Entries for 'Chris Hammond'

With DNN8 a new Image Handler was introduced to provide loading/sizing of images of various sizes. In previous releases the ProfilePic.ashx implementation always looked like it was supposed to do allow for this, but never actually allowed you to resize images in a meaningful way.

The handler in DNN8 allows for this, but I was having a problem as I started using this method in the DNNChat module (new release coming in the next few days) but when I installed it on http://dnnchat.com/ the images were failing to load, and then ended up throwing 404 messages. I wasn't quite sure what the cause was, but decided to check the AUM_ settings in the hostsettings table. In my install there I found a setting AUM_DoNotRedirectUrlRegex that had the following value:

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I’ve been maintaining my DotNetNuke Visual Studio project templates for a number of years now, one of the things they have sorely been lacking is the ability to “customize” the templates without having to crack open the full source code of the VSIX project, making changes, and then recompiling everything. There are 5 specific strings/values that were ripe for customization, but simply were not easily accessible.

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With the release of DNN Platform 8 last week it is now possible to develop modules using SPA and MVC patterns within the DNN platform. As Part of the buildup of the DNN 8 release, Will Strohl provided a Pull request to my DNN Extension Project Templates project to help clean up some of the basic module templates to work better on Windows Azure environments, and to prep them for inclusion of new DNN 8 specific templates for SPA and MVC modules.

Early in the fall Joe Brinkman provided a partial SPA project, with the intention of it becoming a project template. I had a little time when it was initially submitted to work on it, but wasn’t able to get everything squared away on the template until early December. It wasn’t until last week that I got additional time to do further testing on the template and fix a few issues that occurred during the conversion to a project template.

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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.

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A few months ago I released V4 of my DNN Development templates, which included a new project template for Themes (skins). This weekend I was working on a new theme (skin) for a customer project and came across a few changes I needed/wanted to make to the Theme project template, so you get to benefit from those changes as I have put a new release out of the project templates. Continue Reading »

Originally posted on ChrisHammond.com For years I have maintained a set of Visual Studio project templates that are used by thousands of people to quickly and easily create Modules for the DotNetNuke Content Management System, and for years, I have ... Continue Reading »

One of the best things I love about the DNN platform is the ease of building, releasing, and updating Extensions for your website. If you need custom functionality you can either build something yourself, or likely find something that someone else has developed previously that might fit your needs.

If you are an extension developer for DNN (previously DotNetNuke), you have many options for how you can get those modules into the hands of potential customers. If you want to get your modules into the hands of as many different users as possible, you can’t just stick to one distribution mechanism, you need to reach out and try to get your extension available in as many places as possible.

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I must admit, the work I have done over the years with DotNetNuke has involved working with modules that I control, build, and have a say in. I am set in my ways of how I like to do things, and believe that my approach to DNN module development is one of the easiest approaches to the DNN platform, because of this I have put a lot of time and effort into my Module Development Templates.

Occasionally I come across other people’s modules in my consulting work, and it tends to frustrate me when I have to do things outside of my own little “perfect module development environment”. I want to be able to switch to “Release” mode in Visual Studio and build, and have the scripts package the module I am working on so that I can easily deploy it to a customer’s development or staging environment. I had just such an experience this evening, working on customizing a module for a customer, and they had the Source to a third party module that I needed to make changes to. There is no packaging or build process anywhere inside of this module, even to the point where there are missing files in the “source” project itself.

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I decided recently it was time to upgrade the look of my various websites, and while I originally considered modifying my MultiFunction skin for DNN, ultimately I decided to start from the ground up and create a new Skin for DNN using Bootstrap (http://getbootstrap.com), I’ve decided to call it HammerFlex.

 

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Earlier this year I started on a project to learn how to use SignalR, I had reasons to do so for my full time job (non-DNN related) but considering my DNN experience over the past 11 years I figured that learning how to use SignalR with DNN would be my fastest way to get myself up to speed. So I started working on a Chat module. Originally that module was called SignalRChat, and was available on codeplex, but ultimately I decided that name kind of sucked, so it needed to be something else.

In comes the DNN Chat module project, there was a Chat module for DNN long ago, but the last official release of it was in 2008, and while there was a Beta in 2010, it hadn't seen any development and work in years. So I approached DNNCorp about taking over the DNN Chat project and replacing it with my newly developed module, at the same time, going from "DNN Chat" to "dnnCHAT".

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