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Compilation Error: "Title" is not a member

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:08:00 GMT

I was brought in to work on an asp.net web site recently that had been written by another company. I was asked to add some features to their current site as well as to fix some bugs that had been left by the previous developers. Once I had the site ready I moved this web site project to my staging server and then started receiving this error on a couple of pages. Now I had chosen to publish the website instead of just doing a copy of the site with the code-behind files as well. This is when this problem started.

I did some searching on the web and came up with the following that the class I had on these pages were duplicates on other pages or other compiled dlls within the published site. So I started looking for the pages that had the offending classes and I discovered them within the web site. I wish I had the time to move this web site into a web application project to avoid these issues. More information can be found here as well.

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Tags: ASP.NET,Programming

Category: ASP.NET

Category: Programming

Images not showing up in DotNetNuke FCK Editor

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:50:00 GMT

While setting up an installation of DNN for a client I ran into an issue of not being able to display the Image Gallery from within the FCK Editor on an HTML/Text Module. My first instinct with this was that I did not have read permissions on the "/Portals/0/" folder within the DNN architecture.

So following this assumption I logged into my hosting panel and made the appropriate permissions settings for the folder. I then went back to the HTML module and proceeded to see if the issue was solved. NO this didn't solve the issue at all. I then decided to check the event log under the admin menu to see if there was possibly an error being generated that I could get more information from.

Looking at the Event Viewer I found the several General Exceptions within the log. I checked one out and this was what I discovered within the log entry.

AssemblyVersion: -1
PortalID: -1
PortalName:
UserID: -1
UserName:
ActiveTabID: -1
ActiveTabName:
RawURL:
AbsoluteURL:
AbsoluteURLReferrer:
UserAgent:
DefaultDataProvider:
ExceptionGUID:
InnerException: Error loading FCK gallery folders: D:\Webs\brit12\portal\Providers\HtmlEditorProviders\Fck\s\0\
FileName:
FileLineNumber: -1
FileColumnNumber: -1
Method:
StackTrace:
Message: System.Exception: Error loading FCK gallery folders: D:\Webs\brit12\portal\Providers\HtmlEditorProviders\Fck\s\0\
Source:
Server Name: W3W14004

This entry showed that I was having difficulty with a folder that I was not expecting at all. I then proceeded to see about permissions on that folder that it showed me in the event log, but alas this folder doesn't exist. But the folder FCK did exist. I placed the necessary read/write permissions on that folder as an experiment to see if I could then view the gallery in the HTML module.

This solved my issue with the gallery module and allowed my client to merrily continue on developing their web site.

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Tags: DotNetNuke,Customers,Software

Category: Customers

Category: DotNetNuke

Category: Software

Configuring DotNetNuke to Produce a Human Friendly URL

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:11:00 GMT

One of the big complaints that I have seen over the years with DotNetNuke has been the horrible URL’s that get produced by the framework. This is a problem that is part of most dynamically created content on the web, not only DotNetNuke.

For the successful Content Management Systems, they have come up with ways to make these ugly URL’s more human friendly. DNN did this back in about version 3.0 with the introduction of Friendly URL’s. This allowed us to get rid of the dreaded querystring for SEO purposes. So we went from URL’s that looked like http://domain.com/Default.aspx?tabid=39 to http://domain.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx.

This was great for getting better rankings with the pages in the search engines but doesn’t give us that URL that is easy to remember in human terms. This is the default setup that has made it’s way into the DotNetNuke eco-system, and has given us this common complaint about DotNetNuke sites in general.

There is a solution to this that anyone who is looking to make their site distinctive and remove that stigma about it being a DNN site can use. It is available within the core framework itself we just need to make some changes to the configuration of the web application.

So lets look at the default configuration in the web.config file for the Friendly URL provider:

   1: <friendlyUrl defaultProvider="DNNFriendlyUrl">

   2:   <providers>

   3:     <clear />

   4:     <add name="DNNFriendlyUrl"

   5:         type="DotNetNuke.Services.Url.FriendlyUrl.DNNFriendlyUrlProvider, DotNetNuke.HttpModules"

   6:         includePageName="true"

   7:         regexMatch="[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]" />

   8:   providers>

   9: friendlyUrl>

As you can see it only has a couple of options defined by default in the config file when you first install DNN which are the following:

includePageName: this is set to true by default and determines if we have the name of the page included in our URL when we are in searchfriendly mode of the provider.
regexMatch: I'm not a regex expert by any means. But the default match allows the inclusion of all upper and lower characters as well as ll numbers, spaces, underscores and dashes. If I’m wrong someone let me know in the comments would you.

This is what gives us those ugly URL’s everyone complains about.

Now when we venture into the Core Framework code for the FriendlyUrl Provider, we have a few more options that aren’t shown in the web.config and can really give us some nicer URL’s to work with on our DNN site.

FriendlyURL Provider Options

includePageName: this was explained above.
regexMatch: this was explained above
fileExtension: by default the file extension on DNN is .aspx. I played around with this option and also looked at the code and although it is defined and being pulled into the provider in the code. I don’t see where this is actually doing anything in provider.
urlFormat: this is the real treasure in the provider we have two URL formats that we can use here the default of searchfriendly or humanfriendly. If we do not include it in the web.config then by default it is searchfriendly but if we add this and change it to humanfriendly then we have much nicer URL’s to work within the framework.

So lets change it in our web.config file to be humanfriendly:

   1: <friendlyUrl defaultProvider="DNNFriendlyUrl">

   2:   <providers>

   3:     <clear />

   4:     <add name="DNNFriendlyUrl"

   5:         type="DotNetNuke.Services.Url.FriendlyUrl.DNNFriendlyUrlProvider, DotNetNuke.HttpModules"

   6:         includePageName="false"

   7:         regexMatch="[^a-zA-Z0-9 _-]"

   8:         fileExtension=".aspx"

   9:         urlFormat="humanfriendly" />

  10:   providers>

  11: friendlyUrl>

Once we do this and save our web.config file. We can go refresh our site, and now should have URLs that look like the following: http://domain.com/home.aspx or http://domain.com/admin.aspx. It also makes it easier for allowing direct logins without placing a link on the page for logging in because in this format our login page becomes http://domain.com/login.aspx.

I hope that people find this information useful although what we have in DNN is just a basic URL provider there are other providers out there in the DNN community. When I have time I will try to add some of them to this post or provider another post with a list of them out there.

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Tags: DotNetNuke,Programming,Software,ASP.NET

Category: ASP.NET

Category: DotNetNuke

Category: Programming

Category: Software

Blogengine.NET Theme pack

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:06:00 GMT

BlogEngine.NET has released a theme pack that is compatible with the version 1.4 and 1.4.5.

The theme pack contains themes designed and created by the community, and they have been brought together as a downloadable theme pack. Janko has compiled them together for the community to use.

Download the BlogEngine.NET theme pack here.

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Tags: ASP.NET,BlogEngine.NET,Programming,Software

Category: ASP.NET

Category: Programming

Category: Software

DotNetNuke 5.0.0 Skin Repackaging Script

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:16:00 GMT

Paul Scarlett of tressleworks.ca has created a Visual Basic Script to re-package DNN 4.0 skins into the new format for DNN 5.0.

The script is designed to unzip an existing skin/container package and then generate the appropriate manifest and then repackage it back up for deployment to a DNN 5.0 site.

He makes mention of requiring the following library to be installed on your system: XStandard XZip library.

Download DotNetNuke Skin Repackaging Script

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Tags: ASP.NET,DotNetNuke,Skinning

Category: ASP.NET

Category: DotNetNuke

Category: Skinning

DotNetNuke Announces a Professional Edition

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:34:00 GMT

On November 11, 2008, DotNetNuke Corporation announced that they would be releasing a commercially supported version of their open source content management system. DotNetNuke Professional Edition will provide access to expert technical support and value added network services that simplify and optimize the maintenance of DNN Web sites.

The announcement stated that the first release of their professional edition would be based on the current 4.9 core release.

DotNetNuke Corporation plans to provide maintenance and support subscriptions to meet the requirements of organizations to fully utilize the DNN platform. This is expected for public release in the first quarter of 2009.

Read the press release

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Tags: DotNetNuke

Category: DotNetNuke

New Style Skin Object in DotNetNuke 4.9.0

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:07:00 GMT

With the release of the latest version of DotNetNuke 4.9, there have been some new improvements to things. Some of these things won’t be apparent unless your paying close attention. This post will not summarize the changes as I made a post previous to this that eluded to the changes. This post will center around the new Styles skin object.

Style Skin Object

This skin object is new and allows us as skin developers to make better use of the styles that we use with our skins. We can now use conditional expressions to insert other style sheets within our skin. This makes it much easier to build a skin and then tweak it for the different types of browsers that may be viewing the site.

Style Object Properties

Condition
- This is an Internet Explorer specific condition. All valid conditional expressions may be used such as “LT IE 7” or “(IE6) | (IE7)”. More information on these and other Internet Explorer conditions can be found at the MSDN Library.
IsFirst
- This Boolean property allows us to define if the style sheet link should be loaded as the first link or not. If the value is false then it will be loaded as the last link.
- Values: True, False
Name
- This is a string value that will define the ID of the style sheet link.
StyleSheet
- This is a string value that will contain the path to the style sheet that is to be loaded. This path is relative to the root of the application.
UseSkinPath
- This Boolean property allows to determine whether we should be loading the style sheet relative to the path of the skin.
- Values: True, False

As we can see from the properties of the style object, it now gives us many options in how we want to structure our CSS files and even the ability to determine the loading order somewhat of how DotNetNuke places them in the loading order.

Example

With this new object it always helps to see how to implement it properly. With that in mind we will explore the sample that is readily available for everyone in the new 4.9 release with the new Entropy skin that replaces the old standby Blue skin.

First up will be how this is implemented in the ASCX files for skin development.

ASCX Method

  1: <%@ Control Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" Explicit="True" Inherits="DotNetNuke.UI.Skins.Skin" %>

  2: <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="STYLES" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Styles.ascx" %>

  3: 

  4: <dnn:STYLES runat="server" ID="StylesIE6" Name="IE6Minus" 

  5:     StyleSheet="ie6skin.css" Condition="LT IE 7" UseSkinPath="true" />

As we can see from the example we have a style sheet that will be added to the skin if the browser being used is less than Internet Explorer 7. The link will be named “IE6Minus” and that we want to load the style sheet “ie6skin.css” from the root of the skin folder because we have the “UseSkinPath” set to true.

HTML/XML Method

  1: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

  2:     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

  3: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

  4: <head>

  5:     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="skin.css" />

  6: head>

  7: <body>

  8:     [STYLES]

  9: body>

 10: html>

The content of the html file.

  1: <Objects>

  2:     <Object>

  3:         <Token>[STYLES]Token>

  4:         <Settings>

  5:             <Setting>

  6:                 <Name>NameName>

  7:                 <Value>IE6MinusValue>

  8:             Setting>

  9:             <Setting>

 10:                 <Name>StyleSheetName>

 11:                 <Value>ie6skin.cssValue>

 12:             Setting>

 13:             <Setting>

 14:                 <Name>ConditionName>

 15:                 <Value>LT IE 7Value>

 16:             Setting>

 17:             <Setting>

 18:                 <Name>UseSkinPathName>

 19:                 <Value>TrueValue>

 20:             Setting>

 21:         Settings>

 22:     Object>

 23: Objects>

The content of the xml file.

Both examples will produce the same output when used in a skin. They would load the ie6skin.css if the page determines that we are viewing this on a browser that is lower then Internet Explorer 7. I think in the long run this skin object will be a great addition to the core skin objects that are contained within the DNN Framework.

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Tags: DotNetNuke,Skinning,Programming

Category: DotNetNuke

Category: Programming

Category: Skinning

DotNetNuke's Shaun Walker interviewed on FLOSS Weekly

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:25:00 GMT

Shaun Walker creator of DotNetNuke is featured this week on Twit.tv. In episode 41 of their weekly podcast they speak with him about DotNetNuke and the future of this framework on the ASP.NET framework. You can find the the podcast on iTunes or at the Twit site – www.twit.tv/FLOSS.

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Tags: DotNetNuke,podcast,Software

Category: DotNetNuke

Category: Software

DotNetNuke has released NewsFeeds 04.00.00

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:29:00 GMT

The latest release of the News Feeds module has made it through the project release cycle. Peter Donker made the announcement on 8/24/2008. He has chosen to completely rewrite the module to provide us in the Community with some very interesting options moving forward with this module.

The first one is Aggregation

The module uses a new version of the RSS Toolkit located at CodePlex. This toolkit allows the module to aggregate feeds of different types together as one feed.

The next one is Caching

They have made some very interesting choices in how they cache the rss feeds for use within the module. They now store information on disk in the form of the aggregated feed as an xml document as well as storing information in a SQL table with when the feed needs to be refreshed and other information.

The next was Transformation

Previously the XML/XSL transformation was handled by the standard ASP.NET XML component. Now this module uses the same mechanism as the XML module and allows for parameters to be passed to the XSL style sheet.

The next was Displaying

In older versions the news feed module did not display till it had successfully downloaded all the content to display. This new version uses AJAX to allow for quicker loading of the page and better management of the experience for the end user.

The last note is on Security

If you turn on caching of the module and you use an internal page to display a feed. It is important to remember that the feed that is cached will display the information for the user that was logged in when the feed was first called, so if that user has higher privileges then you want to display information for that may inadvertently get cached.

Lost your DotNetNuke Password

omacdon@learnmsnet.com — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:16:00 GMT

Hector Sosa of SystemWidgets has released a Windows Winform application that allows you to modify the User database in DotNetNuke. I’ve checked out the screen shots and it looks interesting and useful. There is a download for the binary files as well as the source of the application. More information can be found at his blog.

Hector Sosa Blog

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Tags: DotNetNuke,Software,Programming

Category: DotNetNuke

Category: Programming

Category: Software