Articles from August 2008
I am very proud to announce that this evening my business IowaComputerGurus inc. has achieved the designation of Microsoft Certified Partner. Although not necessarily a major thing to the regular readers of this blog, this is a very important milestone for myself as I continue to build the business. The support of past customers providing references has been greatly appreciated, and key to allowing me to reach this milestone.
Posted by Mitchel on Monday, August 25, 2008
Recently I have been fielding a number of questions regarding DotNetNuke development environments and the valid URLs associated with them. People that have been setting up local instances of DotNetNuke for testing or development, then trying to expose the site to a larger group for validation. The process to make this work is very simple, however, for individuals unfamiliar with DotNetNuke settings it can be a bit difficult to determine exactly what needs to change. This post investigates the DotNetNuke concept of Portal Aliases and will show an individual how they can be used to solve this specific business need.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, August 22, 2008
A while back I created a monitoring application for Pingdom Corporation called Pingdom Alerter. This application has been used by a wide customer base to monitor their site status on the Pingdom service. I am looking to find at least 3 individuals that have used the Pindom Alerter, created by my company IowaComputerGurus Inc. that would be willing to be a reference to state that the application works as described. The application can be found on the Pingdom Services Page.
If anyone can help me out with this I would greatly appreciate it as this is the final step needed for my business to attain Microsoft Certified Partner status. Please e-mail me at msellers@iowacomputergurus.com if you are willing/able to help.
Posted by Mitchel on Monday, August 18, 2008
Well it has been a few weeks since I last provided an update on the progress of my "Professional DotNetNuke 5 Module Programming" book. Thus far I am about 60-65% completed with the book, with only 4.5 chapters to complete until the book is finished with its first revision. I also just noticed this morning that Amazon.com has finally updated the book information to show my name, granted I still need to get Wrox my picture so that the cover can be changed out to have my picture rather than Chris Paterra's.
If you are interested in pre-ordering the book it is available from Amazon.com and the release date should be February 24, 2009! Feel free to share any comments/questions in the comments of this post!
Posted by Mitchel on Monday, August 18, 2008
I have recently been given the opportunity to preview the upcoming Active Forums 4.0 release. In this starter review I will give my first opinions after working with the module for a short time and experimenting with the new features. A full review of the module will come after it has been released and I am able to test/work with the full edition.
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Posted by Mitchel on Sunday, August 17, 2008
After a change of heart I have decided today that I will be attending OpenForce '08 this fall, I will also have a booth in Expo Hall that I will be sharing with another company. So I'm looking forward to another sucessful conference and opportunites to put faces to names. From the schedule of events it looks like this fall's conference will have plenty to offer for everyone. For full information on OpenForce you can visit the information site OpenForce08.com.
Just like last year if there is anyone that would like to meet with me specifically during the conference please feel free to contact me anytime to arrange!
Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, August 13, 2008
This is just an update to regular visitors of this site, as of this morning Google AdSense ads have been removed from this site entirely. Due to a lack of control over these advertisements and the selection of advertisements that were included they have been removed.
Posted by Mitchel on Tuesday, August 12, 2008
This afternoon Joe Brinkman of the DotNetNuke corporation announced that RC1 of DNN 4.9.0 was just released to DNN 5.0 beta testers. Full details on this announcement can be found in his announcement post on the DotNetNuke Forums.
For site administrators this release is a bit of good news, it replaces the planned 4.8.5 security release that was announced previously. In addition to the security tidbits included this release will include a few DNN 5 fixes that are backported to work in the DNN 4.x platform. For those that will be leary of going to DNN 5 right away it will get some added features that many consider much needed.
Expect to see some more postings here about the upcoming release as I start my testing/upgrade processes to start updating the various documents hosted here.
Posted by Mitchel on Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Recently I have been working on creating a dynamic reporting engine for use within the DotNetNuke system, a method to allow for the execution of a stored procedure and the proper display of the results. This includes creating a list of parameters, including dynamically loaded lookup systems and more. Well the most complex item that I have had to condition for was how to deal with filter options that require the use of the SQL IN clause, there are many ways of doing this, but I have found a way that appears to work perfect for my needs, this will be explained in this posting.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, August 08, 2008
With the high amount of usage of the DotNetNuke upgrade and installation guides that I have posted on this site I see one very common question. Where can I obtain DotNetNuke version ____? Once a release is considered non-current, it becomes slightly harder for individuals to locate the older versions, in this article I'll provide a step-by-step look at the process for finding and downloading "legacy releases" of the DotNetNuke Platform.
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Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Recently on DotNetNuke.com I noticed that PACKT Publishing is running a contest for Overall Winner, Open Source CMS Award<./a>, Best Other Open Source Content Management System, and Open Source MVP's. These theree categories are where DotNetNuke and contributors to the DotNetNuke community can have an opportunity to acheive some press about the product and their contributions. It would be great to see DotNetNuke somewhere in the winners circle!
Posted by Mitchel on Monday, August 04, 2008
In the past I have completed reviews of various DotNetNuke modules, components, and skins, however, recently I have been receiving a number of e-mails with questions about how I manage my business. Typically these questions have been from individuals that are just starting out with consulting business, or those looking for better ways to manage their pending products. Once item that I always recommend to people is BaseCamp, a hosted project management solution provided by 37Signals. This article will go through the features/services offered, and why I use it to manage all projects.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, August 01, 2008