Author Archive
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
So, had a problem with updating from a DNN 3.0 instance to the latest DNN. The DNN login module would not show up and instead I had a critical error. Ok, so this what I did and now I can login into the DNN 4.8.4 portal.
Note that any upgrade into DNN 4.0 there may be some further upgrading and tweaks that you may need to look into before you upgrade. Also, I would check to make sure all your DNN modules are working properly and edit any portals you will no longer be keeping before you upgrade.
-Get familiar with the update first in a dev environment before your live site.
First thing to do is back up your site and database. You could clean up any portals you no longer will be using at this point. I actually had a few that were not deleting through admin functionality. Had to write a sproc to get things moving along. This may not apply to you but at least verify this functionality is working. You can always restore afterwards. Also, membership has changed with the newer DNN in which your usernames will need to be unique with all your portals. You may need to deal with those conflicting usernames before you update to the 4.0 land. Also, some of your custom modules may not be able to upgrade.
Second, download the install packages from dotnetnuke.com. I went with 3.3.7 and 4.8.4. Edit the web.configs and copy over the app connection string key and machine keys.
Third step, which may not apply to you but for some reason I had to manually add in ‘Email nvarchar 256 nullable’ to the ‘Users’ table.
Fourth step is verify iis is set to .net 1.1. Pretty sure it is but keep it open since you will change it soon.
-Few things to note, you will need to login as host, and you will also need to double-check your portal aliases. If you don’t know your host password like I didn’t I would get that situated before you upgrade. With that you will need to go into the asp membership table and copy over password and salt password to your host userid.
-Fifth. Extract the contents of your install zip folder over the contents of your site.
-Ok so now we should be good to go. Navigate to http://~YourRoot~//Install/Install.aspx?mode=upgrade
You should see a site-unavailable page. Give it a minute or two. Just hit refresh on that url and you’ll see the update progress page. This page is interesting enough since you will see progress indication and error logs incase you had errors. You can quickly get more information on the errors with a quick search yet do take sometime and check them out before you login. When all is green go ahead and login into your portal, verify its working good and everything is intact.
Here we go, extract 4.8.4 over the contents of your site. Edit the config file for the app connection string and machine key. Note the <connectionStrings> is available in this version and edit these values since they now play a role with DNN. Change your iis to .net 2.0. Some of your modules may not be ready for 2.0. Consult with your vendor to get these properly updated.
-Ok so now we should be good to go. Navigate to http://~YourRoot~//Install/Install.aspx?mode=upgrade
You should see a site-unavailable page. Give it a minute or two. Just hit refresh on that url and you’ll see the progress page. Check into any errors.
And that’s it. I was able to navigate to the login page and login. 3.3.7 was crucial for some reason and after that I was able to upgrade to the latest. Huh.
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Flash is awesome, compelling and fun if you know what your doing. To a creative person [Kudos to you] that is familiar with the spice of Adobe, flash is a great median in which you can present to clients a menu that virtually includes every dish found around the world including new ones and mixed ones and changing interactive ones, and well you get the picture.
Though I have attempted the creative with Paint and Macromedia Fireworks which some will argue is much like having a spice rack that consist of Ketchup, Salt-n-Pepper, jalapenos peppers. So, since I have peppers I am fine and that’s fine I like a good BBQ anyways.
Flash is awesome and awesome’er(sp?) when they work with a database application.
With Microsoft’s .Net the interaction is somewhat limited since the available controls do not have much in which will allow for any interaction to happen. Though Microsoft has made leaps and bounds with Ajax they have not really bridged much for use with flash. Probably because of Silverlight, IDK, what are we doing tonight brain “try to take over the world”. Adobe and few others now have something available for you studio developers. I greatly encourage y’all to go check them out and see what works and doesn’t. They all have various ways of getting the flash to razzle and dazzle yet they all use some Ajax and xml to parse objects to and from flash.
Looking at some of the new browsers that are coming out via IE8 and Firefox3 that will also mean a bunch of new plug-ins that will ‘hopefully’ enrich the user experience. Hopefully with the dawn of Silverlight 2.0 and the ever awesomely awesome flash, the Internet will get closer to the seamless interactive movie like experience.
XmL.
Matt Gudmundson
Friday, June 6th, 2008
XML is ‘the’ all general-purpose tool for any developer. Just about any development software uses xml and it is available with wide variety of uses. Many things go into building software and along with a few essentials: good music, good team, and a great environment.
Advantages of xml are: supports Unicode, data tabular, ‘SOAP’ entity friendly, it’s an international document, good for SDK’s, also integrated with many development environments… …and it rocks. Having precision problems with comma delimited files? Try going with xml. Need just a local database, try XML. Easy to compress, encrypt and send in an email.
Thanks for making it this far! How did XML come around? Fairly sure no fireflies were to be found when this thing showed up downtown. ?!? Somewhere between Hendrix and or the Snow song some of the Sili-icon or Chip-icon people in the far far away Land of Oz Valley in the later 90’s understood that the some sort of formatting needed to be done in order for the web to work. These eleven peeps are known as the ‘The raiders of the Lost SGML”. Seriously, these people were listening to some good tunes and low in behold XML. Accurate facts can be found here at wiki.
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Why did we even have 3.0? Why did I learn 3.0? I know!
As you all know 3.5 has been released for sometime along with a bunch of new stuff from Microsoft. I am pretty sure most of the developers out there have been awaiting this release for sometime and from the latest feedback buzz is what you can do in VS08 is da bomb. Hey look javascript intellisense, huh what, and the new framework has changed the way we can do things… Again.
One of the neatest things you can do in 3.5 is build a big ole office solution. Yes I said an office database application using VSTO. If your company is using office 07’ you can integrate your ‘business to internal’ applications’ within office: using outlook, excel, etc. What’s neat is you can also host the application, which would make it available for clients. So what does this mean, multiple user interfaces, more security and hey wait a sec maybe you could use all of those excel formulas. VSTO was available in office 2003 yet somewhat limited. Hey this sounds familiar like the 3.0 framework with a few exceptions. With one exception being is that 3.0 has become the core of some of the leading technologies out there. So I know the argument is eh, 3.0 so what, yet it had paved the way of some really good ideas and products.
