Net Data Design, LLC Blog

Recently we had a project that required a social networking set-up (like Facebook.), but without the nasty habit of selling users information to the highest bidder; but that’s another topic within itself. We have developed such a module ourselves, but this project had a number of requirements that fit Active Module’s Active Social better than our own. Humbling, but true. That said, we will not be developing our own module any longer. Active Social (AS) not only fit the bill for this project, but we’ll continue to use it for the reasons I’ll cover below.

The primary reason for using AS was the integration of Active Forums (AF). Active Forums in my estimation is the best forum module for DotNetNuke (DNN). It is robust and feature rich and is far easier to set-up than any other. The user-interface (UI) is more intuitive than that of DNN’s core module and well worth the investment. I have used AF for many years with great success.

The other main reason was we needed to tie it into a blog/article module. AS had hooks for doing so with Ventrian’s News Articles module. And while I’m covering this, with News Article v7.69 , Scott McCulloch (developer) includes an option for Active Social journal integration. Sweet! <digression>And if you haven’t used modules from Ventrian yet, I have a question…What the hell is wrong with you? Ventrian offers the best module subscription on the planet, period. </digression>

First, setup was relatively easy armed with the products documentation and a wealth of knowledge at Active Modules knowledge base and forums. The AS package includes two modules,  Active Social and Active Forums. The AS module once installed and placed on a page has 3 different set-up options.

The Simple install creates 4 pages that host modules for:

• Forums – Contains the Active Forums module, which has your discussion forums and your Active Social group forums.
• Groups – A single page contains the Listing of all the Groups and displays individual groups when selected.
• Members – This page will show the member list and the profile of a chosen member.
• Inbox – Contains the private messaging interface.

The Standard install contains 9 pages and has some definite SEO advantages, this was the configuration that we choose. Those pages are:

• Forums – Same as Simple
• Group Directory – Contains the list of all the groups in the network.
• Group Details – Default view of a group profile. Only visible once a group has been created.
• Members – Searchable listing of all members of the network.
• Profile – This is the page used to display a member’s profile.
• Inbox – Same as Basic Configuration.
• Social Summary – The Social Stream. This page will show you updates and activity for members and groups on the site. It can be filtered to show specific types of information or certain user types.
• Login – Create a separate page containing only the active social login. This will be used for verified registration or other non-standard logins.
• Sign-Up – A page containing the Active Social Sign-Up wizard. Set this page as the “User Page” in the site settings. It will automatically redirect users to their profile.

Lastly there is the Expert Option, which is according to the user manual is not for the faint of heart and in fact isn’t really covered.

The next step is to configure the modules on the pages and set the functionality your looking for. This is probably a good place to stop and resign myself that there will be a part two of this blog.

Comments welcome…

Dot Net Nuke Corp. released it’s latest version of their framework. Version 5.4.4 is a maintenance release resolve’s two significant breaking changes that appeared in 5.4.3. Those fixes are:

• Fixed issue with ExecuteSql method overloads to be able to handle ExecuteSQL(string, nothing) again.
• Fixed issue with Indirect Reference to DotNetNuke Library errors.

The release of 5.5 Alpha was a surprise to me. I have seen it progress in Gemini, I was just blissfully unaware of it progress. The focus of 5.5 is localization. I know, your going to say that DNN has localization. Well, in part that’s true. This is not the static strings localization, nope, we’re talking content localization.

You can read that DNN Blog on the topic here.

Perhaps I was a little quick in singing praises about the way DotNetNuke (DNN) is handling releases. I posted a blog not long ago about this subject, and at the time it seemed true, but not so fast my friend.

In the last two or three releases there have been some major issues, one that directly effects me is a missing method from the DataProvider in 5.4.3. What’s makes it slightly more strange is a very similar issue was found in the previous release (5.4.2). Two other “showstopper” issues that also appeared in recent builds are DNN -12501 and DNN-12412.

In DNN 5.4.0 a change to the PageBase class in DNN has caused aspx pages to break in 3rd party modules. Meaning scripts wouldn’t run, RSS and some AJAX callbacks where broken. The problem was fixed, but a game of Jenga has begun.

When it was first announced the rigid release times sounded like a good idea. Every quarter there is a minor release, every Month a bugfix release. The dates for these releases cannot be missed. And to the Core Teams credit, they haven’t missed a date yet. That said, perhaps DNN needs to find a way to detect breaking issues before RTM, beta has always been an expensive way to do so, but one that DNN seems to avoid.

Of course, you’re going to get the people who press a beta into production, but the beta releases would certain produce a better production build to the DNN community.

An alternative method of installing DotNetNuke on IIS 7.5 9or IIS 7) is using the free helper application by Mike van der Meulen. MakeDNNSite is a nice little package that will give you a new DNN install without a lot of hassle. There is no manual web.config editing, Application Pool creating or setting of permissions (see note below). It will even download the latest build for you or use a package that you already have downloaded.

I have used this method several time in testing and found it to be flawless (2008 R2, 64-bit). It does come with a few restriction, such as you can’t install using a sub-domain. It said to work on IIS 7 and 7.5 both 32-bit and 64-bit and SQL Server 2005 and 2008 both full and Express editions.

Because MakeDNNSite works on both IIS 7 and 7.5, the Application Pool created uses the NetworkService account. While this is fine for IIS 7, however it is not the preferred account for IIS 7.5, rather the IIS AppPool Idently account should be used. This can be simply changed by right-clicking the newly created AppPool and selecting ‘Advanced Setting’. There, under Process Model, change the identity to ‘ApplicationPoolIdentity’.

If you opt to use the ApplicationPoolIdentity you will need to update you permissions on the website directory as well. I have blogged about this in detail (IIS 7.5 AppPool Identities).

In short, it’s a really nice tool at a great price (Free.) I highly recommend it for all DNN users, regardless of your environment or skill level.