What is New in DotNetNuke 7.4.2?

The latest version of DotNetNuke is 7.4.2. This version has been released at October 6th 2015. This release is maintenance release, bug fixes and support for incremental updates.

SECURITY ISSUES

This release resolves the following two security issues:

• 2015-06 (Low) Potential XSS issue when using tabs dialog
• 2015-07 (Medium) Users are getting registered even though User Registration is set to None

What started out as a relatively small maintenance release has turned into one of their largest maintenance releases ever. They spent a lot of time working to resolve a number of password management and multi-language issues along with a few performance enhancements. In total, they ran well over 5000 manual and automated tests on this release with a 99% pass rate.

MAJOR HIGHLIGHTS

• Added upgrade support from beta release
• Fixed issue with lists in custom registration form
• Fixed issue with ignore words in Italian and French
• Fixed issue with site export in multi-language site
• Fixed issue where parameters in return URL were malformed
• Fixed issue in sitemap for multi-language site
• Fixed issue where control panel did not render links correctly in SSL offload environments
• Fixed issue where pages with future start date were inaccessible
• Fixed multiple password reset issues
• Fixed issue where site settings could be duplicated
• Fixed issue where dismissing all notifications removed messages as well
• Fixed issue where file link for missing file caused exception
• Fixed issue where localized portal settings were not getting applied when switching languages
• Fixed issue where admin was unable to change interface language
• Fixed issue where page name uniqueness was applied cross language
• Fixed multiple scheduler issues

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How to Create a Backup of DNN and The Database

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.  Finally I will discuss options available for third party modules for performing backups for individuals that do not have direct access to their servers.

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.

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 dnn441.zip where dnn441 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: 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 and Enterprise Manager

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

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How to Use the Text DotNetNuke Skin Object

DotNetNuke is a web content management system based on Microsoft .NET. The DNN Platform Edition is open source. DNN is designed for multi-tenancy and supports an unlimited number of websites, either as root websites or for portals in a parent-child configuration. The platform's skinning feature separates content from design-related files for easier customization. Skins make it simple to maintain a common look and structure across related sites without advanced programming knowledge. DNN's core functionality can be expanded with modules for common elements, such as those for e-commerce. The software enables parent-child website resource sharing and management using specially-formed symbolic links.

What is a Skin Object?

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

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

Text Skin Object

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

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

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

The Code

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

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

    <param name="Text" value="Welcome, " />

    <param name="CssClass" value="NormalBold" />

    <param name="ResourceKey" value="Welcome.Text" />

    <param name="ReplaceTokens" value="False" />

</object>

If you are using a ASCX skin, then you would need two updates.  First, put this line of code into the top section of the source:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="TEXT" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Text.ascx" %>

Next, put this code into the appropriate spot of the source in the skin:

<dnn:TEXT runat="server" id="dnnTEXT-Welcome" Text="Welcome, "

CssClass="NormalBold" ResourceKey="Welcome.Text" ReplaceTokens="False" />

Resource Files

Next, you need to make sure your skin has resource files.  In your skin package, you should have a folder namedApp_LocalResources.  This folder will contain the necessary files to tell your skin the appropriate text to use for the skin object when the specific language is asked for during page request life cycle.

If your skin file is named index.ascx or index.html, then your default resource file for English would be namedindex.ascx.resx.  If your additional supported language is French, your filename might be index.fr-FR.ascx.resx.

The English file code would be something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<root>

  <data name="Welcome.Text">

    <value>Welcome, </value>

  </data>

</root>

The respective code for the French language file might look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<root>

  <data name="Welcome.Text">

    <value>Accueil, </value>

  </data>

</root>

Text Skin Object Properties Explained

There are a few properties that you’ve seen in the previous examples that you might be wondering about.  Here is an explanation of those properties:

• Runat – (required, ASCX only) The value must be ‘server’ 
  
• Id – (required) This is a unique name for the tag, much like in standard HTML 
  
• Text – (optional) This value will be used as the default, should an appropriate resources file for the current language not be found 
  
• CssClass – (optional) This value is the name of a CSS class that will be available to the rendered HTML page to stylize the text in the web browser 
  
• ResourceKey – (required) This value references the id (name) of the text to retrieve from the resources file 
  
• ReplaceTokens – (optional) This true/false value will tell DNN to look for system tokens and replace them with the appropriate text

The DNN login page is the most forgotten part in all DNN users and even some professional DNN portals like PokerDiy.com and neoteo.com. There are few modules that allow you to have a simplified login or pop up login like digg.com but you need to pay or it and it is not cheap and easy to change the design.
dnn-login-sample

In order to make changes to your DNN Login page, you have to understand the components in the login module. The DNN Login module consists of 4 parts which is the DNN Membership Authentication System, The Authentication Provider, The Login Module itself and the Language Resources Files (.resx).

The linkage of these components are as below:
Login Module loads Authentication Provider(s) into it and the provider as a gateway to the DNN Membership Authentication System. For example, if a user using LiveID to login your DNN Portal, the LiveID Authentication Provider redirect the user to MSN LiveID Gateway and then pass the credential back to your DNN Portal and match it with the DNN Membership Authentication System.

Login Structure

However, DNN Membership Authentication System also consist of Member Registration, Password Reminder and Forgot Password Question which makes the designing work on Login Works kinda tricky, not even need to mention the words that are loaded from the language resource files.
Ok, lets start changing those ugly interface! First we need to locate all the files that need to be changed. You will need to have FTP access to your DNN installation root.

Step 1: Changing the Login Module Container

The Login Module is basically the Admin’s Container by default where there is actually no login page but a “DNN Control” (Home/ctl/Login.aspx) unless you create a page and specified it in Admin > Site Setting > Advance Setting > Login Page.

Step 2: Locating Files that need to be changed

Now we need to locate the Login Authentication Providers at /DesktopModules/AuthenticationServices/ There will be 3 default providers which is DNN, LiveID and OpenID. You will find Login.aspx and Login.ascx.resx (under App_LocalResources) inside it and that are the files you are going to change it. For the DNN authentication files, you can get them at: /admin/Users/user.aspx and /admin/Authentication/login.aspx
Make sure you didn’t mixed up with login.aspx in providers.

Step 3: Changing the Text and Words

You can either change it using DNN Language editor which is located in Admin > Language in control panel are directly look for the files in FTP. I actually prefer the later method as it is more easier to read and modify using Visual Web Developer.
“Register” “Forgot and Password” at /httpdocs/admin/Authentication/App_LocalResources/Login.ascx.resx
*If you have more than one portal, the file name will be “Login.ascx.Portal-0”

<data name="Remember.Text" xml:space="preserve">
     <value>Remember Login</value>
 </data>
 <data name="cmdForgotPassword.Text" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>Forgot Password ?</value>
 </data>
 <data name="cmdRegister.Text" xml:space="preserve">
     <value>Register</value>
 </data>

All you need to to change the text inside between the “value” attribute. I’d not recommend you to put html/css into it as it will increase the load time and may messing up xhtml coding standard…

Step 4: Changing the files.

First, we need to deal with the Login Tabs which is using the DNNTabStrip webcontrol. You can find this file at:
/httpdocs/admin/Authentication/Login.ascx
Inside the file, look for:

<DNN:DNNTabStrip
 ID="tsLogin"
 runat="server"
 TabRenderMode="All"
 CssTabContainer="LoginTabGroup"
 CssContentContainer="LoginContainerGroup"
 DefaultContainerCssClass="LoginContainer"
 DefaultLabel-CssClass="LoginTab"
 DefaultLabel-CssClassHover="LoginTabHover"
 DefaultLabel-CssClassSelected="LoginTabSelected"
 visible="false" />

The Css Classes are located at /Portals/_default/default.css by default. You can either change the css file, override it in skin.css / portal.css or redefine the classes in login.ascx
If you look at the pokerDIY login tabs, you will see that the tabs have been pushed into 2 lines which makes the layout very messy. You can simply widen it by changing the “width=160” to a larger number in the following lines and you will have the problem solved.

<asp:panel id="pnlLogin" runat="server" Visible="false">
     <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="0" summary="SignIn Design Table" width="160">

Ok, now you have change the “Register” and “Forgot Password?” text but what about the design? For these, you need to look for “cssclass=”CommandButton” in the following lines located inside the same login.ascx.

<asp:Linkbutton id="cmdRegister" resourcekey="cmdRegister" cssclass="CommandButton" text="Register" runat="server"/>
 <asp:Linkbutton id="cmdPassword" resourcekey="cmdForgotPassword" cssclass="CommandButton" text="Forgot Password?" runat="server" />

We’ll leave the other parts of codes inside the file and CSS coding for a moment. Now we proceed to change another login.ascx which is located in:
/DesktopModules/AuthenticationServices/DNN.ascx
There are few basic things you need to change to make your login looks beautiful which are: The width, Label text/icon, login button, input box and the text inside it. You can find them in these lines:

<dnn:label id="plUsername" controlname="txtUsername" runat="server" resourcekey="Username" />
 <dnn:label id="plPassword" controlname="txtPassword" runat="server" resourcekey="Password" />
 <asp:textbox id="txtUsername" columns="9" width="150" cssclass="NormalTextBox" runat="server" />
 <asp:textbox id="txtPassword" columns="9" width="150" textmode="password" cssclass="NormalTextBox" runat="server" />
 <asp:button id="cmdLogin" resourcekey="cmdLogin" cssclass="DNNLogin" text="Login" runat="server" />

Like many others, you probably thought of removing the stupid help icon in the login page. It is simple if you’re only having a single language website version. All you need is to replace the <dnn:label to standard html code.
If you need to persevered the language resources function, you may substitute the dnn label control into standard asp label control as follow:

<asp:label id="plUsername" controlname="txtUsername" runat="server" resourcekey="Username" />

To change the textbox design as well as the font inside, simply look for <asp:textbox and change the cssclass value and thing applies to <asp:button for the login button.
After you’ve changed all the cssclass value in dnn.ascx, you may proceed to LiveID.ascx and OpenID.ascx using the same method.

Step 5: CSS Styling codes

Now we’ve reached into the hardest part where we need to use css to make a stylish login page. First, I would suggest you to put a new name for each of the value inside the CssClass attribute. This is because the default value are general classes which are shared with other modules and controls in the whole portal.

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Integrating your Zoom search page into DNN

At this point, you should have a working search page which you can access and perform search queries on as seen above. You can use your search page just as it is, and simply modify the "search_template.html" file to match the look of your site. However, if you want to further integrate the search page inside your DNN website (so that it will maintain the same skinning and various modules you are using), then read on.
First, we need to "Add" a new page in DNN to serve as your new Search Page. This will contain a search form, and your search results. You can name this something appropriate like "Site search".
On this new page, we will need to add an IFRAME module (if you do not see "IFRAME module" in the Modules list, you will need to login as "host" and "Find/Install additional modules"). You can title this added module as "Search" or something similar. Now click on the "Edit IFrame Options" button.
Here you should specify the Link Type as a URL, and copy and paste the URL of your working search page (from before) in the "Location:" text box as seen below. For the width, specify "100%" and we recommend a decent height of something around 600 pixels (or enable Auto height if your search page is on the same domain as your DNN site).

Next, click on the expand box next to the "QueryString Parameters" heading. We will need to add all the parameters that Zoom will use so that the page can pass these parameters along to the actual "search.asp" script within the IFrame. Click on the "Add QueryString Parameter" link and specify the following:

This allows the main search query to be passed to this page. If you would like to have more parameters in your custom search forms (search forms that you will place on other pages of your site), then you will need to add them here as well. If you are not familiar with the idea of the custom search form or what other parameters are necessary, don't worry, as this will be explained a little later below and you can come back here to add more parameters as needed.

Now click "Save" to return to your search page. You should now see your Zoom search page loaded within the IFrame of your DNN search page!

Run a few test searches and you should find that everything should be working within your new DNN search page.
If you wish to modify the text or layout (or the colours and fonts of the search results) within the IFrame, you will need to change the "search_template.html" file. Please see chapter 6 of the Users Guide ("How do I customize the look of my search page?") for more information.

Note: You may notice that when you click on a search result, the link opens within the IFrame of the search page. If you wish to change this behaviour, go to the Zoom Configuration window, and select the "Search Page" tab. Under "Results linking", change the selected option to "Frame or window:" and enter "_top" (without the quote characters, but note that the underscore is important) in the text box next to this option. Re-index your website and upload the files for this change to take effect. You will now find your search result links will open outside of the IFrame.

Additional note: If you make the IFRAME very tall, you'll find that when you click on the "Next >>" results link down at the bottom of the search results page, the browser would not scroll back to the top of the frame automatically. To fix this, edit your "search_template.html" file and replace the <body> tag with the following:

<body onload="location.href='#'">

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This article will walk you through this module and how to successfully configure it on a page within your DNN portal.This article assumes that you have downloaded and installed this version of the module in your website.  This article also discusses creating a blog that is to be used only by the individual configuring the blog, so you will want to login as the blog owner before continuing with this tutorial.  For this example we will be creating a blog for use by the “Admin” of the site.

Creating the Blog!

To get started we will add a new page and call it “Blog”, you complete this step by clicking the   icon in the control panel.  Input the following information for the blog page, or feel free to input your own specific information.
This creates a page that is visible to all users that will contain our blog.  Now, we will want to add an instance of the blog to this newly created page.  Select “Blog” from the list of available modules in the control panel and then select “Add”

Now right away you will notice that the blog module has now added a total of 5 new module displays to your page; most recent blog entries, blog list, new blog, search blog and blog archive.  We will work with each of the controls individually to properly configure the blog for display.

Lets start with the “New Blog” module, this is an administrative module that is used to manage the blogs that are part of the module so we will first want to change the display properties of this module to disable viewing by all users.  Hover over the action menu and select “Settings” to enter the module settings.  In the permissions section, uncheck the “Inherit View Permissions from Page” and ensure that no values are selected, then click “Update”.  The module should now show that it is only available for administrators.

This view control is the one that you will use to create and manage the properties for your blog and sub-blogs.  Once you have the view listed above click on “Create My Blog” to start the configuration of the blog module.  You will be presented with a “Create new Blog” page that will prompt you for various bits of information; each of these will be discussed below.

• Title – This is the display title for your blog, it is displayed at the top of the entry listing and in the blog directory.  For this example we will call our blog “Test Blog”
• Description – This is a short description to the purposes of the blog.  This content is displayed on RSS feeds and as general blog information..  For this example we will use the text “Demonstration blog description text”.
• Blog Options – This section is a collection of checkboxes and looks like this, each setting will be discussed below.
• Make this blog public – This option is used to make the blog visible to the public
• Allow users to post comments – This allows registered users to post comments to your blog
• Approval for user comments required – This option is only enabled for selection if user comments are allowed.  If enabled this option will prevent any comments from displaying publicly until they are approved
• Allow anonymous users to post comments – this allows anonymous users to post comments to your blog
• Approval for anonymous comments required – Just like the rule for user comments this adds an approval processes to the anonymous comments.
• Allow Trackback Comments – This option allows users of other blogs to link back to your blog inputting a comment automatically
• Approval for trackback comments – Just like the other items this will enable an approval process flow
• Trackback auto discovery – This is a mode that will allow trackbacks to be discovered automatically
• Send mail notifications - This option will send an e-mail notification to the blog owner after each blog comment and/or trackback
• Use CAPTCHA for comments – This option will require the completion of a visual CAPTCHA before a comment can be submitted.

The final option in this section is the “When displaying your identity use” option.  This allows you to use either your username or full name as the identifying name for blog postings.
Typically when configuring modules we would enable comments for registered users without approval and for anonymous users with approval.  These will be the options that are selected for this tutorial.

• Syndication Options – This collection of settings relates to RSS feeds and if/how they will be created.  Each option will be described below.
• Syndicate this blog – If this is enabled the content for this blog will be introduced into an RSS feed
• Syndicate independently – If this is enabled the blog will be syndicated as its own separate RSS feed.  You can use this with child blogs to prevent them from all being listed in 1 feed.
• Managing Editor - This textbox is where you can put an e-mail address that should be listed as the managing editor for the RSS feed.  This is something that should be populated with a valid e-mail address as it provides a method for feedback and questions from consumers of the RSS feed.
• Date and Time Options – These options are used to control how the dates and times are displayed in the blog.  This is where you select the time zone for your postings as well as your desired date format.  Below is an example of the default setting for US Central time.

Once you have gone through these settings you can skip past the “Child Blogs” section as this section is outside the scope of this article.  After clicking on “Update” your blog will be created.

Configuring your page layout

Now that we have created a blog it is a bit easier to see what each of these individual modules on our page are used for.  Lets take a bit of time to organize and discuss each of these modules.  The following steps will take you through a process to provide you meaningful information for each control as well as will give you instructions on how to rename the components to be more descriptive.

New_Blog

This control is the first control that we worked with an serves as an administration module, initially used to create the blog and eventually used to modify blog settings and to add new blog entries.  Typically renaming this module to “Administration” is helpful as it makes it easy to remember what its purpose is.  You can click in the module title to use the inline editor to change the name of the module.
It is also very common to move this module to the left pane to condense it’s display.  The module display provides you with three options.

Blog Settings

Clicking on this link will return you to the blog settings page that we used above to create your blog; you can use this to administer the various configuration elements of your blog.

View My Blog

Clicking on this link is the same as clicking your specific blog form the “Blog_List” module; it simply updates the “Most recent blog entries” window to show your blog listing.

Add Blog Entry

This is where you can make a new post to your blog.  You will be presented with an input screen that will provide you with fields for entry date, blog, title, summary, and blog.  Each of these fields are fairly self explanatory you can use these fields to control the CONTENT of your blog post.  You additionally have an “Entry Options” section where you can set options for your blog.  These items exist to allow you to “publish” a blog, to allow comments, and/or to display a copyright notice at the bottom of your blog posting.  Below is an example of these settings under their defaults
After you populate all values for the fields you may press “update” to actually make your new blog post!  It is that easy!

Blog_Archive

This module is a simple calendar that shows days that have blog posts and allow users to navigate the blog based on a date range.  Typically this module is renamed to “Archive” or something of that nature.  This is another control that for both space and usability is typically moved to the “RightPane” to allow it to display alongside the blog postings.  An example of the interface after modifying this control and the previous control is below.
As you can see we are starting to create something that looks more like a blog that you might expect to see.

Blog_List

This module is a control that allows users to select the various views from your blog.  They are presented options for “View All Recent Entries” which will display recent entries from any and all blogs and child blogs.  They are also given the ability to click on each individual blog and they will be displayed that information.  This is another control that condenses display very nicely and is deserving of a new name and location.  Typically this is found on the “LeftPane” of a site and is called “Navigation” or “Blogs” something a bit more descriptive to your users.
The action menu for this module provides you access to the “Blog Settings” page and “Add New Blog” pages.  This makes the “Administration” module unneeded for administration purposes now that you have created your blog.  Some individuals remove the module entirely but most just leave it for administration display.

Search Blog

This module is the search feature for the blog module itself allowing users to search for desired content, again this is a module that can condense to display in smaller areas and is typically located near the “Archive “ control as they are similar in function.  For this example we will rename it to “Search” and place it directly below the “Archive” module.
This module has no configuration options and provides users basic searching of blog content.

Most Recent Blog Entries

This module is the actual display control for the module that will show your blog posts to your users and allow them to view/leave comments.  The view of this specific module changes depending on how the other modules are configured.  You can view summary information for you blog postings and then drill down into the full detail display.
This module does have a configuration element that is accessible via the action menu by selecting “Module Options”.  These options apply to the blog module as a whole and will be discussed in two separate sections.

Basic Settings

These settings are basic settings that control the display of the blog and the input of content for the module.  Below are the default settings for this module.  They are all fairly self explanatory and are used to mostly limit the content to ensure that you have a proper display on your site for content length, search results length, and RSS feed length.

Advanced Settings

These settings are more advanced topics and relate to integration and other elements of the blog module.  Each of these values will be discussed below.

• Allow Upload Options – Can blog posters upload items to their posting?
• Show Blog Summary – Is the summary displayed when viewing the single blog detail?  Typically this is disabled as your summary is the first portion of your full blog post and it wouldn’t make sense to display it before the blog content.
• Show unique title – If enabled this module will use a blog specific title to describe the content of the page.  For SEO this is a very good practice!
• Personal Blog Page – If you want to display 1 and ONLY 1 blog on the page you can select the blog that is associated with the module here.  This essentially disables the function of the “Navigation”/”Blog_List” module discussed earlier and selects the given blog directly.
• Enable DNN Search – This option is disabled by default.  If selected the module will use the ISearchable interface to provide the core DNN search engine with information about your blog postings.

Summary

After walking through this example you should now have a blog page that looks something like the following.

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ASPHostPortal.com is the leading provider of Windows hosting and affordable DotNetNuke Hosting. DotNetNuke Hosting from ASPHostPortal.com provides a safe, reliable and performance-driven foundation for your DotNetNuke website. DotNetNuke is the perfect Content Management System for managing and developing your website with one of ASPHostPortal’s Hosting plans. ASPHostPortal has ability to support the latest Microsoft and ASP.NET technology, such as: WebMatrix, WebDeploy, Visual Studio 2015, .NET 5/ASP.NET 4.5.2, ASP.NET MVC 6.0/5.2, Silverlight 6 and Visual Studio Lightswitch, ASPHostPortal guarantees the highest quality product, top security, and unshakeable reliability, carefully chose high-quality servers, networking, and infrastructure equipment to ensure the utmost reliability

Manage Pages in DNN

To create a new page in DNN is pretty simple. After you login on the site, look for the menu Pages and hover your mouse into the menu, a sub menu will appear under the menu. Click the option Add New Page.

Page Properties in DNN

Below is the main properties that you will basically utilize in daily use.

• Page Name : Page name must unique and can not be duplicate or has the same name with other pages. What ever you type in here, it will appear exactly in the site menu.
• Page Title : Page Title is used for meta tag Title. You can optimize your site by specifying individual unique title for each page.
• Page URL : You can define your own custom url in here. This will help optimize your site for SEO purposes.
• Description : This will be used in meta tag description. You can include a brief description about this page.
• Keywords : This will be used in meta tag keyword. You can separate a keyword by comma.

"Note: most search engine will no longer consider the meta keyword as important factor for search engine search".

• Include in Menu : By untick this one, the menu will be hidden and will not be visible in the site menu.

Manage Page's Permission

The page permission will list available roles in the current site portal. By default Administrators, All Users, Registered Users, Subscribers, Translators, Unauthenticated Users, and Unverified Users are predefined in DNN. What we interest most are probably All Users which cover all user roles, Registered Users which cover registered members only and Administrators which covers admin account only.

If you want to make the site visible to all users then you should tick All Users View Option. The Edit option, give ability to specific role to edit the content of the page. The content in here are the modules of the page, it could be HTML modules, news modules etc. If you do not want any public users able to view this page, you can set to Registered Users. But if you want to give the page visibility to admin only, then you should choose Administrators.

Alternatively, you can use Page Managements to manage your site pages easily. This menu is available under the Site menu.
All your pages will be displayed in a tree menu on the left hand side. To edit the page, you can just click the menu name. If you want to delete the page, you can just simple right click the menu link.

Best DotNetNuke 7.4 Hosting Recommendation

ASPHostPortal.com

ASPHostPortal.com is the leading provider of Windows hosting and affordable DotNetNuke Hosting. DotNetNuke Hosting from ASPHostPortal.com provides a safe, reliable and performance-driven foundation for your DotNetNuke website. DotNetNuke is the perfect Content Management System for managing and developing your website with one of ASPHostPortal’s Hosting plans. ASPHostPortal has ability to support the latest Microsoft and ASP.NET technology, such as: WebMatrix, WebDeploy, Visual Studio 2015, .NET 5/ASP.NET 4.5.2, ASP.NET MVC 6.0/5.2, Silverlight 6 and Visual Studio Lightswitch, ASPHostPortal guarantees the highest quality product, top security, and unshakeable reliability, carefully chose high-quality servers, networking, and infrastructure equipment to ensure the utmost reliability

DotNetNuke 7 DNN Edit Button Will Not Work

After a clean install of DotNetNuke version 7.00.05, the Edit buttons would not work, and the page would repeatedly redirect to the homepage when clicking Edit. I did not experience this issue on installations which I upgraded.  I have uncovered three solutions which work, or at least work around, to solve the problem.

Method 1

One way to get around this problem is to use the Ribbon Bar instead of the Control Bar as the Control Panel setting. To make this change, navigate to the “Host” panel, click “Host Settings”, click the “Other Settings” tab. Set the “Control Panel” setting to “RibbonBar”.

Method 2

The second method, and one of the methods which actually solves the “ControlBar” issue, is to edit the web.config file. I found this solution at chaydigital. This method does work to solve the problem, but I have concerns about the waste of system resources it could cause as well as possibly creating other errors.
Open the web.config file in Notepad.exe or another editor. Find the system.webServer section, and change this section:

<system.webServer>
   <modules>
To this:
<system.webServer>
   <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" >

Method 3

Due to my concerns with placing a global fix in my web.config which might cause other errors to crop up, I decided to create two new installs on the same machine. One install was with the 7.00.05 full install package of DotNetNuke. The other install was with an older version of DotNetNuke 6 to which I applied the 7.00.05 upgrade. As suspected, in the full install website, the Edit button would not work. In the upgraded website, the Edit button worked as expected.
I decided to pull the two web.config files and compare them using a Powershell script. There were many differences in the two, but I found one difference in particular which seems to have solved my problem. The upgraded website had an entry for the FormsAuthentication module in the system.webServer section. and this entry was missing from the full install. This may be by design, I am not sure. But putting that entry in web.config on the full install version solved my issue.
Please attempt editing your web.config file at your own risk. Note that the system.webServer and modules nodes should already be there along with several other entries. The only entries you should add are in red type.

<system.webServer>
   <modules>
      <remove name="FormsAuthentication" />
     <add name="FormsAuthentication" type="System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationModule" preCondition="" />
</modules>
<system.webServer>

Hope this helps you. If you find additional solutions to the issue, let me know. I will gladly add them to the list.

DNN 7.3 has been released and contains lots of changes for performance and stability, bug fixes and some new features.
I was first alerted to an issue with Url Master and DNN 7.3, who found that the API cleanup in 7.3 had removed an old DNN API that Url Master was leveraging, which meant that the site would stop working after the 7.3 Upgrade.   The error you get if you upgrade DNN without first upgrading Url Master to 2.8.2 is this:

500 Internal Server Error
The requested Url does not return any valid content.
Administrators
Change this message by configuring a specific 404 Error Page or Url for this website.

This is the default URL Master error output (unless you have debug mode enabled) which intentionally hides the actual exception for security reasons.  If you open the event log, you’ll find something like this:

Exception: Method not found: 'DotNetNuke.Entities.Portals.PortalAliasCollection DotNetNuke.Entities.Portals.PortalAliasController.GetPortalAliases()

The solution is that you need the latest version of the Url Master module, version 2.8.2, which uses a newer method to get the portal alias data.
Get the Url Master Module 2.8.2 Download

If you haven't upgraded to DNN 7.3 already, you must upgrade to 2.8.2 before upgrading.

Just download the 2.8.2 install package, and upgrade via the Host->Extensions page.  You do not need to update your licence – this version is available to *all* existing Url Master customers.

If you have already upgraded and have found that your site is dead with this error, then you will need to manually patch the files.  Here are the steps:

• Download the Url Master install package
• Extract the zip file locally on your computer to a folder, so you can see the files inside the zip
• Within the extracted zip file, you will see 4  files.
• Copy these 4 files into the \bin directory of your site that needs to be upgraded.  Use FTP or copy/paste or any other method to get it into the \bin directory.
• Once they are copied into the bin directory, try the site again.  It should start and run normally.
• Once your site is running again, install the (compressed) file as normal through the Host->Extensions page.  This won't change the versions installed, but it will bring your extensions catalog up to date.

I appreciate if people spread these instructions to those who are running Url Master and are intending to upgrade to 7.3 as a preventative measure.

Quick tips : Getting rid of spam users

After getting a couple of questions, I'd like to provide options for getting rid of spam users, which is cumbersome via UI, if thousands of registration have been added by a bot.
Unfortunately, it is not as easy as just deleting items from a single table, as user Information is distributed in multiple tables inside the database, therefore we need.
You are in a comfortable situation, if your site is using verified or private registration - in this case all spam users are unauthorized and you simply need to hit "delete unauthorized users" in Admin > User Accounts.
In all other cases, you will need to identify the users to delete from the database and mark as "deleted", in order to use "remove deleted users" (hard-delete) those users from all tables.

ALWAYS START WITH A DATABASE BACKUP!!

If your site only has a host and admin user you would run the following statement inside Host > SQL (check "run as script" in all DNN versions prior to 7.3):
UPDATE {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}UserPortals]
 SET   isDeleted = 1
 WHERE UserID NOT IN (SELECT UserID FROM  {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users
                                    WHERE isSuperuser = 1 OR UserName Like 'Admin')
If you may identify all users by registration date, e.g. since first of November, you would run
UPDATE {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}UserPortals]
 SET   isDeleted = 1
 WHERE UserID NOT IN (SELECT UserID FROM  {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users]
                                    WHERE isSuperuser = 1 OR UserName Like 'Admin' or CreatedOnDate < 2014-18-11)

Of course, this will become more difficult, if regular users registered the same time. You may consider creating a role "verifiedUsers" and move all regular users manually into this group. Now the command would look like

UPDATE {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}UserPortals]
 SET   isDeleted = 1
 WHERE UserID NOT IN (SELECT UserID FROM  {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Users]
                                    WHERE isSuperuser = 1 OR UserName Like 'Admin' or CreatedOnDate < 2014-18-11)
   AND UserID NOT IN (SELECT UserID FROM {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}vw_UserRoles]
                                    WHERE RoleName Like 'verifiedUsers')

Afterwards you may use "Remove Deleted Users" link in Admin > User Management, to delete all rows.
For DNN Versions prior to DNN 7.3.1, you need to delete user folders manually, which reside nested inside users subfolder of the portal folder. Unfortunately, it is difficult to identify all folders from deleted users, but you may delete all empty folders without subfolder and files inside, as the folder for a still existing user will be re-created, once the user logs in again for the first time. You may use the following command (sing a command line on the server, while being inside the users folder)
for /f "delims=" %i in ('dir /ad /s /b') do @rd "%i"
Finally, you should enter file manager in DNN Admin menu and perform a recursive sync to get rid of all folder entries and folder permissions in the database