DotNetNuke (DNN) is a good content management system that greatly simplifies the day to day administration and content management of sites. One nice feature is the file management system which allows users to upload files from their local computers to the file system on the DNN Web server portal root. They can then use the DNN GUI to add widgets such as the Documents module that provides a fast and simple way to give site visitors access to these files.

The Problem

Sometimes, though, users will encounter a seemingly mysterious error message when they are trying to upload files to DotNetNuke such as the message in the image at the start of this article. This message will say that the file they just tried to upload is a restricted file type and that they need to contact a hosting provider.

You and your users will be happy to hear that this warning looks more ominous than it really is. If you are in charge of the DotNetNuke installation then you may have heard of disallowed file type errors before.

Tracking Down the Issue

When speaking with the user who does not explain the specifics of the error they encountered, there are two possibilities that will immediately spring to mind when hearing about an error with the DotNetNuke file uploader.

1. The first is that the file size exceeded the permitted file size in DotNetNuke.
2. The second is that the file type is not a permitted type.

You should make sure to check both of these points while talking with the user and make sure that when you enable the file type, that the file size will not exceed that allowed by your installation of DotNetNuke.

Luckily it’s quite easy to update the list of  permitted file types in DotNetNuke

Here are the steps to update the list of allowed file types based on a DNN 7 installation that I am working with. Depending on your version of DotNetNuke, the path and procedure to manage the list of file types may differ.

• Log into DotNetNuke with your SuperUser level account.
• Click on the Host option on the top left toolbar
• Click on the Host Settings menu item under the Basic Features menu.
• Scroll to the bottom of the Host Settings page that appears
• You will see an Advanced Settings sub-section
• Click on the plus (+) beside the Other Settings option to expand this
• You will now see a number of options, one of which is titled Allowable File Extensions
• In the text box of Allowable File Extensions you will see a comma-separated list of the allowed extensions.
• At the end of the list add the file extension you would like to enable. Please note that you do not add the ‘.’ in front of the extension, but simply a comma and then the actual file extension (such as ,ai for Adobe Illustrator file types, or ,docx for MS Word documents)

Do Not Over-Allow File Types

The reason that DotNetNuke restricts file types so carefully and only allows system SuperUsers to manage the list of file types is that some file types are more prone to allowing system compromises than others.

While managing file types, it is important to realize that each new file type that you add can introduce security risks to your site. On a closed Intranet system this is not so much of an issue, but on an Web site that is exposed to the Internet you should carefully evaluate the allowed file types to make sure that you are not exposing your site and users to unnecessary risks.

In this article, I want to describe about IIS SEO Toolkit and the YSlow plugin for FireFox. The SEO Toolkit is invaluable for finding things like broken links, bad markup, etc, while the YSlow plugin analyzes things from a pure performance perspective. I recommend both highly for fine tuning your DotNetNuke websites.

One of the things that YSlow recommends is to compress the files that are sent from the server to the user’s web browser. DotNetNuke provides the option to use GZip compression on the Host Settings page. Turning this feature on is one of the first things I do when I set up a new DotNetNuke installation.

YSlow has the following to say about compression:

“Compression reduces response times by reducing the size of the HTTP response. Gzip is the most popular and effective compression method currently available and generally reduces the response size by about 70%. Approximately 90% of today's Internet traffic travels through browsers that claim to support gzip.”

That’s great! Unfortunately, not every file on your DotNetNuke site is compressed when you enable that setting at the host level. In fact, in a test against a recent version of DotNetNuke in my local environment, YSlow reports 18 components that should be compressed. When you enable GZip compression in the DotNetNuke Host Settings, that number drops to…..17. This is due to the actual page itself being compressed (which is wonderful, don’t get me wrong). But what are the other 17 components? Static files. Namely JavaScript files (.js) and Cascading Style Sheets (.css).

Now, the fact that there so many external files its an altogether different issue that I will side-step for the purpose of this blog post. Of course I would love it if DNN had 1 dynamically created minified JS file and 1 dynamically created CSS file, period. However, that is currently not the case, and even if it was – wouldn’t you want to gzip those files as well?

Here is the compression report from a recent version of DotNetNuke that has GZip enabled:

You can see that DotNetNuke does pretty darn well with respect to the YSlow configuration, except where it comes to dealing with external files (this report was run with the “Small Site or Blog” ruleset, for those that are curious). So, how can I improve this section of the YSlow report? By letting IIS gzip the static files, of course!

The report above is from a local environment, but this is exactly how dnnGallery.net behaved prior to implementing some Gzip compression in IIS.

The steps that I used to get IIS to perform GZip compression on all of the static files in my website were as follows:

1. Enable static file compression in IIS
2. Install IIS Resources
3. Add the appropriate file extensions using the IIS Metabase Explorer
4. Restart IIS

Enabling static file compression in IIS

So, first I enabled IIS compression of static files. Note that this is a server-wide solution, and will apply to each of your web sites hosted in IIS. Here are the relevant steps from the MSDN documentation:

To enable server-wide HTTP compression

1. In IIS Manager, expand the local computer, right-click the Web Sites folder, and then click Properties.

2. Click the Service tab, and in the HTTP compression section, select the Compress application files check box to enable dynamic compression.

3. Select the Compress static files check box to compress static files.

4. In the Temporary directory box, type the path to a local directory or click Browse to locate a directory. Once a static file is compressed, it is cached in this temporary directory until it expires, or the content changes. The temporary directory must be on a local drive on an NTFS-formatted partition. The directory cannot be compressed, and should not be shared.

5. Under Maximum temporary directory size, click a folder size option. If you click the Limited to (in megabytes) option and enter a number in the text box next to it, IIS automatically cleans up the temporary directory according to a least recently used rule when the set limit is reached.

6. Click Apply, and then click OK.

After I performed this step, only one random .txt file was compressed, how useful! You can check which files are compressed by looking in the temporary folder that was specified in the above steps.

Add file extensions using the Metabase Explorer

After I installed the resource kit tools, I opened the new Metabase Explorer application from my start menu and performed the following steps:

1. Expanded [Machine Name] –> W3SVC –> Filters –> Compression and selected gzip
2. For the row named “HcFileExtensions” I added “js” and “css” to the “Data” list
3. For the row named “HcScriptFileExtensions” I added “axd” to the “Data” list

Run it and you’ll see the result

Review some of the default DotNetNuke configurable settings, most of which have been configured for general ease of use. This article will show you how to modify some of these settings ito improve the overall performance of your DotNetNuke installation.

DotNetNuke is a large and flexible web platform and as such has many configurable settings. Most of these settings have been configured for general ease of use, so it is recommended that we review and modify some of these settings if we wish to improve the overall performance of a DotNetNuke installation.

1) Host Settings Configuration

Configuration - Check For Upgrades
When this option is enabled, your website will communicate with “DNN Corp” to check for upgrades. An upgrade check will be performed every time you view the module definitions page or if you view a page with the DNN control bar embedded.

We should turn this option off to reduce overhead and remove the annoying nag images.

Appearance - Show Copyright Credits
This feature injects the DNN copyrights into the page, this just adds more page weight and is not required.

We should turn this option off to reduce page overhead.

1.2) Request Filter Settings

DotNetNuke introduced the request filter feature starting with DotNetNuke 4.5.3, this feature enables you to setup request filters to block or redirect users.

If you do not specifically need this feature, then we recommend that you turn this option off.

1.3) Performance Settings

The default DotNetNuke performance settings are ok for testing environments but production environments will require these settings to be modified. The following sub sections will outline recommendations for the configuration of these items.

Page State Persistence
This setting determines whether the page’s view state is stored in the page or server memory. Although changing this option to “Memory” could reduce the overall size of the request sent to the user, in most cases it causes other problems and I personally recommend NEVER changing this value to anything other than “Page”.

Module Cache Provider
The module caching provider setting configures how DotNetNuke will store the output cache of its module objects. The proper configuration of this setting is dependent on the specific environment that the website will be hosted in. Shared Hosting and Dedicated hosting environments will typically see better results using “Memory” caching. In Cloud computing environments, disk based caching makes sense as website content is stored on a SAN or similar device with very good write speeds, and memory availability is limited.

Cache Setting
This performance setting is used to control how much of the underlying data is cached by DotNetNuke.
We recommend setting this option to “Heavy”.

Authenticated Cacheability
This setting is used to define the cacheability of content for authenticated users, this can be used to optimize what can and cannot be cached by downstream routers and machines when working with authenticated users. For more information on the values in this section please consult MSDN

I recommend that this setting is left at the default value.

Compression Setting
Enabling gzip compression is an easy way to reduce the size of the site payload and get a nice boost in performance. It is possible to disable the DotNetNuke compression and use IIS native compression, however, we have experienced issues with some third party modules and IIS level compression. Therefore it is recommended that we use the DNN functionality unless there is a specific need to compress at the IIS level.

Use Whitespace Filter
This setting will strip whitespace from your generated page content following the Regular Expression specified in the Whitespace Filter option under "compression settings". This option is NOT needed if you are using a compression method. If you are not using a compression method and still would like to see a reduction in page size you can use this option which will slim down the HTML size of your pages.

Output Cache Provider (DNN Prol Only)
This provider is used to cache the entire content of a generated page allowing for zero database lookups and page generation activities to be skipped for un-changed content. This option is not available in the community edition of DotNetNuke.

1.4) Other Settings

Enable Users Online
The Users Online feature allows DotNetNuke to show you which users are currently online. This process adds a fair amount of overhead and it is recommended that you do NOT have users online enabled.

Site Log History
The Site Log History setting controls the data retention policy used by the DotNetNuke Site Log.
We recommend that the Site Log History setting be set to “0” days which will disable all site log functionality.

Scheduler Mode
This setting controls how DotNetNuke scheduled tasks are triggered. The default configuration of “Request Method” requires that on page requests a check is performed to trigger any tasks. This mode introduces additional request overhead and can delay end-user experiences. We recommend setting this configuration option to “Timer Method”.

Enable Event Log Buffer
DotNetNuke writes all kinds of log entries to the event log, user login, page changes, etc. Enabling the event log buffer allows DotNetNuke to queue these log items to cache, thus reducing the number of database writes. Therefore it is our recommendation that this setting be enabled on all installations.

Auto Sync File System
This configuration option enables/disables the automatic file synchronization functionality. We recommend disabling this functionality as it is only needed if files are added to the portal via FTP on a regular basis.

2) Admin Settings

On DNN 5 portals, un-select “Enable Skin Widgets” if they are not being used. This will prevent additional page resources from being injected, and increasing the size of the page.

3) DotNetNuke Scheduler

This is another DotNetNuke sub-system that is worth configuring to ensure the website is optimized
for performance. The DotNetNuke task scheduler provides vital functionality, however if the tasks are
scheduled to run too frequently they will have an adverse impact on the websites performance.

We recommend the following task scheduler optimizations:

First disable all scheduler tasks that are not required by this website installation.

Configure “DotNetNuke.Services.Scheduling.PurgeScheduleHistory, DotNetNuke” to run every 12/24 hours (or whatever best fits your portal requirements, based upon how much Schedule Log your website generates)

Configure “DotNetNuke.Services.Search.SearchEngineScheduler, DotNetNuke” to run every 12/24 hours and retry after 24/48 hours. (again depending upon what best fits your portal requirements). Note: updating this setting will yield a significant improvement in performance.

4) DotNetNuke Event Log

Anyone who uses DotNetNuke for any period of time will soon discover that the “EventLog” can produce a significant hindrance on performance. It is very important to note that DotNetNuke by default does not clear the entries in “EventLog” table. Over time this table will grow to be very large.

You can enable the “EventLog” buffer feature, to minimize the impact, but I recommend truncating this table on a daily basis. This allows for a 24 hour rolling history for any diagnostics purposes and avoids rapid transaction log growth when deleting records. This can be accomplished a number of ways;

SQL Server Scheduled Job

Manual process

Or using a custom module.

Also disable all logs that are not essential for the website installation, this will reduce the number of database requests your website will need to perform, in particular:

Disable “Application Start” log entries

Disable “Application End” log entries

Disable “Scheduler Started”, “Scheduler Event Started” log entries

5) Authentication Providers

Starting with DotNetNuke 4.7.0 additional authentication provider modules were introduced. Website administrators can configure which authentication provider/s is used to authenticate the users against.

Most DotNetNuke sites will only require the standard DotNetNuke Authentication Provider. However, behind the scenes the website will incur a performance hit when additional authentication providers are enabled, even if they are not being utilized.

This performance hit is typically limited to the login page itself where DotNetNuke polls all enabled providers to see if they must be rendered, but the performance impact can be major.

It is our recommendation that all non-essential authentication providers should be disabled.

ASPHostPortal.com is a premiere web hosting company that specialized in Windows and ASP.NET-based hosting, announces their global expansion into Asia with a new datacenter location in Singapore. Advanced Windows 2008/R2 hosting and SQL hosting are available in the new Singapore-based datacenter.

This Singapore Data Center is supported with Multiple connections to major Internet backbone carriers via SingTel, SingNet, NTT Communication, Deutsche Telekom AG, Hurricane Electric and PCCW with OC-12 connections using BGP-4 routing protocol. This Singapore Data centre hosting is suitable to anyone who plans to do an online business in Asia or it is suitable to those who are targetting Asian markets.

“We have a large Asia customer base and we wanted to address their concerns of website latency issues due to data transport over long distances,” said Dean Thomas, Manager at ASPHostPortal. “We are serious in global hosting business and this is why we provide options to our customers to select from our three data centres.”

“From now, customer can select the data center location where they desire to host their website as part of our online ordering process and after successful order submission, the website account will be instantly setup. And we did not leave out our existing customers; we have a team ready to assist in datacenter location migration," added Dean Thomas. “We are extremely proud with this new launch of Asia data center.”

ASPHostPortal.com Singapore Data centre hosting server supports the newest Intel Xeon Processor with a minimum 8 GB RAMs and 2000 Mbps connection line. All the latest ASP.NET Framework  and SQL 2012 hosting are ready on all the servers. This data centre is provided as an addition to our two existing data centres, i.e. Houston (US Data center) and Amsterdam (European Data center).

ASPHostPortal.com is one of the Microsoft recommended hosting partner (http://www.microsoft.com/web/hosting/HostingProvider/Details/962) that provide most stable and reliable web hosting platform. With this new data center, it will continue to keep ASPHostPortal.com as one of the front runners in the web hosting market.

About ASPHostPortal.com:

ASPHostPortal.com is a hosting company that best support in Windows and ASP.NET-based hosting. Services include shared hosting, reseller hosting, and sharepoint hosting, with specialty in ASP.NET, SQL Server, and architecting highly scalable solutions. As a leading small to mid-sized business web hosting provider, ASPHostPortal.com strive to offer the most technologically advanced hosting solutions available to all customers across the world. Security, reliability, and performance are at the core of hosting operations to ensure each site and/or application hosted is highly secured and performs at optimum level.

One of the biggest concerns for developers these days is how to increase the performance of delivered applications. User expectations have changed over the past few years and the expectations are very, very high in regards to page load times and how quickly information should be returned to the users. Thankfully, as part of DotNetNuke there are a number of different features that can help applications work quickly. Some of these features are known by everyone, things such as the DotNetNuke performance settings under "Host Settings", Cache Time settings on a module by module basis, and if on Professional Edition the built in page Output Cache Provider. However, one often overlooked API that is helpful for developers is the DataCache API. In this post I'll do a deep dive into why this API is so helpful and some scenarios where leveraging this API it can reduce page load times and system resources needed for each page request.

What is the DataCache

Before I get into the specifics of how to use the DataCache API I want to give a bit of detail on what exactly DataCache is. If you are an experienced ASP.NET developer you should be familiar with the ASP.NET Application object, a cache repository for storing information at the application level. Items stored in application are stored using code like the following. Application["MyKey"] = MyObject; This shouldn't be anything new to you, but within DotNetNuke, just like "SessionState" it is a recommended practice to not utilize this object due to the fact that Application is not aware of the DotNetNuke caching API's or Web Farm configurations. Enter the DataCache API.

DotNetNuke's DataCache object comes in to fill the gap, used at the base level in a very similar fasion it allows you to store any object that you desire using the DotNetNuke cache provider. If the site is configured to use File caching your content is stored in a file, if Memory it wil be stored in memory. With this you can rest assured that your cached objects will work just like the rest of the DotNetNuke infrastructure.

What do I Cache?

So great, we know we can cache objects, but what do we cache? This is the age old question and something that I cannot give a 100% answer here that will be a solution for everyone reading this. The key here is that we can store ANY objects necessary. A few examples of diffent cache strategies can be illustrated by discussing what I do with two of our most popular open source modules. You can cache individual objects, and implement this caching seamlessly in your controller class. We are doing this for the our custom settings for the "Expandable Text/HTML" module. The advantage here is that if you are calling ExpandableTextController.GetSettings(12) with cache checking code inside the "GetSettings" method we can be sure that we only hit the database if the object isn't in cache already. This helps reduce database hits for commonly used objects.

In addition to doing this you can also cache generated content. Lets assume that we have a module that grabs a number of objects from the database and then does a bunch of processing and eventually loads the content to an ASP.NET Literal control on the UI. Sure, we could cache the database objects to prevent the database call, but we could also think about storing the fully generated content. Doing this, even with a 15 minute cache time can reduce CPU usage, Memory usage, and page load times for your custom modules.

Using the DataCache Object

When it comes to using the data cache object there are a number of situations where a similar pattern can be used to help gain access to the Cache and store items. To help take away some of the duplicate code that can occur I often include a "CacheHelper" object that helps greatly. Looking at the code snippet below you can see what we use on all projects.

1: public static bool CacheExists(string key)
2: {
3: return DataCache.GetCache(key) != null;
4: }
5: 
6: public static void SetCache<T>(T toSet, string key)
7: {
8: DataCache.SetCache(key, toSet);
9: }
10: 
11: public static T GetItemFromCache<T>(string key
12: {
13: return (T) DataCache.GetCache(key);
14: }

This makes the process this much easier for you as a developer you don't need to perform casting along the way and you can use very simple patterns to get objects from cache. For example I can do something like this: var myObject = CacheHelper.CacheExists("MyItem") ? CacheHelper.GetCache("MyItem") : new MyType();. As you can see one line process to get my object, or a new object if the item isn't contained within the cache. You can easily expand on this to help with your specific application.

Conclusion

Application performance is something that as web developers we need to be working on every day. Using DotNetNuke's built in cache system gives us a helpful tool to improve performance, and also ensures that applications we develop can easily scale to Web Farm environments. Please feel free to share comments/questions below.

Sometimes, you’ll see this error when trying to add an new article, there is the error.

Error: DNNArticle Edit is currently unavailable. DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.ModuleLoadException: This property cannot be set to an empty string. Parameter name: value ---> System.ArgumentException: This property cannot be set to an empty string. Parameter name: value at System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.set_Host(String value) at DotNetNuke.Services.Mail.Mail.SendMailInternal(MailMessage mailMessage, String subject, String body, MailPriority priority, MailFormat bodyFormat, Encoding bodyEncoding, IEnumerable`1 attachments, String smtpServer, String smtpAuthentication, String smtpUsername, String smtpPassword, Boolean smtpEnableSSL) at DotNetNuke.Services.Mail.Mail.SendMail(String mailFrom, String mailTo, String cc, String bcc, String replyTo, MailPriority priority, String subject, MailFormat bodyFormat, Encoding bodyEncoding, String body, List`1 attachments, String smtpServer, String smtpAuthentication, String smtpUsername, String smtpPassword, Boolean smtpEnableSSL) at DotNetNuke.Services.Mail.Mail.SendMail(String mailFrom, String mailTo, String cc, String bcc, String replyTo, MailPriority priority, String subject, MailFormat bodyFormat, Encoding bodyEncoding, String body, String[] attachments, String smtpServer, String smtpAuthentication, String smtpUsername, String smtpPassword, Boolean smtpEnableSSL) at DotNetNuke.Services.Mail.Mail.SendMail(String mailFrom, String mailTo, String cc, String bcc, MailPriority priority, String subject, MailFormat bodyFormat, Encoding bodyEncoding, String body, String attachment, String smtpServer, String smtpAuthentication, String smtpUsername, String smtpPassword, Boolean smtpEnableSSL) at DotNetNuke.Services.Mail.Mail.SendMail(String mailFrom, String mailTo, String cc, String bcc, MailPriority priority, String subject, MailFormat bodyFormat, Encoding bodyEncoding, String body, String attachment, String smtpServer, String smtpAuthentication, String smtpUsername, String smtpPassword) at ZLDNN.Modules.DNNArticle.PubEditor.SendEmail(DNNArticleInfo objDNNArticle, Boolean NewArticle, Boolean JustApproved, PortalSettings PortalSettings, Hashtable Settings, Boolean IsSendEmail, String Email, String EmailSubject, String EmailTemplate, String NewArticleEmailSubject, String NewArticleEmailTemplate, String ApprovedArticleEmailSubject, String ApprovedArticleEmailTemplate, Int32 SubscribeModule, String SubscribeEmailSubject, String SubscribeEmailTemplate) at ZLDNN.Modules.DNNArticle.BaseEditor.SendEmail(DNNArticleInfo objDNNArticle, Boolean NewArticle, Boolean JustApproved) at ZLDNN.Modules.DNNArticle.EditDNNArticle.SaveArticle() at ZLDNN.Modules.DNNArticle.EditDNNArticle.cmdUpdate_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

The issue is caused by new send email API in DNN 6.2. If the SMTP server is not set up, when the send email API is called, it will throw the error. To fix it is simple, you can set up the SMTP server in host->host settings. Or you can disable the email notification in module settings. It will solve your problem.

In this post, I'm going to take a bit more of a 'code-centric" no-nonsense approach to what your form should really look like, I hope that this helps you. To help make this post as helpful as I can, I'm going to start out with some key CSS Classes then I'll move into the actual form pattern.

CSS Classes

The following is a listing of the new CSS classes that I've been using and found to be key to working with the new form pattern.

Now the above listing is just a subset of the CSS Classes that were added, but these are the basic ones that I needed to get my forms updated to the new standard.

Coding the Form

So, it is all fine and dandy that I have these items defined, but what does it actually take to get the form coded? Actually it is very simple, and I'll break it down into a number of steps for you.

Form Overview

To ensure that we start out on the right foot, lets take a high level look at what a form should look like:

<div class="dnnForm dnnClear">

    <ul class="dnnActions dnnClear">
        <li><asp:LinkButton id="btnSubmit" runat="server"
                  CssClass="dnnPrimaryAction" text="Submit" />
        </li>
    </ul>
</div>

As you can see here it is pretty simple, a div to contain the entire form, then at the bottom an actions list to handle your operations.

Form Items

Once we have the overview of the form created, we can add our items. In the most basic structure items should look like the following.

<div class="dnnFormItem">
    <label>My Label</label>
    <asp:TextBox id="txtMyTextbox" runat="server" CssClass="dnnFormRequired" />
    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator id="myValidator" runat="server"
        ControlToValidate="txtMyTextbox" Text="My Error"
        CssClass="dnnFormMessage dnnFormError" display="Dynamic" />
</div>

Now, notice here that we have an individual div for each item, within this we have a HTML label and then our control(s). If you are used to using the DotNetNuke Label control for providing localized labels and help information you can substitute that control for the label as used in the above example.

To continue building out your form, simply add additional Form Item Div's as needed within the dnnForm div created above and your will be set to go.

I hope that this basic overview of the general form structure has been helpful. In future posts I will show how to create expanding/collapsing sections using the jQuery helpers

ASPHostPortal is a premiere web hosting company that specialized in Windows and ASP.NET-based hosting, proudly announces new Microsoft product, Windows Server 2012 hosting to all new and existing customers. The newly released server operating system offers a number of features that can be utilized to benefit developers, resellers and businesses.

Windows Server 2012 offers new and improved features which enable multi-user infrastructure where storage resources, networking and compute are completely remote from other users. There are a number of key features that customers will find useful, including support for asp.net 4.5, Internet Information Services 8.0 (IIS), compatibility with Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio Express 2012, support for ASP.NET MVC 4, and Entity Framework 5. Other key new features include dynamic IP restriction to help prevent DoS attacks, support WebSockets and node.js, and also CPU Throttling to ensure isolated each client's server usage and Application Initialization to improve user experience of first requests.

“We have always had a great appreciation for the products that Microsoft Offers. With the launched of Windows Server 2012 hosting services, entrepreneurs and organization will be able to build their impressive website to be on the top of the competition.” Said Dean Thomas, Manager at ASPHostPortal. “Within Windows Server 2012 hosting packages, users will have the ability to use Hyper-V in assorted configurations, improved isolation and security, fortified access controls to files and processes and the capability of managing servers as a group.”

ASPHostPortal is one of the Microsoft recommended hosting partner that provide most stable and reliable web hosting platform. With the new launch of Windows Server 2012 into its feature, it will continue to keep ASPHostPortal as one of the front runners in the web hosting market. For more information about new Windows Server 2012 hosting, please visit http://www.asphostportal.com.

About ASPHostPortal.com:

ASPHostPortal.com is a hosting company that best support in Windows and ASP.NET-based hosting. Services include shared hosting, reseller hosting, and sharepoint hosting, with specialty in ASP.NET, SQL Server, and architecting highly scalable solutions. As a leading small to mid-sized business web hosting provider, ASPHostPortal strive to offer the most technologically advanced hosting solutions available to all customers across the world. Security, reliability, and performance are at the core of hosting operations to ensure each site and/or application hosted is highly secured and performs at optimum level.

DotNetNuke is a content management based on Microsoft's .Net Technology that allow non-technical users to create, modify and customize the appearance and working of their websites. DotNetNuke Corp recently released DotNetNuke 6 that allows much more simplified user interface and increases productivity by making it much easier for the user to build and maintain websites.

In this tutorial we will walk you through a detailed step-by-step process to how to download and upgrade existing DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to the latest version, DotNetNuke 6.0.

Before formally starting the process let us make this very clear that it is possible for the user to directly upgrade DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to DotNetNuke 6.0. Most of the tutorials published over the internet would suggest that it is either not possible or requires to install number of enhancement packages to directly upgrade DotNetNuke 6, which is fortunately not the case. Many would suggest to go step-by-step from DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to 5.5 and then to DotNetNuke 6.0. Here we will show with the help of screenshots that if you have IIS configured properly and have all matching specifications then there is no issue in upgrading DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to DotNetNuke 6.0 using the platform of Windows 7.

Specifications:

In this tutorial we are assuming that:

- Users have Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 or SQL Express.
- Currently using DotNetNuke 4.9.5 on Windows 7. It should be noted that DotNetNuke 4.9.5 is perfectly workable on Windows 7.
- Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) 5+, IIS 7 are recommended.
- Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 ( can be obtained via Windows Update).

Before starting the upgrade process you must, as always, first create a backup of the website and the database. Never ever try to upgrade DotNetNuke on live site without creating the backup. There are number of ways that can be used to create backup for your website. We will elaborate few most common and easy methods to create backups.

Database backup:

As you can see in the screen shot that we are using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2008. To have a backup of your existing database navigate to your specific database in Enterprise Manager, right click on the database and select "All Tasks" >> “Backup" and save the “.bak” file at a secure location.



SQL Backup to app_data:

One common method is to copy the database backup in app_data folder with ".resources" extension. The will enable you to copy the compete website including database as a single unit (zip file).

Taking your site offline:

If your site is online and have regular visitors then it is better to leave a message that will let the visitors know of any back end enhancements. All you have to do is to place "app_offline.htm" in the root directory. ASP.NET will itself display the visitor a friendly message that the website is currently under maintenance or you can edit the file to left a message that suits you. Once the upgrade is complete you can simply rename the file "app_offline.htm" to "app_offline.htm.exclude" or can even delete the file.

Upgrading DotNetNuke 4.9.5:

The backup has been created and we are all set to move forward with the upgrade process.

Downloading the upgrade package:

DotNetNuke 6 upgrade package can be downloaded from http://www.codeplex.com/. All we need is to visit the website, search with the keyword "DotNetNuke 6" and the top most result would be the one we should be looking at. Navigate to the download tab at the top of the page and make sure that you download the latest version upgrade. For your ease here is a link that will navigate you directly to the upgrade page.



Once the upgrade package has been downloaded, the next step is to extract the contents of the ZIP archive to any local folder. Make sure to uncheck the "block option" under properties, sometime this option comes as "checked" when zip files are downloaded.

Upgrade to DotNetNuke 6:

To begin the upgrade processes we will navigate to our local root directory where the files of DotNetNuke 4.9.5 exist, “c:\inetpub\wwwroot\”, which would look like this c:\inetpub\wwwroot\dnn4\. Now we will copy all the files from the upgrade package that we have just downloaded and replace them in the directory where DotNetNuke 4.9.5 was installed “c:\inetpub\wwwroot\dnn4\”.



Running the upgrade wizard:

Once the files are replaced we are going to recall the website in the web browser or simply strike this link “ localhost/Install/Install.aspx?mode=upgrade” into your web browser.



You will realize, as can be seen in the snapshot, that the upgrade process has been triggered itself. You don’t need to do anything but to wait for few minutes until a message at the bottom shows the status as “Upgrade Complete”.



Click at the bottom to access you portal, enter your credentials and you are good to go.





Dotnetnuke has now made it easier for the users to upgrade from one version to another without facing much issue. But there might be some permission problems during the upgrade process. To overcome such scenarios make sure that you have set all the required permissions to give user full control on the website. Navigate to "Security" tab of your DNN folder under “wwwroot” directory to confirm that you have all the required permissions fully configured.

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.

DotNetNuke is a content management based on Microsoft's .Net Technology that allow non-technical users to create, modify and customize the appearance and working of their websites. DotNetNuke Corp recently released DotNetNuke 6 that allows much more simplified user interface and increases productivity by making it much easier for the user to build and maintain websites.

In this tutorial we will walk you through a detailed step-by-step process to how to download and upgrade existing DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to the latest version, DotNetNuke 6.0.

Before formally starting the process let us make this very clear that it is possible for the user to directly upgrade DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to DotNetNuke 6.0. Most of the tutorials published over the internet would suggest that it is either not possible or requires to install number of enhancement packages to directly upgrade DotNetNuke 6, which is fortunately not the case. Many would suggest to go step-by-step from DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to 5.5 and then to DotNetNuke 6.0. Here we will show with the help of screenshots that if you have IIS configured properly and have all matching specifications then there is no issue in upgrading DotNetNuke 4.9.5 to DotNetNuke 6.0 using the platform of Windows 7.

Specifications:

In this tutorial we are assuming that:

- Users have Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 or SQL Express.
- Currently using DotNetNuke 4.9.5 on Windows 7. It should be noted that DotNetNuke 4.9.5 is perfectly workable on Windows 7.
- Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) 5+, IIS 7 are recommended.
- Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 ( can be obtained via Windows Update).

Before starting the upgrade process you must, as always, first create a backup of the website and the database. Never ever try to upgrade DotNetNuke on live site without creating the backup. There are number of ways that can be used to create backup for your website. We will elaborate few most common and easy methods to create backups.

Database backup:

As you can see in the screen shot that we are using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2008. To have a backup of your existing database navigate to your specific database in Enterprise Manager, right click on the database and select "All Tasks" >> “Backup" and save the “.bak” file at a secure location.



SQL Backup to app_data:

One common method is to copy the database backup in app_data folder with ".resources" extension. The will enable you to copy the compete website including database as a single unit (zip file).

Taking your site offline:

If your site is online and have regular visitors then it is better to leave a message that will let the visitors know of any back end enhancements. All you have to do is to place "app_offline.htm" in the root directory. ASP.NET will itself display the visitor a friendly message that the website is currently under maintenance or you can edit the file to left a message that suits you. Once the upgrade is complete you can simply rename the file "app_offline.htm" to "app_offline.htm.exclude" or can even delete the file.

Upgrading DotNetNuke 4.9.5:

The backup has been created and we are all set to move forward with the upgrade process.

Downloading the upgrade package:

DotNetNuke 6 upgrade package can be downloaded from http://www.codeplex.com/. All we need is to visit the website, search with the keyword "DotNetNuke 6" and the top most result would be the one we should be looking at. Navigate to the download tab at the top of the page and make sure that you download the latest version upgrade. For your ease here is a link that will navigate you directly to the upgrade page.



Once the upgrade package has been downloaded, the next step is to extract the contents of the ZIP archive to any local folder. Make sure to uncheck the "block option" under properties, sometime this option comes as "checked" when zip files are downloaded.

Upgrade to DotNetNuke 6:

To begin the upgrade processes we will navigate to our local root directory where the files of DotNetNuke 4.9.5 exist, “c:\inetpub\wwwroot\”, which would look like this c:\inetpub\wwwroot\dnn4\. Now we will copy all the files from the upgrade package that we have just downloaded and replace them in the directory where DotNetNuke 4.9.5 was installed “c:\inetpub\wwwroot\dnn4\”.



Running the upgrade wizard:

Once the files are replaced we are going to recall the website in the web browser or simply strike this link “ localhost/Install/Install.aspx?mode=upgrade” into your web browser.



You will realize, as can be seen in the snapshot, that the upgrade process has been triggered itself. You don’t need to do anything but to wait for few minutes until a message at the bottom shows the status as “Upgrade Complete”.



Click at the bottom to access you portal, enter your credentials and you are good to go.





Dotnetnuke has now made it easier for the users to upgrade from one version to another without facing much issue. But there might be some permission problems during the upgrade process. To overcome such scenarios make sure that you have set all the required permissions to give user full control on the website. Navigate to "Security" tab of your DNN folder under “wwwroot” directory to confirm that you have all the required permissions fully configured.

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.