In DNN v3 we extracted the Desktop Modules into their own projects (and more recently we have created separate Project teams for these modules). IMO these have been a great success.
One of our Roadmap ideas for a while has been to do the same with Admin Modules. ie to extract them into their own project. Some of our admin/Host modules are rarely used - they are not required to run the application in most situations.
Recently, there have been some suggestions in the forums that the ability to change admin/host modules would be of interest
This Blog is an attempt to guage the demand/interest in this -
I CAN MAKE NO PROMISES.
In theory, this would allow 3rd party Module developers to build better mousetraps, especially for managing Users/Roles/Pages/Modules/Files - any UI provided is subjective.
It would also enable us to package a "light" version that only includes the basic needs for Admin/Host (additional components could be added as neccessary).
A number of things would be needed (the following list is probably not complete):
- An ability to configure the Admin/Host menus on install/portal creation - this really is already available for admin menus (through templates).
- An ability to add new Admin/Host pages through the UI (as well as delete)
- An ability to add new Admin/Host modules to existing Admin/Host pages (as well as delete)
- An extension of the Module Installer to install admin/host modules
- An extension of the Module Definitions framework to support Admin/Host modules, so the Control Panel "offers" the correct list of modules for Standard/Admin/Host pages
- A physical extraction of the code (this is actually easier in .NET 2 - as we will not need any new Class Libraries)
- A reorganisation of the Admin folders - 1 module per folder (as with Desktop Modules)
We have already extracted our API into a Class Library for .NET 2, so this process is much cleaner in .NET 2.