News

Saturday, October 2nd was the Day of DotNetNuke in Chicago. A number of us from Engage attended and spoke.

I’m really excited to finally be able to introduce version 1.4 of Engage: Events.  This release addresses, in my opinion, the biggest missing feature of the module, event categorization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a cross-functional discipline and to achieve findable websites, a variety of tactics must be employed. When building DotNetNuke (DNN) websites, optimizing your websites for findability can be exceptionally challenging. Rich, contextual content is the root of findability, but due to the nature of a content management system (CMS), content can have many disparate sources and control of your content can be unwieldy. In this article, I’ll list 12 tactics to make maintaining the fundamentals of findability in DNN easier.

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.