Last week I created a blog about my intention to pick up DNN FAQ and make that as an example for a session during http://www.web-connections.eu (Day of DotNetNuke Europe) on Jun 16-18 in Hamburg Germany. FAQ is a standard core module that did not get any attention in the last 4 years, by lack of a team. I want to illustrate how you can apply (DNN wrapped) Telerik controls in order to improve User eXperience (UX) of any DNN module.
What did I do?
Last week, I outlined several steps in my blog for this legacy module to get it up to date. And I am happy to say here that I have finished the first 4 steps in a week (I spend some spare time in evenings and weekend ) and created a new release of the FAQ module!
This new release is a VS2010 project, the solution is restructured and simplified, I implemented MS Build for PA and source packaging, created release notes, implemented file clean-up during upgrade, hardened the table structure, improved the SQLProviderscripts, added security checks by removal of html scripting in text entered, and I did quite some code clean-up. I also assumed that a question in FAQ does not contain pages of text, so I trimmed a question itself down to 200 chars max.
I revived the FAQ forum a bit by posting some answers, and took the chance to implement one new feature in this FAQ release, based upon a request which I found somewhere in the FAQ forum.
And since FAQ hasn’t got any attention in the last years, I set the minimum level for DNN to version 5.6.1 and .NET 3.5 for this module. Technically this FAQ version could set be lower than DNN 5.6.1, but since I will apply DNNWrapped Telerik controls in the next weeks and also want to encourage everyone to upgrade to the latest DNN version (in which some security issues are fixed), 5.6.1 is the minimum for this FAQ release.
Where can you find this new FAQ release?
The new release of the FAQ module is now in the DNN Release tracker. As part of this formal DNN release process, I created a test scrip as well. You can follow the progress in the release tracker here.
The new FAQ release can also be found as beta version on the CodePlex pages of DNN FAQ, click on this link. You can download the updated source pack and the release notes there as well. Please remember that this release is not yet a formal DNN release until it has passed the release tracker successfully. Try it in a test environment and provide feedback to me on any issues found.
Send in requests for FAQ
I use CodePlex as main source for issues, releases, source, etc.. It is well connected as TFS server to my VS2010 environment for this project. So, if you have any bugs, issues or feature requests for DNN FAQ, have a go at this link.
I do not promise that I will honour every request, but it is always nice to have a list of options to choose from.
What will I do next?
My next step will be to convert the module to C# with automatic conversion tools. Stay tuned!