Most recent blog entries

Broken Forum Notifications Undermines Confidence
All Blogs Miscellanea By mamlin on 10/20/2009 10:59 PM
After two years part of the DNN forums' "notification" feature is still not working despite DNN Corp's efforts to monetize DNN by offering "PRO" paid support. Note to DNN Corp: Paid support isn't an attractive option when the Corp's own website continues to exhibit already-fixed bugs...
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DNN Hosting Tips: GoDaddy upgrade 04.09.00 to 04.09.05
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 9/3/2009 1:08 AM
Using GoDaddy's DNN auto-installation feature saves time and headache, but the installed version is still 04.09.00. Well here's the lowdown on upgrading from the auto-installed version to the latest 04.09.05 version...
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Twitter Effect Affects Stats
All Blogs Miscellanea By mamlin on 7/30/2009 11:49 AM
Yesterday our site visits spiked and we recorded a new high in unique daily visitors -- nearly 8% above the previous high. It seems that Twitter deserves some credit...
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Greytness free DNN skin by Adammer
All Blogs Reviews By mamlin on 7/29/2009 9:33 AM
Wow...what a good, free skin from Adammer. I can't tell you how many times I've had to point clients towards "paid" skins when all they needed was a good, basic skin...
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Free online EPS viewer
All Blogs Miscellanea By mamlin on 7/27/2009 2:02 AM
I recently needed to do a quick visual verification of a client's .EPS file but was away from my system with the needed software. Google and I quickly located a suitable online solution but it was not as good as the _second_ solution I tried...
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Network Solutions has (finally) added .Net 3.5 framework
All Blogs Miscellanea By mamlin on 7/8/2009 6:57 AM
For much of the past year Network Solutions' users have asked for it. Today I confirmed that Network Solutions finally offers the .Net 3.5 framework...
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Opinion: Non-professional "DNN Pros"
All Blogs Miscellanea By mamlin on 6/26/2009 9:50 AM
I'm occasionally amazed how some people diminish their perceived expertise in obvious ways...
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Inspector IT "Universal Tag Cloud" for DNN
All Blogs Reviews By mamlin on 6/18/2009 3:12 AM
A missing "Web 2.0" element from DNN is the now-ubiquitous Tag Cloud. Que Inspector IT: their new Universal Tag Cloud module does most everything you'd expect neatly and easily.
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TIP: Enable substring search for DNN Search
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 6/7/2009 10:15 PM
For some reason I can't fathom, DNN Search does not perform substring searches. In this tip we'll look at the one-line tweak needed to enable this common search feature...
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Prevent account sharing using the REPORTS module
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 6/3/2009 3:59 AM
DotNetNuke currently has no provision for preventing a user from sharing an account with other users. This is a real problem for paid-subscription sites. There is, however, a simple trick you can do using the REPORTS module that will help to prevent simultaneous logins on the same account by different users...
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Tag Cloud Part 2: Clickable Tags
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 5/27/2009 2:08 AM
In the first Tag Cloud posting we saw how to use the free REPORTS module to implement a Tag Cloud in just a few minutes. Here in Part 2 we'll update our original solution to make the tags into clickable links...
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Quickly create a "latest blogs" list with the REPORTS module
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 5/20/2009 3:39 AM
A common request is for a "latest blog entries" list for the core BLOG module. We'll see how to quickly make such a list for free using the core REPORTS module...
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Quickly create a Tag Cloud with the REPORTS module
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 5/13/2009 3:42 AM
Tag Clouds are a common item in the "Web 2.0" era but the feature is still conspicuously absent from the DNN core offerings. Fortunately, all you need to create your own custom Tag Cloud is the free REPORTS module and about 5 minutes of setup...
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DNN Hosting Tips: DotNetNuke on GoDaddy
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 4/15/2009 11:26 PM
Want to install DNN on GoDaddy (but also want it to be easy)? Here's a brief overview of options and a handy tip -- removing subfolder name from URL -- when auto-installing DNN under GoDaddy's "Deluxe" hosting plan...
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Tip: Force DISPLAYNAME to a predetermined pattern
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 4/13/2009 5:17 AM
For sites where users' DISPLAYNAMEs are made public (via forum postings, etc) it is desirable to allow users to pick their own DISPLAYNAME values. If you have a site where DISPLAYNAMEs are NOT public, however, you may save yourself some headache by forcing DISPLAYNAME to a predetermined pattern (plus you'll simplify your site signup process to boot...)
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DNN Hosting Tips: DotNetNuke on Network Solutions
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 3/20/2009 12:46 PM
This is the first of what I hope will become a series of tips focused on DNN hosting providers. I'm not advocating any particular provider (there are plenty of good ones). I'm simply sharing operational tips regarding various providers I've dealt with when setting up DNN sites for clients. Hopefully these tips will save others some time and a few headaches when setting up their own DNN sites in shared hosting environments...
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Create a "Login Redirection Based on User Role" module using DNN Advanced Datagrid
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 3/18/2009 10:36 PM
This is Part 4 of the continuing series "Create a custom module with the free Advanced Datagrid module". As in previous examples, you simply drop the ready-to-use Advanced Datagrid module on a page, populate a couple of settings and you're done: instant "Login Redirection Based on User Role" for your DNN site. Very cool...
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Comparison utility for files and directories: WinMerge
All Blogs Reviews By mamlin on 3/15/2009 4:54 PM
WinMerge is a great open-source utility that's quite a step up if you're still using WinDiff. WinMerge features easier to read results, inline editing, better desktop integration, regex support and is extendable via plugins. Oh, and did I mention highlighting of per-character differences within a line?...
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Add "Save as PDF" feature to your Blog for free
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 3/4/2009 1:47 AM
Easily let users save your blog entries (or any web page) as PDF files for free with Web2PDF. Although this service has been available for nearly two years, I've rarely run across any blogs that make use of it or anything like it. The service does not place ads on your site or in the rendered PDFs and it works even with DotNetNuke's dynamically-generated pages. To top it off, adding the feature to your DNN site is simplicity itself...
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Filter out "static" in Google Analytics results with a single click
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 2/25/2009 5:06 AM
Google Analytics (GA) use is as widespread as it is useful. Unfortunately, the default results can often be misleading to the uninformed Analytics user. I'll share one method to filter out a lot of the "static" in GA by clicking a single checkbox within the recently-introduced Advanced Segments feature...
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Where Do I Put My Script? JavaScript and the DotNetNuke FOOTER field
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 2/12/2009 10:45 PM
Adding JavaScript to a DNN page is easy: use the Text/HTML module. However, if you want to enhance an existing DNN module with your own client-side script you may prefer to add it in the module's FOOTER field. To illustrate, we'll use the SURVEY module to create a "pick three items" survey that REQUIRES the user to pick three and only three items...
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DotNetNuke USER ROLES and ROLEGROUPS
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 2/3/2009 5:00 PM
Some thoughts and tips on USER ROLES and ROLEGROUPS in DotNetNuke. ROLES provide the fundamental means of determining who gets to see what content. ROLEGROUPS help organize ROLES by defining collections of ROLES but...ROLEGROUPS are not as helpful as you might expect...
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Tip: Stop DNN page from scrolling on page load
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 1/30/2009 8:54 AM
Here's a scenario that can drive your users crazy: A certain page on your site always seems to open in the middle instead of at the top, making users scroll up to see the start of the page. This has happened to me more than once (thanks to the LOGIN module), but I have a simple solution...
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List of DNN 5.0 problems fixed (and not fixed) in DNN 5.0.1 (updated 1-23-2009)
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 1/22/2009 10:50 AM
(Updated 2-17-2009) DNN 5.0 represents a good step forward on a number of fronts. Unfortuantely, 5.0 was not exactly "ready for primetime". The upcoming 5.0.1 "stabilization release" fixes a good number of 5.0's problems. This post lists a number of more notable items both fixed AND not fixed in 5.0.1...
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DotNetNuke SiteMap Submittal, Warnings and Priority Rules
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 1/12/2009 7:31 AM
These SiteMap-related tips include another way around the Google page-priority warning, places to submit your sitemap and thoughts on creating page-priority-value "rules". This post fills the void between the "Improve Page Prioirty Feature of DNN's Google SiteMap" and our upcoming release (free!) of an enhanced sitemap that enables per-page sitemap priority settings...
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DebugBar for Internet Explorer
All Blogs Reviews By mamlin on 12/9/2008 8:16 AM
FireFox users have a wealth of free browser addons that really help make the browser a strong development and debugging tool. Unfortunately those nifty FireFox addons aren't always helpful when a page renders incorrectly in IE. What to do? Well, use an IE addon, of course! A worthy (and free) addon for IE is the DebugBar from Core Services...
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DNN 5 - List of Changes and Additions from DNN 4.x to DNN 5
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 12/5/2008 2:23 AM
I've seen quite a few people around the 'net asking for a list of major changes from DNN 4.x to DNN 5. I have always found it a little frustrating that there never seems to be such a list (outside of brief Gemini Change Logs) when new versions of the DNN framework or even new module versions are released. We often get bits and pieces via blogs and forums but rarely a solid list of features as you'd normally find for a commercial product release. To this end, I decided to make and share my own list of notable DNN 5 features...
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How to hide TERMS OF USE, PRIVACY STATEMENT and/or COPYRIGHT
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 12/2/2008 8:50 AM
Sometimes DNN provides more default features than the average admin needs. A common example is the collection of links that appear on every page for TERMS OF USE, PRIVACY STATEMENT and COPYRIGHT. Fortunately it's very easy to remove any or all of these without editing your DotNetNuke skin...
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Give ADMIN tabs access to Non-Admin DotNetNuke Users (Pages, File Manager, etc)
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 11/21/2008 1:42 PM
The DotNetNuke framework is great in many ways but its website administration rights are not very granular. In many cases you either need to have full admin rights or you simply won't be allowed to perform a critical function (like create new web pages). Well, there is a trick you can do to extend certain ADMIN rights to selected users without actually making them administrators. Best of all, you can do it from within the DNN UI...
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Free DNN Module: DNNStuff SQLView - Sort EVENTS module events by City / County / State
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 11/10/2008 3:50 PM
If you need an upgrade from Efficion Consulting's free (but aging) "Advanced DataGrid" (ADG) module, DNNStuff's free SQL module may be the answer. "SQLView" does what ADG does and does a few things better. The drawback? SQLView is not open-sourced like ADG. If you think "FREE is FREE" and you don't care about having access to the source code, read on...
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Add Google AJAX Search to your DNN skin: Prevent ENTER key from clearing search results
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 10/29/2008 9:12 PM
The "Add Google AJAX Search" series continues! If you've implemented the AJAX search you probably have noticed that pressing the ENTER key will actually clear the results. Huh? Sure, Google AJAX doesn't need a button or ENTER keypress to perform a search, but clearing the results upon ENTER is downright confusing since people tend to hit ENTER automatically after typing in a search term. We're going to extend our basic Google AJAX example and stop that ENTER key from clearing the search results...
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Free DNN Module: Advanced DataGrid (Part 3) - Create a "Most Commented Blogs" module
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 10/13/2008 12:57 AM
Another example of using the free AdvancedDataGrid module to instantly create new functionality on your site. This time we'll create a clickable "Most Commented Blogs" list (just like the one used on this site) to use with the standard DNN Blog module...
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Format and Sort your DNN Events RSS feed results with the DNN NewsFeed module
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 9/4/2008 11:45 AM
(Updated 1-29-2009) If you like to stick to using the core DotNetNuke modules as much as possible (hey, they're free!) and you use or have thought about using the DNN NewsFeed module, you'll likely appreciate this post. Specifically, we're going to look at using the NewsFeed module to list calendar entries from the DNN Events module. By default, the results of mating these two modules is not impressive, so we're going to tweak and improve upon the original using nothing but Notepad and without changing any core DNN code...
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Add Google AJAX Search to your DNN skin (Part 2 of 3)
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 7/27/2008 6:33 PM
Follow-up to Part 1 of "Adding Google Custom Search to Your DotNetNuke Skin" series. Here in Part 2 we'll examine a few of the many options for customizing Google searches as well as ways to influence the ranking of results. And just as in Part 1, all of this functionality is delivered for -free- from the Google Search AJAX library...
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Improve page priority feature of DNN's Google SiteMap
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 7/2/2008 10:07 PM
DotNetNuke provides a Google-ready XML sitemap to help you get your pages indexed and ranked in Google search results. Unfortunately, the current implementation sets every page's "priority" ranking to the same fixed value. Because of this, no page ever gets priority over any other. Fortunately there's a simple improvement you can make (using Notepad) to give priority to certain pages without changing any core DNN functions...
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Add Google AJAX Search to your DNN skin (Part 1 of 3)
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 6/7/2008 10:02 PM
The internal DNN search engine, while convienient, still leaves much to be desired in the realm of content search. It is restricted to its own portal, returns only what is specifically made "searchable" by module developers and has no inherent feature for generating reports of what users have been searching for. With a (free) Google site search, however, you not only get the power of Google's vastly superior search algorithms but you also get to define WHAT gets serached on WHICH portals/domains and also influence HOW the results get ranked and displayed. Plus you can get free reports on what your users searched for and when they searched for it. All it takes is a small bit of text editing...
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Free DNN Module: Advanced DataGrid (Part 2)
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 4/25/2008 4:04 PM
Another example of using the free Advanced DataGrid module to fill a gap between core DotNetNuke functionality and having to write your own module. This example creates an add-on for the core Events module...
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Force javascript to run AFTER a DotNetNuke page is fully loaded
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 4/2/2008 4:06 PM
So you want to insert a bit of javascript on your DNN page to perform some function that you probably should code into a module but you know you can implement more quickly by dropping script into a Text/HTML module (or in the Header/Footer of any module's Advanced Settings). The problem is, your script fires at the wrong time -- before the page is fully loaded. Here's a way to insure your script always waits until the DNN page is loaded...
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Add custom registration instructions to the DNN user account registration page
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 3/12/2008 5:11 PM
Have a DotNetNuke portal with open registration and wish you could freely add your OWN instructions to the DNN user account registration screen? Sure, you can edit the input field names (to change "Username" to "LoginName", for example) but what if you wanted to put the message "*** Please use your Email address as your Username ***" at the top of the user account registration page? Here's one FREE way to do it without changing any DNN code...
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Free DNN Module: Advanced DataGrid (Part 1)
All Blogs DNN Development By mamlin on 2/27/2008 5:05 PM
The "Advanced DataGrid" module by Efficion Consulting has been around for years. It allows you to make direct SQL queries into the DNN database and return the results in a basic HTML table. This is by no means the only module to offer such functionality but the Advanced Datagrid module (and source code) is FREE...
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Lost and Corrupted LinkClick links in DNN modules
All Blogs DNN Tips By mamlin on 2/13/2008 7:04 PM
Have you experienced a sudden corruption of document links in your DNN "Documents" module? If the documents are still physically present in your Portal folder but the links in the Documents module no longer work, this may be the reason why...
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This is an example of a Google AJAX Search with asynchronous search execution for two searches.  See our blog series, 'Add Google AJAX Search to your DNN skin' for info and sample code.
 
     
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There are many great DNN modules.
A few we highly recommend are:
 
Dynamic Registration
Total control over the user signup process.  Create custom forms, execute your own SQL, use the integrated payment processing features to assign user roles, validate USERNAMEs via AJAX and much more.  Very cool.
 
URL Master
Change to friendly URLs that really ARE friendly.  Add keywords into your page URLs for better SEO.  Create 301 redirects for individual pages.  Force visitors (and search bots) to a single domain (i.e., make everyone use the "www" version of your site's URL or vice versa).  One of the single best upgrades for any DNN site.
 
Document Exchange 5 (DMX5)
Drag-and-drop from Windows Explorer directly into the DMX file manager!  File versioning, file and folder moderation, extend user permissions down to the file level (for user groups and even for individual users).  Infinite file and file info presentation options via custom display templates.  Store files locally or remotely via UNC (i.e., can securely store files somewhere besides your web server).  Much more.
 
XMOD by DNNDev
Rock-solid form module for data collection.  From simple feedback / email forms to complex, multi-part tabbed forms.  XMOD is different from other form modules because XMOD does not create a new database table for every new form definition -- an important feature if you plan to create dozens or hundreds of forms over the life of your DNN instance!  Excellent support from the developer and an active community around this module.
 
If you desire your form module to create a new DB table for each new form definition, a great alternative to XMOD is the Dynamic Forms module from DataSprings.  Dynamic Forms offers direct DB access beyond that found in XMOD as well as an easy drag-and-drop form builder option to help you get up and running very quickly.

 
     

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