News

In 2010, True Value and Engage launched a new, enhanced TruSite platform usingDotNetNuke (DNN). The project had a simple guiding principle – maintain consistent brand standards while allowing retailers to make their site personal. By leveraging a number of features inherent to DNN and extending the platform, True Value is able to provide retailers the tools to create and manage their own feature-rich content. Additionally, the True Value marketing department is able to provide a robust set of starter content to ensure brand standards and keep content current and relevant for all retailers.

The CodePlex Foundation enables the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities. That’s HOT. When CodePlex Foundation asked us to help enhance the features and design of their website we were giddy. Not only did this project allow us to do some exciting work, but we jumped at the chance to work with an organization whose mission we could get behind.

As the branding changed and the site grew, the foundation's website easily adapted. The skinning features of DNN allowed us to completely redesign the website without losing content. As more galleries and projects became a part of the foundation, the website easily welcomed the new content. Additionally, each gallery and project owner now has the ability to manage their information. The leadership at the foundation is frequently providing news, announcements, and blogs on their website.

Engage: Serene is our latest DotNetNuke 5 skin, whose design is based on simplicity, clean white space, and balance. The skin is designed using CSS and minimal images for the best performance, and comes with 6 different color options, four layouts, and 6 containers. Each layout is carefully spaced to give the site even weight and balance, and when combined with the multiple containers, gives your content a clear and custom way to shine. The skin package includes the original Photoshop file for easy customization, 6 unique colors, 4 layouts, and 6 containers.

Engage: Fresh Engage: Fresh is a new DotNetNuke 5 skin that emphasizes simplicity and flexibility. The skin is designed using CSS and minimal images for performance, and comes in 12 different colors. The skin package comes with the Photoshop design file for easy customization, 12 unique colors, and 7 containers. Fresh is designed to be so flexible that it could be applied to any website for a fresh, clean look.

I really wanted the title of this blog post to be “Customizing the Telerik Rad Editor with DNN to Reinforce Consistent Content Administration Practices for your Content Editors and Other Implications of using Telerik Rad Editor as your Default HTML Editor in DNN” but that may have been a tad too long.

In DotNetNuke 5.4.0, the community edition of the platform included the Telerik RAD Editor. This is an exciting new development for the community edition of DNN. The flexibility of the HTML editor in DNN is one of the most commonly overlooked features. For most content editors, the HTML editor might be their only interaction with the system. For this reason, customizing the HTML editor for your content administrators is crucial to user adoption and creating a friendly workspace for your editors.

This blog entry is going to apply some of the same concepts from a previous blog entry for the FCKEditor, Optimizing the FCKEditor for DNN, but as an evaluation of the Telerik RAD Editor for DNN. Chris Hammond introduced how to include these features on your site in a blog on DNN Daily. I’m going to build upon his implementation instruction with some opinionated configuration recommendations.

Over the past few years, Engage has done a lot in the DotNetNuke Training space. Some highlights include:

• launching a DNN training program from scratch
• developing a great training DNN curriculum
• partnering with DotNetNuke Corp. to become an Official DotNetNuke Training Provider
• training hundreds of individuals and many groups of people at major corporations, government entities and learning institutions around the world
• creating alternative learning channels with live and on-demand webinars, DVD video training, and e-Learning formats

This time and effort has been both exciting and challenging. Our biggest challenge has been reaching everyone who needs instructor-led DNN Training. Today we are pleased to announce the next chapter in our DotNetNuke Training adventure. Engage has again partnered with DotNetNuke Corp., this time to help launch a major initiative: the DotNetNuke Training program.

We recently released a new version of Engage: Rotator which featured four new templates to display rotating content on your DotNetNuke site.

Engage: Element is our latest commercial skin package release, including five bold color combinations, six unique containers, and three main layouts. Each layout choice comes with multiple panes designed to make your content shine whether you use all the panes together or just a few per page. Engage: Element is using the web standards approach, each layout is built with XHTML/CSS with some CSS3 enhancements (sorry IE users, you will not see text shadows). The skin itself has been cross-browser tested across most popular browsers. This skin is made to be flexible, easily accommodating any site small or large.

With the advent of 2010, we at Engage took some time to reevaluate our products business (Engage Modules and Engage Skins).  The last six months or so of 2009, we were swamped with client work and were unable to make any substantial enhancements or fixes to our DotNetNuke modules.  We recognized that this was unacceptable, and have been working to restructure our business and commitments so that we can maintain a consistent support, maintenance, and enhancements for all of our products.  As a result, we've made some internal changes to make sure that work on our product lines cannot be ignored because of client work, however pressing it may seem.

We decided to help spread the love to the DNN community by offering Engage: Zeen; a free skin package based on a Wordpress theme design created by WeFunction Design Agency especially for Smashing Magazine and their readers (Check it out). The theme was released free under a GPL, and open to modification and use for all types of projects without any restrictions. All they asked for in return was a link to the article to spread the word. The design simply rocks, and grew to be a popular favorite among Wordpress themes.

Engage launched Engage University last year as an e-Learning resource for DotNetNuke. The site is built on DNN of course, and powered by our Engage: Campus LMS. Our first course Introduction to DotNetNuke was a free, short course to provide an overview of what DNN is and how it can be applied. The course also serves as an example for how Engage: Campus works, and more importantly, what students will get in an e-Learning experience for DotNetNuke. During the past 10 months, over 350 students have taken the free Introductory course.