Will Strohl's Blog

With DNN 7.4 coming out on our scheduled broadcast of this month’s DNN Hangout, it only made sense for us to switch things around and talk about the release.  There are several nuggets of goodness that the community will enjoy in 7.4.  We spent this entire DNN Hangout talking about what went into the latest DNN release and what it means to you.

As one of the more prominent producers of DNN video content, it seemed only logical that we should invite Aderson Oliveira of DNNHero to come and speak to us.  He instantly suggested that we speak about templates in DNN and how they can be used to streamline content creation.  As a huge fan of templates myself, I was excited about his presentation immediately.  Not only did he not disappoint, but he covered nearly every aspect on this topic.  So much so, that Joe and I really didn’t have any questions – and neither did our audience!

If you’re arriving to this blog for the first time, you may not know that I’ve been working with DNN nearly since it was released.  That’s well over 10 years of managing DNN sites of various sizes, purposes, and deployments.  This experience has ranged from businesses that run on the platform, to running subsets of an organizations web properties on it, and more.  During my consulting days, I saw all kinds of DNN sites.  This wide range of challenges has resulted in learning a large number of things – including how to leverage SQL Server to solve problems in a creative way.  That’s what this session was about.

The past few weeks have been a blur for us here at Hotcakes Commerce for quite a few reasons… We were highly involved at DNNCon Palm Beach 2014. This is the third consecutive DNN event that we’ve sponsored and attended. We not only sponsored this time, but we also co-organized, provided a training track, presented 2 sessions, and emceed the event. It’s always great to participate with the DNN community and this time we took it to a whole new level.

We’ve just gotten done with the October episode of DNNHangout – this time featuring longtime DNN community member and skin designer, Tracy Wittenkeller.  You may or may not have heard of Tracy, but he’s the man behind the team that brings you T-Worx and DNN Magazine.  Chance are that you’ve already used or purchase one of his skins at some point.  Tracy walks us through some new and exciting techniques that his company is applying to their new skins to help use contemporary design techniques, while at the same time making the content editing experience accessible to the average content editor.  From what we could see, he’s taken this a long way to fill in that gap and by using a lot of existing DNN features!

I don’t know if you deal with as many websites as I do, but I’ve been dealing with other peoples DNN sites since I first began dabbling with it over a decade ago.  (Boy, does that make me feel old!)  Restoring the website from someone else’s environment to test, troubleshoot, and fix an issue isn’t a major issue as long as you have some experience with IIS, SQL Server, and Windows.  However, the testing you need to do often requires access to multiple accounts.  This is the problem.  Duplicating those accounts is either non-trivial, or time consuming.  So why not just reset all of their passwords?

It’s been a LONG time since I began and last updated the “participate” blog series. A lot of things have changed since then. I am at a new company. Shaun Walker moved on too. Joe Brinkman is now leading community. Charles Nurse took over as the Chief Architect. The DNN core is now much more open for contributions, and so many more changes. Regardless to your personal opinions, there is a bright future for DNN. Part of this is the introduction of working groups, one of which is the Training working group that I am leading – and I need your help. Nay… The COMMUNITY needs your help!

This is the second post in a series of blog posts that will focus on ways that you can participate in DNN in some way.  Participation is incredibly important.  Without it, any community will suffer, and an open source community like ours knows this all too well if you look at the history of open source.  After all, what good is any project if no one is using it.  Luckily, we have had the luxury of millions of users, nearly a million production sites, over a thousand eco-system vendors & system integrators, and more.  We have thrived more than most.  However, like I stated before, there are a ton of ways for you to participate.  If you’re new to DNN, this post will help you help others by answering questions.

There’s really nothing bad I could possibly say about any code camp in Florida.  Community leaders like Dave Noderer make such a thing impossible.  They are so amazing in their ability to organize a fantastic event.  South Florida Code Camp 2013 was just as amazing as this code camp always has been.  This is about my 3rd or 4th time presenting here.  It just gets better and better!  This blog post is mostly about the resources for my sessions though.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to South Florida Code Camp (#sflcc).  If you’re not aware, it is the largest code camp in the State of Florida.  They regularly have at least 700 attendees.  People come from all over the state to attend this code camp, and if you’re reading this blog, you should too.  Code camps are a one-day event that allows you to learn about all kinds of useful information.  In fact, Day of DotNetNuke was modeled after the code camp model.  If you want to meet and learn from some of the most passionate people dealing with Microsoft technologies… Go to a code camp!