In my spare time, I often find myself playing with ideas for enhancing the DotNetNuke (DNN) core. Most of the time I am developing prototypes as a “proof of concept” – i.e. they are not complete, and may never be completed.
One example of this is my recent blog series on developing modules for DNN using ASP.NET MVC. So far I have demonstrated that the default MVC Application created using the ASP.NET MVC version 1 template can be converted, with little effort, into a DNN module. In order to accomplish this I had to create a framework that sits on top of the DNN core.
The code to do this is very rough, there is still a lot of work to do, but I have had a number of requests to make the current code available. Where should it go? I could include a zip file attached to my blog, but that is not very discoverable. I could create a DNN Forge project, but many of these ideas may never go anywhere, and some may end up being moved into the core.
We discussed this in the DotNetNuke Corp. Engineering group, and we have come up with the idea of a special DNN Forge project – called “DotNetNuke Labs”, where all the prototype ideas generated by members of the Engineering team, as well as Community Team members can be placed in one easily discoverable location.
I am pleased to announce today that "DotNetNuke Labs” is now live and the “DotNetNuke MVC Module Application Framework” project is the first sub-project to be added to this new Forge project.