DotNetNuke 5.3.0 Released

I am happy to announce that the DotNetNuke 5.3.0 release is now available for download.  This release marks the fourth month in a row where we have hit our targeted release date.  That is a huge accomplishment for the project as the DotNetNuke Corporation engineering team is really starting to gel.  During this release cycle we also had a number of significant contributions by core team members. 

Over the past year, as our development methodology has undergone change and we have hired more members for the engineering team, the core team contributions have dropped off.  This was mainly because it is very hard to manage contributions when our own internal processes are not well defined.  Now that our DotNetNuke Corp. engineering team finally has some stable processes in place, it will be even easier for core team and community members to contribute to the project.  We recognize that sometimes you need to take a step back in order to re-evaluate and re-engineer your processes.  Having spent the last year doing just that, we are now in a much better position to work with the core team and the community to continue evolving the platform at a much more rapid pace to keep up with the ever changing web application landscape.  This is definitely a great time to be a part of DotNetNuke Corporation and the DotNetNuke Community.

The 5.3.0 release contains a number of new features and enhancements as outlined below.  Over the next couple of weeks we will be covering the new features in more depth on the DotNetNuke blogs.  As usual, you can see the full list of changes for this release on the changelog.

New Features

• Templated User Profiles - User profile pages are now publicly viewable
• Photo field in User Profile - Users can upload a photo to their profile
• User Messaging - Users can send direct messages to other system users
• Search Engine Sitemap Provider - The sitemap now allows module admins to plugin sitemap logic for individual modules.
• Taxonomy Manager - Administrators can create hierarchical category lists that can be shared and used across modules

Major Highlights

• Fixed issue with the Create New Module form not showing on upgrades.
• Fixed issue where the Create New Module wizard allowed the user to select an invalid 'Owner' folder.
• Fixed the issue where adding query strings such as Mid=Crash showed an error screen.
• Fixed issue where the dashboard controls failed to load if upgrading from a version prior to 5.1.0 to a later one.
• Fixed issue where create new module from manifest was not working
• Fixed issue where the red border around Administrator only content was not displayed after upgrading from 4.x
• Fixed the issue with the Market Place in the Solutions Explorer
• Fixed issue where GrantStoredProceduresPermission and GrantUserDefinedFunctionsPermission ran on every install/upgrade
• Fixed issue where logging in as Registered User throws PageLoadException in Event Viewer.
• Fixed issue with creating new language packs.
• Fixed issue with emails not having http in urls to external resources.
• Fixed issue with caching providers not being defined in web.config in some instances.
• Fixed issue where the User Image showed in the search drop down box in Manage Users.
• Updated the portaltemplate.xsd to cater for new fields.
• Update the Google Verification file content to match the new Google protocol.
• Updated the Installation Wizard's Finished button text to "Start building your new site!"
• Updated the default menu provider to use the DNNMenuNavigationProvider.
• Create Package button is now disabled until a package folder has been created.
• Reduced the number of user events that are logged.
• Optimized retrieving a module by its control key.
• Added code to store the site map priority as a number, which allows any valid localised single e.g. 0.5 or 0,6
• Added new logic to only allow cancelling a module installation if the Core Version is not sufficient for the module to be installed.
• Added extra checks to the upgrade application logic when removing core modules.
• Added a success message when exporting the Dashboard as xml.
• Added more validation around editing a module control definition
• Added the ability to disable portal folder synchronization on "hidden" folders.
• Added a new check to test if all extensions are installed that are present in a site template.

Security Fixes

• XSS issue with Search box that affects older browsers

Updated Modules/Providers

The following modules and providers have been updated in the 5.3.0 packages. Please see the specific project pages for notes on what bugs or enhancements were corrected with each release.

Modules

• None

Providers

• none

As with any release, we recommend you perform a complete file and database backup before performing any upgrade on a production website and that you first conduct a trial upgrade on a staging version of the site.  Following these guidelines will ensure that you are able to recover should any unforeseen problems arise during the upgrade process.