Articles from Announcements

SDN June Event 

Although a recent post provided most of my upcoming speaking engagements, there was one big one left off the list.  I will be presenting a total of 3 sessions at the SDN Event on June 26th.  This event in in Houten, The Netherlands.  I will be presenting on Advanced DotNetNuke Module Development, Creating Authentication Providers, and Creating Membership Providers. 

I'm looking forward to this event as it will be a great opportunity to get to meet some of the European DNN'ers out there.  I'll be coming in a few days early and staying a day later, so if anyone wants to meet to say hello just let me know.  For most of the time I will be in Amsterdam, with a short trip to Pairs.

Those looking to register for the event can do so here, or if you are non-dutch speaking you can email info@sdn.nl. 

Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Upcoming Speaking Engagements 

As many of you might have heard, or remember from past discussions that I have been doing more presentations in 2009.  Well this has really started to ramp up a bit, overall I will be giving 6 different presentations in the month of June in three separate locations.  Right now I can publicly discuss two of the three.  Below you will find the details:

June 9th, 2009 - CT DNN User Group

Topic: Advanced DotNetNuke Module Programming

This is a session on Advanced DotNetNuke programming topics in a three step approach.  Step one is to define what I consider to be "Advanced" when it comes to programming.  Step two covers some specifics on implementation methods that I have found useful.  Finally we end with step three which is a discussion on where to go from here!

June 13th, 2009 - Day of DotNetNuke

Topic 1: Obtaining the Best Performance from DotNetNuke

This session covers the role of the DotNetNuke site administrator in proper site performance.  A comparative analysis is completed showing baseline and optimized site performance in many traditional settings.

Included in this session is recommended configurations for Shared, Cloud, Virtual and Dedicated installation environments.  All using proven configurations that have been perfected by the presenter.  Along with each configuration recommendation is a detailed discussion on WHY this configuration has proven to be the best so far, and some of the key problem areas to monitor in other environments.

The session finishes with a checklist of routine maintenance items that should be completed on a regular basis to ensure that site performance remains top-notch.

Topic 2: Essential DotNetNuke Third Party Extensions

At times the third party DotNetNuke marketplace can be daunting at first glance.  This session starts with a quick overview of the common third-party distribution mediums, and progresses into a bit of an explanation on some of the most popular third party modules.  Included in the discussion is implementation detail as to why these modules have become so common.  Modules discussed will include a new friendly URL provider, a third party forum module, and a few helpful free modules for site management/tracking.

Note and Invitation

Keeping track of these items has gotten to be a bit complicated, so rather than updating the blog every time I have a new item, I have added a new page to the site, Speaking Engagements which lists all of my past and upcoming speaking engagements.

If you will be at one of these events I look forward to meeting with you, be sure to swing by and say hello!

Posted by Mitchel on Saturday, May 16, 2009

So you moved sites again? 

As many people caught on the other day via Twitter I have moved my sites to a different hosting provider again.  One of the first questions I got before was "why did you move" or "did you have a problem with your existing host?".  I want to start off by saying that I do NOT have any issues with my old hosting provider, and that if it was not for special circumstances I would still be with them.  In this article, I'll lay out my hosting experience, and give everyone some insight in to what happens behind the scenes when I make hosting decisions.

Read more...

Posted by Mitchel on Monday, May 11, 2009

OpenForce 2009 Call for Speakers Announced 

Joe Brinkman announced earlier today via Twitter that the Call for Speakers has officially opened for OpenForce 2009!  After a great conference last year I am really looking forward to seeing what gets put together for this years event which is scheduled for November 10-12th in Las Vegas.

I encourage anyone that has an idea to submit their topics!  I have already submitted 5 session topics in hopes of landing a speaking slot again this year, after presenting in 2007!  For those interested, below are the titles of sessions that I have submitted.

  • Advanced DotNetNuke Module Development Techniques
  • Creating DotNetNuke Authentication Providers
  • Charting and DotNetNuke the Easy Way
  • CodeSmith and DotNetNuke - Improving Developer Efficiency
  • Getting the Best Performance Out of DotNetNuke
  • Working with DotNetNuke Users - De-mystifying the API

 If you have a session idea that you would like to see me present on as well, please feel free to drop me an e-mail or make a comment here and I can see if it is something I can submit as an idea!

Posted by Mitchel on Monday, April 20, 2009

Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming Sample Update 

It has recently been brought to my attention that there were two mistakes in the GuestbookVB and GuestbookCS sample code that was provided with the Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming book.  In light of this issue I have created updated packages for these modules that you can download here.

I have also submited these updates to Wrox so that they can update their downloads as well, please use the following link to obtain the new files.

Updated Book Sample Files

As always, thank you for reading!

Posted by Mitchel on Monday, April 20, 2009

Vacation and Future Blog Topics 

As some of you already now, I am about to embark on a much needed vacation.  I will be gone for just under two weeks starting 3/12,  and will be trying to disconnect from the technical world as much as possible.  However, upon my return I have big plans on blog articles and yet again would like to get feedback and recommendations from others on things that they would like to see.  Below is a sampling of the items to come shortly after my return on 3/24.

  • Selecting a Source Control Provider
  • Product Review: Source Gear's Vault Source Control System
  • Product Review: Enterprise Architect
  • Product Review: Active Modules Active Forums 4.x Full Review
  • Creating Muti-View DotNetNuke modules without Isolation
  • Adding debugger information to your classes
  • Why I don't like ObjectQualifier
  • Creating DotNetNuke 5.x Library Packages and why should i?

This is just a sampling of the "high demand" items that I have had in my queue, for quite a long time.  I've been working on reducing the backlog a lot over the past few weeks and hope to hit the ground running upon my return.  If you have any suggestions please post them below!  If you notice delayed responses from me between 3/11 and 3/24, I apologize and will get back to you soon!

Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Speaking Engagements 

As we get moving into 2009, one of my personal goals this year was to get out and do more presentations to User Groups and at conferences.  Well thus far I have two confirmed speaking engagements for the first half of 2009.  Below is the information on the two items. 

Friday April 17th, 2009 - Bartlesville, OK .NET User Group

I will be presenting at the Bartlesville user group on Friday April 17th, this session will be focused on the use of the Microsoft Charting Components.  Many people know that the components exist, but many are unsure of exactly how they are used within an application, especially when working in windows or web environments.  In this session I will provide a number of code samples and demonstrations of the control in use.

Bartlesville .NET User Group Website

Tuesday May 7th, 2009 - Orlando DotNetNuke User Group

In this presentation I will be introducing Advanced DotNetNuke module development techniques, with a focus on tips/tricks for DotNetNuke 5.  I will cover items such as methods of avoiding Module Isolation and dealing with packaging, deployment and management of large scale DotNetNuke solutions.

Full Information on the Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group Website.

Thursday July 23rd, 2009 - Nashville Web Developers Group

I will be presenting this night on the topic of DotNetNuke module development, the specifics of the session will be idenfied as we get closer to the meeting date. 

More about the Nashville Web Developer group can be found at the NashDotNet Group site.

Future Engagements?

Right now I don't have any more items scheduled.  If you are a user group leader and would like me to present to your group, drop me an e-mail msellers@iowacomputergurus.com and we can discuss options.

Also, as the year progresses I will be submitting my regular collection of topic suggestions to both OpenForce/DevConnections as well as the SDC conference.

Posted by Mitchel on Sunday, March 01, 2009

Site Upgrades and Performance Improvements 

Those that frequent this site and the other sites that I operate might have noticed some periods of service interruptions over the past 2-3 days as I have been working on some infrastructure upgrades for our collections of sites.  As part of this, it was my goal to improve the "average load times" of various pages of my DotNetNue sites.  As many people will note, they have been pretty fast before, but that just wasn't good enough for me.

So, now I'm proud to say that I'm done with all of the major changes and the functionality of all sites should now be stable, I've love to get some opinions of those regular users/visitors of my sites to see if they can confirm the improvements. 

View the full article for a listing of sites affected as well as benchmark information that I have.

Read more...

Posted by Mitchel on Friday, February 13, 2009

Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming Shipping! 

I just received word from Wrox Press that my Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming book, currently available from Amazon started shipping from their warehouses on Monday!  Finally for me this marks the final step in the book process with it getting out there in everyone's hands.  I am looking forward to getting feedback on the book and I hope that all of you that have been anxiously waiting for the book for a long time are happy with the end result!

I woud like to thank everyone again for all of the support and recommendations as I went through the process of writing the book!

Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Book and Service Announcements 

As I am getting things in place for 2009 I wanted to post a quick update here on the blog about a few new exciting things that I am working on and to notify everyone of a new service offering that IowaComputerGurus is starting today.

Book Announcement

The biggest news of all is that I have another book writing deal with Wrox Press.  I have hinted about this over the past few weeks, but it is now official that I will be writing another book for Wrox.  I can't say alot about what is in the book, but it will be a book on Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0.  As I have more abilities to make comments and provide information, you will find it here.

New Service (MyWebKeepAlive.com)

For quite a while now I have been talking about creating a keepalive solution for users as alternatives to Host-Tracker or Pingdom.  This is finally becoming a reality, and in the next few weeks will have a home on the internet via MyWebKeepAlive.com.  The good news is that I can set clients up with the service now as the backend processing portion is fully functional. 

Pricing for this service is as follows.

  • 1 URL - $19.99 a year
  • 5 URL's - $49.99 a year
  • 10 URL's - $79.99 a year

This service is a simple keepalive service that will ping your site every 9-13 minutes to prevent ASP.NET unloading.  The service will expand to include additional report elements to provide a better overall value.

For those interested in a keepalive solution, please e-mail me at msellers@iowacomputergurus.com and I can discuss getting you setup before the public launch of the website.

Future Blog Articles

I still have a big backlog of blog topics, so be expecting new posts here about things such as ASP.NET Charting Controls, Redgate Tools Reviews, Active Forums Reviews and more!  As always, please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, January 21, 2009

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