Tracy Wittenkeller, author of DotNetNuke Websites - Problem Design Solution published by Wrox in August, 2008 will show us how to build a DotNetNuke website, highlighting new features in DotNetNuke 5. The newest version of DNN is packed with new features and ways that DNN can be managed. Tracy will actually build a small website in one information-packed session. You'll learn how to create pages, apply skins and skin widgets, add and customize the display of core DNN modules, apply content and create/apply security roles. This session will provide a jumpstart to build and maintain your own DNN websites.

Brian Scarbeau, co-author of the Professional DotNetNuke 5 book by Wrox gives an overview of DotNetNuke 5. This session will review an Introduction to DotNetNuke and some of the new features that comes with DNN 5. Learn how to install DNN and learn how to create pages and put modules on your pages. Learn how to get free skins and modules for your site. Finally, learn how to create your own module using Open-Smart Module.

This session covers the role of the DotNetNuke site administrator in proper site performance.  A comparative analysis is completed showing baseline and optimized site performance in many traditional settings.

Included in this session is recommended configurations for Shared, Cloud, Virtual and Dedicated installation environments.  All using proven configurations that have been perfected by the presenter.  Along with each configuration recommendation is a detailed discussion on WHY this configuration has proven to be the best so far, and some of the key problem areas to monitor in other environments.

The session finishes with a checklist of routine maintenance items that should be completed on a regular basis to ensure that site performance remains top-notch.

Some of the standard questions about a DotNetNuke site are often answered with a T-SQL Query:  Why is my database so big?  What table is the largest? How do you get a list of user’s properties?  How many visitors came to my site yesterday? 

This session will focus on the various T-SQL commands that can help improve the day-to-day functionality of a DotNetNuke site.  Using standard and free modules, the session will demonstrate helpful T-SQL queries that will answer common operational questions.

Updating your site and wanting to determine what 3rd party modules are located on what pages?  This session will help you develop reports to ensure your upgrades deliver few surprises.

The session will also help the attendees understand some of the standard data relationships in a DotNetNuke database so that they can use the tools and techniques discussed to develop T-SQL queries of their own. 

The session will focus on the DotNetNuke V5 database structures. However, the majority of the techniques demonstrated can be used on previous versions of DotNetNuke.

This session will emphasize best practices as well as showing tips and tricks for leveraging the power of Users and Roles in DotNetNuke.  Included will be a special section on the User->Profile.  We will not only show how to use Users and Roles, but also how to access this information programmatically. Lastly, we will look at the inherent security implications that site administrators should be aware of.

We’ll walk through using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer and the Windows Web App Gallery for a minimal click installation of DotNetNuke and its prerequisites…  (http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/DotNetNuke.aspx ) . The Microsoft Web Platform Installer is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer.

Are you responsible for unattended applications that absolutely must “work” – how do you monitor the day-to-day operations to ensure application functionality?– I use DotNetNuke. 

This session will detail and discuss how to use DotNetNuke to monitor applications to ensure the processes are working and the applications are functioning as required. How can DotNetNuke be used to ensure standard functionality of your “back office system”, validate appropriate functions have completed, display standard log files, or display a dashboard of application status? DotNetNuke makes a great internal tool to support the “data center” operations.

Additionally DotNetNuke can play a pivotal roll in system recovery.  A monitoring site can be used to verify recovery, initiate recovery steps, provide user documentation on handling recovery, implement client notification, and provide user feedback.

Lastly, using DotNetNuke to monitor DotNetNuke sites will be discussed.

The session will focus on DotNetNuke V5 and the various core modules provided.

Part 1 begins with a quick technical overview of DotNetNuke, and a discussion of why you might build a custom DNN module or provider. We'll see an overview of module and provider architecture, and an overview of the development and deployment process with a module install demo. Next, we'll talk about module development options, project types, and setup in Visual Studio 2008. Demos will include how to install a custom module into the portal, how to configure a module's source for development, and stepping into design mode. We'll look at the DNN Starter Kit for creating modules from scratch, with a focus on developing the data layer. Demos will show several options for data layer code generation, and we'll see some development tips & tricks along the way. This is a 200-level session - some experience with DotNetNuke will be assumed.

Part 2 begins with a demonstration of a sample custom module, and a walk-through of the module source code layers to see how it works. During the tour, we'll look at implementation of the optional DNN interfaces including: IActionable, ISearchable, IPortable, IHydratable, and a discussion of IUpgradeable, and IPropertyAccess. We'll also look at localization techniques in the source, and basic module UI styling. Next is a tour of the DotNetNuke core from the developer's perspective: reusable controls, base classes, page navigation methods, core APIs, AJAX functionality through the ClientAPI, and client-side programmability through jQuery. During the tour, we'll cover some advanced development tips & tricks. This is a 300-level session - some experience with DotNetNuke will be assumed.

An often overlooked feature that DNN provides is the ability to create and utilize Portal and Page templates within the framework. In this session we’ll cover some of the simple day to day uses for templates, as well as some of the more advanced scenarios in which templating can save you a lot of time. We will look at how DotNetNuke generates templates, and how you can extend them to be even more useful to meet your needs. We’ll also talk about how you can customize the DNN installation process/package to fit your needs, using templates and modules.

There are many desktop applications that provide publishing support via the MetaWeblog API, Windows Live Writer, even Microsoft Word 2007 support’s the service, why not extend your DotNetNuke modules to provide this support. Implementing the MetaWeblog API into your application is simple to do, and when done can provide extremely flexible desktop solutions to posting or maintaining content for your DNN site. In this session we’ll cover the basics of implementing the API into your DNN modules.

Among the many improvements present in DotNetNuke version 5.1, this latest release includes authorization as a first-class extension point.  This allows customization previously impossible without core modification.  Additionally, the permission model (and the internal use thereof) has been significantly streamlined and centralized, allowing for great flexibility across myriad use scenarios.

In this session, we explore the new permission provider in detail.  This includes a discussion of how (and why) authorization services were centralized and abstracted, the overall design and structure of the provider, and available points of access control.  Finally, we examine some concrete ways in which the provider might be extended to meet real-world policy requirements.

In this session you will learn how to use DotNetNuke to build customer focused communities.  In this session will take a look at configuration options, terms of use policies,  membership configuration and available resources; including modules, skins, widgets and extensions.   We will look at ways to encourage participation, increase traffic,  manage content,  recognize  community leaders and how to deal with community disruptions.

At times the third party DotNetNuke marketplace can be daunting at first glance.  This session starts with a quick overview of the common third-party distribution mediums, and progresses into a bit of an explanation on some of the most popular third party modules.  Included in the discussion is implementation detail as to why these modules have become so common.  Modules discussed will include a new friendly URL provider, a third party forum module, and a few helpful free modules for site management/tracking.

This session will investigate whether or not DotNetNuke can withstand the rigors of being used as the basis for a mission critical application.  We will look at the advantages/disadvantages of using DotNetNuke and cover many of the negative comments you can find on the internet. We will also look at DotNetNuke's Open Source status and stability.

This session is great for organizations evaluating or beginning an implementation of DotNetNuke for a development team. The session will cover ways to manage a DotNetNuke team to make them the most effective. For the designers and skinners, we will learn how to make design to skin conversion quick and effortless by designing core PhotoShop design templates and having a starter skin and CSS template ready to make skin conversion quick and effortless. For site producers and administrators, the session will cover how to use portal templates and page templates to reduce the time it takes to deliver a DotNetNuke website. DBA¹s will learn two strategies for keeping the database under source control using TFS. For developers, we will cover a branch and merge strategy to keep DotNetNuke version agnostic skins and modules in source control in TFS. For server administrators, we will cover using multi-portal installations to manage large volumes of sites.

Learn what it takes to take your custom module to market.  We will review different options for distribution channels and what to expect after the sale.  We will also take a look a best practices for managing upgrades, documentation, customer support and DotNetNuke compatibility.

Clients will often want to take advantage of the registration portion of DotNetNuke, but how much can you do with the core module, what are the limitations and lines you cannot cross and therefore need a third party registration such as provided by third party DNN developers, Datasprings?  In this 60 minute session, we’ll tap into the core module and expose the tricks to setting up registration until we hit the boundaries.  Implementing the Dynamic Registration module goes from that point and beyond to reporting, preserving data integrity and generating reports on users.

As a developer or implementer of a DNN website one of the most difficult parts of the process is the handoff to your customer. To make this process as smooth as possible this session will provide you with some of the things we’ve learned from our DNN training and handoff processes with clients over the years. We’ll provide a list of the key concepts within DNN that should be conveyed with all project handoffs, and how best to include this in your delivery process.

Often times, the technical people like us face difficult challenges when transitioning from technical field into business side and wanting to make money utilizing our technical expertise in DotNetNuke.

In this session, we will discuss how we can take our DotNetNuke skills into next level by sharing our experience and tips and tricks in selling products and services, DotNetNuke web application project estimation, marketing skills, and business, and legal understandings.

We will also share open source tools and 3rd party DotNetNuke modules and products from real world experience that we use today that can help in saving time and money when starting up your own business and ultimately ripping the benefits of great open source product DotNetNuke!

Because DotNetNuke can be used to quickly develop highly functional websites and applications, it is a strong choice for small businesses who are developing vertical solutions for a targeted customer base. This session will discuss many of the common mistakes and pitfalls that vertical solution providers make as well as present solutions to these problems. We will also demonstrate the PowerDNN Control Suite's automation and management tools for DotNetNuke and discuss how these tools benefit vertical solution providers.

DotNetNuke is the perfect development platform for specific types of small and medium-sized businesses. This session will show you how to identify specific vertical markets best served by CMS toolsets as well as ways to bring these prospects into your sales cycle. We will also cover developing a menu of the most common core and third-party modules so you can efficiently develop proposals / estimates and methods to build recurring revenue streams from your existing client base.

Before you invest in a premium hosting account or a webfarm you need to understand your bottlenecks or potential performance issues.  In this session we will translate some common DotNetNuke Event Viewer entries.  We will explore the cause of the error and possible ways to remedy the problem.  We will also look at the performance impact of various modules on a page. You will learn how to use Microsoft SQL Profiler to monitor site activity and processor utilization.  You will be able to see the benefit of caching and how it relates to database requests.  At the end of this session you will have enough information to start troubleshooting your DotNetNuke site and know when it's time to upgrade hardware, find better performing modules or possibly a better hosting provider.

Hundreds of municipal and county governments, as well as State and Federal agencies, already use DotNetNuke to provide services for both external and internal customers.  From Detroit, Michigan to Denver, Colorado to the California Department of Child Support Services to the Florida cities of Gainesville, Fort Myers, Cape Coral and Naples, DotNetNuke has been the framework of choice for hosting public-facing web sites.

DotNetNuke 5 has some compelling arguments as a choice for government entities looking at launching a new, or converting an old, web site, including cost, availability of modules and leveraging the Microsoft and ASP.NET environment already in use in many government data centers.  In addition, the daily management of the web site and content can easily be accomplished by non-technical staff members once the initial configurations are established by an IT department or integrator.

The audience for this session is expected to be a mix of current or future government DotNetNuke users, including non-technical staff and IT staffers, plus system integrators looking at using DotNetNuke 5 to expand their business in the government market.

Many commercial DotNetNuke modules and skins do not work well together; subsequently, building a consistent user experience in the DotNetNuke environment is challenging. This presentation will focus on seamlessly integrating modules and skins by incorporating DotNetNuke standards and Web Standards. By emphasizing these standards and discussing user interface design best practices, the DotNetNuke community can bridge the gap between designers and developers.

Ryan Morgan, co-author of the upcoming Professional DotNetNuke 5 book by Wrox shows us how to create skins using "Pure CSS" techniques. In this session, Ryan will demonstrate advanced skinning techniques in DotNetNuke 5. The session covers writing valid and clean code with XHTML, the new Super Stylesheets in DNN 5 that give a starting point for pure CSS skinning, using the new object token format and considerations for making search engine optimized skins. If there's time at the end, we will also review a few of Ryan's favorite client side widgets that come with the new version of the framework.

There are many community developed web design patterns to make our job as web designers easier. One of the most popular design patterns in recent years is grid-based. What exactly is designing with a grid system? Is this the trend we should all follow in designing our web sites? This session will cover the foundations of grid systems. We will also evaluate the available grid systems and explore which one is the best fit for your next project.

Will Strohl, contributing Technical Editor of Professional DotNetNuke 5 by Wrox gives an overview and functional demonstration of what widgets are included in DotNetNuke 5, and how to work with them. Afterwards, you will learn how to create and install your very own widgets using DotNetNuke 5

This informative session for  will discuss (and show how to overcome) many of the common issues DotNetNuke developers and designers face when creating a "search engine friendly" website, including:

• What's REALLY important - Titles, Content, URLs, Links
• SEO Roadblocks using default DNN framework (including 5.0)
• URL rewriting and redirection
• Parent / Child Portals - advantages and disadvantages
• XML Sitemap creation and submission
• Robots.txt files
• Code Bloat Dangers
• Installing Analytics, tracking, setting up goals
• Best Free SEO Tools - Modules we use
• The Advantages of CSS Skinning in 5.0
• Using the new DNN 5.0 relocation widget to help with your SEO
• Questions / Answers

Session Presenters:

David Pavlicko - Internet Marketing Specialist / Architech
Ralph Williams, Jr. - Lead Web Designer / Architech

Over the last few years, with the adoption of AJAX and RIA frameworks, JavaScript has taken on added importance in the development of web applications.  jQuery is one of the leading JavaScript frameworks and greatly simplifies JavaScript development.  Microsoft’s recent announcement about adopting jQuery as a standard part of the ASP.Net platform prompted the DotNetNuke team to make the commitment to improve jQuery support within the platform.

In this presentation, we will provide a brief overview of jQuery and look at how we can leverage it in DotNetNuke to improve user interactions.  We’ll look at the jQuery support offered in DotNetNuke 5.0 and how we can take advantage of these features in our module and DotNetNuke widget development.

Co-Presented with: Ryan Morgan