By Bo Nørgaard on Wednesday, July 09, 2008

The Multi Page module installation is still not working, the module is not registered as having implemented the ISearchable interface. It is working on the development instance, and I beleive that I have registred the module correctly in the DNN file.

I think that I have tried all that I can think of, so now there are only one thing to do, debugging. I will now download the source version of DotNetNuke, compile and start it in Visual Studio debug mode, set the breakpoints and then install my module and see whats happening.

Some still ask why I don't use the source version of the core application, but why should I, the starterkit is easy to use and upgrade, and the install package includes all that I need for test and production sites.

By Bo Nørgaard on Tuesday, July 08, 2008

I am back from an action packed vacation; sorry that I couldn’t tell you before but there have been multiple thefts from homes here in Denmark, where people wrote in their blog or community page that they where going on vacation (and that the house was empty).

The vacation started in Le Mans (France) where we participated in the 24 hours roller skate race (www.24rollers.com). Our team called Rolling Vikings ended at place 349 of total 638, with 124 completed laps at the Bugatti circuit. Our kids, Casper and Laura did do the practice round, and are both very proud that they have been roller skating the Le Mans race track.

After Le Mans we did go to the Eiffel tower in Paris, then the Disneyland Park, and at last we where at a water world park relaxing, playing mini golf, ice skating, driving moon cars, and jumping trampolines etc.

12 days without a computer, I am eager to get started closing some of the tasks on the list and I will blog regularly again.

By Bo Nørgaard on Thursday, June 26, 2008

I am still working on the skin and modules, but due to other tasks that I need to do, I will not be able to blog regularly again until July 8. I hope to find time in between but I can't promise anything.

By Bo Nørgaard on Monday, June 23, 2008

Some have reported that the multi page content module is not providing any information to the DotNetNuke search engine, but I am sure that it is registered and is working.

I tested it a lot, used the debugger to look for anything that could go wrong, and even solved a link issue where data was on pages other than the first and the parameter was encoded to a friendly URL. But still I couldn't reproduce the reported error.

Then I installed a fresh DotNetNuke, and installed the binary version of the module - and now the reported error was true, no page content could be found with the search engine. The only difference is that the source files have been compiled into a DLL.

In the module registration page, the compiled module has no checkmarks in Portable, Searchable, and Upgradeable; in the source version the checkmarks are fine.

My first idea was that the code must have been optimized away, as I have placed all the code in a separate class which is not use by the module, only the DotNetNuke framework. So I moved all the code to the Controller class, which is used by the module and therefore cannot be optimized away, - but still no luck, the error is still there.

My next idea was that it was an issue with the site running in medium trust, so I tried in the local installation - and the error was still there, so it's not a trust issue.

It's late and I will continue tomorrow.

By Bo Nørgaard on Friday, June 20, 2008

Today I finished up the source, published and packed the secondary navigation skin object. The best I can say about it right now is that it is working, probably also working as designed.

But I am not sure that this is the right menu type for this site, as it is not providing the overview that I was aiming for. Yes I have the path at the bottom of the page at all times, but I still thing that you get lost in the menus.

I will continue building the site, and examine how the menu is working when there are more pages and information available.

Next on the task list is to create the css styles for all the text content and links. Currently the fonts and sizes vary a lot on the few browsers that I have installed.

By Bo Nørgaard on Thursday, June 19, 2008

Okey I didn't think that the old modules had any interest anymore, but I was wrong. After many requests I have uploaded some of the old modules, including the source code and Visual Studio projects.

Please note that these are .Net 1.1 modules, and is not intended to be used in DotNetNuke 4 or above.

And yes, I will create new versions of these for DotNetNuke 4, and I plan to upgrade these so they all support the multi language function in DotNetNuke 5.

By Bo Nørgaard on Wednesday, June 18, 2008

When I create modules and skin objects I do create the dnn manifest file early in the process, actually it the builder that does it. This step helps me a lot later when I need to package the project for release. DotNetNuke is able to import the dnn file in the development phase, which makes the manual registration of a module into a few mouse clicks.

This works excellent for modules, but not so for skin objects. If I zip the skin object it will install and uninstall with no problems. If I use the same dnn file with the manual import function, it will register the skin object as a normal module, not a skin object. Its a minor issue for me as the skin object is normally only a single control to register in the skins module, so its easy to create manually. I read a blog about the new DNN version 5, and this area is something that will be updated to handle packages that include both skins, skin objects, and modules.

I had hoped to upload the navigation skin object today, but it will have to wait until Friday, as tomorrow I will celebrate my daughters 6 years birthday.

By Bo Nørgaard on Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The page navigation layout is now implemented in a skin object, and the general idea behind the organization of the links seems to be easily understandable.

The navigation is split into differet parts:

• First is the parent page (the green link in the image)
• Second is the current page and its siblings
• Below these are the sub menu items

There are two situations where the above layout is shifted, and that is when there are no parent page to show, and when there are no subpages (children).

In the image the SubMenu211 page is selected, but as this page does not have any children (subpages) it stays in the sub menu area. This works well and provides a good overview of the navigation, but if the SubMenu212 does have children, then the menus will jump one level up. This might confuse users and I need to test it and look at the feedback I get.

The skin object supports icon images and all the other page settings (visible, deleted, start and end dates etc).

Now I need to add som configuration settings, compile, write a user guide, and pack it for upload to this site and distribution.

By Bo Nørgaard on Monday, June 16, 2008

Today the site was upgraded to version 4.8.4 of DotNetNuke, using the upgrade zip packet and my FTP client. I also upgraded my starterkit to the new version and both upgrades went without any problems at all.

I did create a new local development site with the starter kit and it compiled and is running perfectly. I have now started the task of moving the source modules and skin objects  to this new installation.

By Bo Nørgaard on Monday, June 16, 2008

The DAL builder started its life as an online service that could code generate all the source files needed to create a DotNetNuke Data Access Layer. The first version was able to generate DNN 1.0 DAL source code in both Visual VB and Visual C#. You could define a number of table fields, and configure if there could be one or multiple rows for each module instance. The generated source included all the standard CRUD functions, Create, Read, Update and Delete. The first version could generate DAL implementations for both Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL server.

For DotNetNuke 2.x the DAL builder was created as a native Windows application and extended to include user defined queries, and multiple table’s pr module. The DAL builder could also import an existing model from a Microsoft SQL database.

Version 3 of the DAL builder for DotNetNuke 3.x was build to have a number of plug-in modules, and one of these could build sample module files, including all the Microsoft Visual Studio solution and project files. The support for the Access database was dropped in this version.

Due to my absence from the DotNetNuke community I never build a DAL builder for version 4.0 of DotNetNuke. Now that I have returned I can announce that the builder will be created to support version 4, and the coming version 5.

As the builder now generates much more than just the DAL (and DAL+) I would have renamed it to DNN Builder, but that would violate the DotNetNuke trademark policy, so I follow the recommendations in this policy and is calling the new version “Builder for DotNetNuke”.

The release of the builder is scheduled to August 1, but there will be a beta version available to the existing DAL customers in July.