Entries for September 2015

This is an interview I have recorded with Jason Lichon, Founding Partner at BlueBolt Solutions, a DNN Gold Partner who's product line include PackFlash Constellation Suite and Bravo Search. Continue Reading »

Giving a hand with existing modules A couple of months back, I moved a number of open source DNN modules from CodePlex to the DNNCommunity area on GitHub. Moving the projects to GitHub has some advantages: The source can be easily forked an... Continue Reading »

Since the earliest days of DNN, users have had the ability to create user defined tables for storing structured content.  The original UDT module was eventually renamed to the Form & List module and continued to be enhanced for many years to provide greater control over the data definition and presentation.  Over the past couple of years there have been a few other Open Source modules that have tackled the job of providing structured content editing for DNN.  I have long believed that this is a fundamental requirement of any CMS and should be an out of the box capability for the platform.

I’m pleased to announce that DNN 8 will once again include the ability to create, edit and display structured content as a native capability of the platform.  DNN 8 CTP 5 for the first time includes both the Dynamic Content Type Manager and the Dynamic Content Viewer.  These two modules, along with an improved Content API, make up the new Dynamic Content Creator (DCC).

Continue Reading »

DNN 8 is a major leap forward for DNN.  There are many new features like MVC and SPA module development support, OAuth2 server support, a new HTML Editor, the Dynamic Content Creator and a new default skin and template.  In addition to all of these new features, we are also updating the DNN architecture.  We are working to enable the creation of custom DNN distributions, to improve platform performance and to get rid of some outdated portions of the platform that are holding us back.

As we have progressed on DNN 8 development, we have been faced with some tough choices.  Some of the architectural and performance improvements that are needed will require us to break backwards compatibility.  In speaking with many community members on these issues, we have consistently heard the same message – do what is right to move the platform forward.  In most cases these changes will have no impact on your use of DNN. We are spending a lot of effort to ensure that the core platform features continue to work properly even after these changes.  We are also working with the Evoq team to ensure that the Evoq Content and Evoq Engage products provide a smooth upgrade for our commercial customers.

Continue Reading »

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tool which allows a website owner to quickly integrate different script-based products into a website without needing to edit the underlying pages of the site.   While ‘tag’ in this context can be confusing to some, it m... Continue Reading »

Just over a month ago now, Visual Studio 2015 was released into the wild, I started receiving requests to update my DNN development templates for VS2015 shortly before the release. I typically wait until after the release is RTM to work on templates, simply due to other time commitments and projects. With VS2015 however I was quickly able to get a new release of the Module/Theme development templates out for use.

Continue Reading »

Please raise your hand if you've ever wanted to display some dynamic Hotcakes Commerce data in a specific spot and in a specific way within your overall website design layout? And besides that, you really didn’t want to give administrators the option of changing its placement within site? Continue Reading »

We had planned to speak with Phillip Becker this month, but he had a personal emergency he had to tend to.  We’ll get that rescheduled for you soon…  Go figure – we got the technical issues solved, and we loose the speaker.  This left ... Continue Reading »

In a previous post on the upcoming ASP.NET ‘vNext’ release, I covered all of the terminology around ‘Project K’ – which is what it was known as in early betas.   Things have moved along a lot since then, and wi... Continue Reading »

This is an interview I have recorded with Chris Wylie, CEO at Accord LMS, an e-learning solution for DNN which has Evoq Preferred stamp of approval. The LMS space has been the primary focus of Chris and his organization since 2008. Continue Reading »