Blog

I recently had to create a private assemblypackage for one of our modules and in doing so I ran into problems that caused me to spend a day of my life that I will never get back. I thought I would share this and possibly save someone the pain that it has caused me.

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Last week I got started on getting the DotNetNuke Wiki module into a 4.4.0 source solution, so that I could convert the module to ASP.NET 2.0 and debug it in Visual Studio. Normally this wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary, I setup DotNetNuke solutions for a living, I can do it in my sleep, but I decided I was going to do all of this on my main machine running Windows Vista Ultimate edition.

You would think this might not be too difficult, but it sure was. Here's what I was starting with.

DotNetNuke 4.4.0 Source package, available for download from www.dotnetnuke.com.

Visual Studio 2005 w/ SP1

IIS7 Installed

IIS6 compatibility partially installed.

After multiple failures, and quite a bit of head smashing (on the wall) I gave up for the weekend. I blogged about the troubles, and a little birdie came to the rescue (If you read this birdie and don't mind me mentioning your name let me know)!

The little birdie...

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I see this requested all the time, so I figured I'd blog how I proceed with upgrading a DNN Instance.

If you're upgrading your DotNetNuke instance, here is a list of simple steps to follow during the upgrade process.

First tip, test the upgrade on a staging site first, pull a copy of the database and files down, try the upgrade, make sure all your functionality is still there. Then upgrade production (backup everything first)

 

Here’s the steps to upgrade

 

1.       Backup the database.

2.       Backup the file system.

3.       Make sure you did 1 & 2

4.       Extract the latest DNN ZIP file somewhere, i usually use the installation package, not the upgrade package out of preference.

5.       Edit the web.config file from DNN package

a.       Modify the SQL connection strings, there are two places, you can get the string from your original web.config

b.      Be sure to copy the Machinekey ValidationKey and Decription key values...

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Just in time for Christmas a new version of DotNetNuke has been released. On it's 4 year anniversary of the first release, DotNetNuke released version 4.4.

"On December 24th, 2002, the code which was to become the DotNetNuke web application framework was first released to the community.  On the fourth anniversary of this date, DotNetNuke version 4.4.0 - a release with significant performance enhancements - has now been made available for download"

If you've never used DotNetNuke before, do yourself a favor and try it out, there are no licensing fees to download it, use it, or even modify it. It's open source, free, and a great way to easily start building a website via an intuitive web based UI.

Version 4.4 marks the first ASP.NET 2.0 only release, prior to this release DNN was maintaining two sets of code, one for .Net 1.1 and one for .Net 2.0. 4.4 marks significant improvements in performance over previous versions as this version was heavily tested and tweaked in a full scale performance...

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I just finished reading Eric Sick on the Business of Software by Eric Sink, the founder of SourceGear -- makers of source control products Vault and SourceOffSite (which we use here at Engage Software). It was a great book. Very insightful, funny and inspiring. I recommend it to anyone who works for an "ISV" (Independent Software Vendor). While the author targets the "Micro-ISV," I consider Engage Software to be more of a "Mini-ISV" but the concepts still apply. The book is essentially a collection of blog posts, categorized into sections: Entrepreneurship, People, Marketing and Sales. Since each chapter is a former blog post, there is a lot of...

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On friday a Beta version of ASP.NET ajax was released, the number of features in the release is less than in the last CTP, but the features that remain have had some very welcome enhancements made.

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This weekend I attended the Tulsa TechFest and had the opportunity to sit through the entire Ajax/Atlas track. While it wasn’t the focus of every presentation at the fest, I have decided to focus this post on the new Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax web development technology, which currently is out as a Community Technology Preview.

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I attended the event over the weekend and was very impressed. Great hosts and good people in Tulsa OK.

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I attended the FREE event over the weekend. I can only say good things about it. They did a great job putting this on.

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Read more for information about our DotNetNuke Training offerings.

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