very quick to get a site based on a generic layout up and running. As such Joomla is likely ideal for making quick, inexpensive and moderately interactive websites.

DotNetNuke is aimed more at the creation of business scale web sites and web applications. Tight integration with existing systems and a usable e-commerce solution out of the box make it a winning formula for companies who want to set up an initial online sales presence. At the same time the stable, professionally certified and supported version is ideal for use in business critical applications, as well as high traffic community hubs.  

Conclusion

Both Joomla and DNN are good. It depends on you. So, if you’re looking for Joomla or DNN hosting, ASPHostPortal will help to host your site. You can start from our lowest price $ 5.00/month to get this hosting.

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