I'll Be Back

Time has gotten away from me.  It has a tendency to do that.  But before I completely miss the opportunity and get an entire week behind… I wanted to update everyone on last Monday’s core team chat.  It was well attended and there were lots of little things to talk about.  I’ll fill in some details of things that have made progress since then as well.

Beta 1 Downloads ~

As of Monday afternoon (roughly 48 hours) there had been over 2000 downloads from the DotNetNuke site.  It is hard to say how many more had been made from GotDotNet.  We have removed the download from GDN as we were receiving too many complaints about receiving an “empty zip file”.  In order to ensure quality service and to better track usage, downloads will be likely be available only from the DotNetNuke home site going forward. ~ Note that as of today the number of downloads is approximately 3700.

Interim Beta Builds ~

It was discussed whether or not we should release “interim” builds during the beta period.  The point is that beta 2 IS the interim build.  It is slated for a March 6 release and will contain lots of fixes (as many as we can do).  Whether or not this is exactly the right approach (maybe we can do beta releases faster than every three weeks), we are going to stick with our plan for 2.0.  Maybe for 2.1  we can try it differently but it doesn’t serve anyone well to mess with our plans in progress when we don’t even know how it’s all going to work out.

2.0 Bug Reporting ~

Folks are staring to find and log issues… GOOD!  This is what the beta is for!  As of today the number of bugs logged in GDN (our public issues log) is around 50.  There are another 40 in the teams’ internal list.  With 23 fixed 10 withdrawn and only 7 remaining.  Some of these are dupes… Scott McCulloch and Josh Weinstein (congrats on the new baby girl!!!) reconcile these lists every couple of days.  We’re very happy with our installation of Aardvark, although our server is not sending notification emails just yet.  We’re working out our own kinks with using the system but hope to be able to use it (probably not for 2.0) to publish a publicly accessible knowledge base and allow direct public entry (and tracking) of items.

Known Items ~ sample skins

There were no skin samples included in the beta 1 release.  We’re considering what to do about that… it was decided (and rightly so) that the DotNetNuke sites’ 2.0 skin will NOT be included in the DNN distribution.  It is real property which provides brand identity and should remain privately held.  Unfortunately, it was originally included in the source on GDN (during alpha) so some folks already have (and are using) it.  The original look (1.x) was pretty generic… but we don’t need every default installation of DotNetNuke to be confused with the real one. That being said, we will be looking for some examples to provide.  However, should they actually be shipped as part of the DNN package?  Or be downloadable separately?  This is still in discussion.

Known Items ~ Module Communicator

Module communicator functionality had not been retrofitted for 2.0, nor was there a working sample.  This is being taken on by Mark Hoskins who, working with some community contributions, is already done with a first draft implementation.  A working sample will go out with the beta 2 release.

Known Items ~ Users Online

This popular module, written by core team member Scott McCulloch, is being retrofitted for use with 2.0.  We have made some changes to the core (rightfully) which the new module will be able to hook into which will allow it to function without having to make additional changes to the core.  The changes are such that performance impacts related to the using the module are not absorbed by the core (affecting all implementations) but rather only for those portals that choose to install the companion modules.  This was a major consideration in working to make this possible.

Known Items ~ AccessDataProvider

Shaun is on it.  The AccessDataProvider will be in sync with the SQLDataProvider for the beta 2 release.

“Dogfooding” the DNN site ~

We still intend to upgrade the DNN site to 2.0… this has not happened in production yet, although Shaun has done it without issue on a test system.  It’s just been a matter of availability.  Expect it to happen sometime soon.  The only real concern about doing this has been about possibly sending the wrong message to folks when we keep saying “Beta software, not for production use, etc”.  When we do it, there will be a suitable warning prominently posted on the front page.

Private Beta Team ~

Off to a slow start, but we’re rolling now.  What with getting Aardvark set up, playing with our test server and just getting the release package out.  We didn’t get set up as fast as we should have.  But we now have 11 private beta testers (a couple more invitations still outstanding) who are working EXTRA hard (all the community testers are working hard) to locate and clearly describe issues for us.  Expect a formal announcement in the forums sometime soon, giving well deserved credit to all those helping to make the 2.0 release successful.

There was more… but this is the most relevant to current discussions and my fingers are tired.  I’ll try to keep up a little better and give you some more information on bugs as they are slain.  But it’s a hard job… the Knights of the DotNetNuke Table are slaying the Dragon faster than I can keep up with!  You’ll get more updates, don’t worry… I’ll be back.