The CK Editor from WatchersNET has been (and still is) a very good alternative to the Telerik RAD Editor, the standard HTML editor delivered with DNN for a long time. It provides the successor of the FCK Editor, which has been the default editor in DotNetNuke a while ago. But as the cooperation with Telerik was ending, a search for a new editor solution started, and the DNN Connect Association forked Ingo Herbote's provider with the goal to integrate it into DNN 7.something (I don't know exactly when this happened).
I recently had to upgrade a site from DNN 6.2 to 7.4, and I thought about changing the editor provider as well - not because I don't trust Ingo (who did some great work over the years) but because the DNN Connect product is the one which is more or less "officially" supported. But I had a little problem: I configured a lot of different toolbars and set up a lot of stuf like which users may use which toolbar on which page etc. How can I manage to migrate all these customizations?
Well, in the end it was quite easy. These are the necessary steps:
Do not install the DNNConnect.CKEditorProvider that is delivered with DNN 7.4.2 (and available from the Available Extensions tab) - it is a bit buggy. If so, no problem, do the following and check the "Repair installation" option in the installer.
Download the latest release from here: https://github.com/DNN-Connect/CKEditorProvider/releases (in my case this was 1.0.1.66). Install this package.
In the portal root directory you find files named CKEditorSettings.xml, CKToolbarButtons.xml and CKToolbarSets.xml. Copy them to DNN.CKEditorSettings.xml, DNN.CKToolbarButtons.xml and DNN.CKToolbarSets.xml (if these files already exist, delete them).
Go to Host :: SQL and run the following script:
INSERT INTO
{databaseOwner}{objectQualifier}CKE_Settings
SELECT
SettingName,
SettingValue
FROM
{databaseOwner}{objectQualifier}CKEditorProviderSettings
Then restart your application (eg. from the Tools menu), and go to Host :: HTML Editor Provider Configuration. Change from CKHtmlEditorProvider to DNNConnect.CKE, delete the module for the CKHTMLEditorProvider and you're done.
If you want you can uninstall the CK Editor provider. I had some troubles after this, a small change in the web.config solved the situation. I don't know why, but after the uninstall, the default provider was set back to DotNetNuke.RadEditorProvider, changing this in the interface made the page "hang". I manually deleted the config files (CKEditorSettings.xml etc.), and changed the line
<htmlEditor defaultProvider="DotNetNuke.RadEditorProvider">
in the web.config to
<htmlEditor defaultProvider="DNNConnect.CKE">
After this change, everything worked fine.
That's it. Happy DNNing!