I have often found that when debugging applications that a lot of time is spent drilling down into the various custom objects to see what the values are of specific instance methods. In this blog posting I will demonstrate the default behavior of Visual Studio when debugging a class, I will then show how you can improve the debugging experience with the addition of a simple attribute.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, July 03, 2009
After doing this blog for almost three years I have came to a conclusion that I need to take a step back, and re-focus a bit and manage the content a bit more. To do this, I am making a few changes, don't worry not only will you keep getting the same quality of content, but you will start seeing more content and a better organization system behind the scenes. Overall this is a three step process, each phase of the changes will be outlined below.
Changes to Blogging on MitchelSellers.com
The first stage of change here is working to solidify the types of articles that will continue to be published via the communication channel. I will continue blogging about .NET and DotNetNuke technical topics, as well as product reviews. Therefore trying to stay with a more technical focus.
In addition to this, as part of becoming a C# MVP, you will start to see more C# articles here as well.
New Blog at IowaComputerGurus.com
The second stage of change is the introduction of a new blog on the company website, IowaComputerGurus.com. This blog will become the new home for the best practices, case study, and "doing business" blog articles. Trying to focus a bit on the proper implementation/leveraging of both the .NET and DotNetNuke platforms from a business perspective. These articles will be less technical in nature and are geared more towards doing business, we hope to include success stories of DotNetNuke implementations as well.
NOTE: if you are an existing IowaComputerGurus customer and would like your project featured in a case study on the new blog, please e-mail me msellers@iowacomputergurus.com.
Tutorials Aggregation
The final stage of change will come from a future "tutorial aggregation" system. This will be a new place for the storage of items that are currently being posted to this blog that are much more directly "tutorial" related; items such as the DotNetNuke installation, upgrade, backup and restore tutorials. Right now, although very popular articles these are a bit harder for individuals to identify and access.
The exact plan and home of this new system is unknown, therefore, all blogs of this nature that are created will be tagged with the "Tutorials" tag, so they can still be easily identified.
Comments/Suggestions Appreciated
As with any change, some people will not like the direction that things are going, I welcome comments and suggestions on better ways to manage this information. Otherwise, stay tuned for future blogs and announcements.
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Posted by Mitchel on Thursday, July 02, 2009
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As many of you know I attended and presented at the Day of DotNetNuke event this past weekend in Tampa Florida. First and foremost I want to take a moment and thank Will Strohl and all others that put the effort forward to organize this great event. I was very impressed with how well organized everything was, and overall the sheer size of the event. With what I believe was close to 150 people there was a variety of interests and viewpoints expressed. The sessions were great and the conversations before, during, and after the event were even better.
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Posted by Mitchel on Monday, June 15, 2009
When working with DotNetNuke I often find it necessary to do a redirection back to the current page, with additional querystring parameters. Not actually switching views, but just back to the same page so that some other action could be taken for a specific module. In the past most of the examples I found used this process.
DotNetNuke.Common.Globals.NavigateUrl(this.TabId) + "?mykey=myvalue"
Which would create a url such as
http://www.mysite.com/MyFolder/Default.aspx?mykey=myvalue
Although a fully functional URL that works 100%, it is not something that can be easily copied, and overall doesn't look all that fancy. Looking through the functionality of the various NavigateUrl overloads, it didn't seem apparent that there was something that could be used to re-write that type of URL. Well I missed something using the following code.
DotNetNuke.Common.Globals.NavigateUrl(this.TabId, "", "mykey=myvalue")
From this example we provide the tabId, a blank ControlKey, and then our added parameter value. We could add additional parameters as well.
This results in a URL similar to the following.
http://www.mysite.com/MyFolder/mykey/myvalue/Default.aspx
Now, this is a fully re-written URL, and something much easier for a person to remember. I hope this has been helpful!
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Posted by Mitchel on Monday, June 08, 2009
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
A very common question that I get asked by people is; what tools do you use to complete your development and what type of system do you use. Now, I believe I have written a bit about this in the past, but I thought I would take some time to go through and give a bit of a detailed overview of what I use for development and why I have selected the hardware and software that I have. I will cover this in detail from both the hardware and software point of view.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, May 22, 2009
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
This is just a quick blog post to hopefully share some helpful information. Recently when working on a DotNetNuke Authentication Provider for a client I was tasked with syncing roles from the external system into DNN. Simple enough right? We can just use the "RoleController" and the "AddRole" method to add the role to the system. Well, that is the process but it doesn't work 100% unless you specify specific items. The following sections show what I tried, and what actually works, along with a few notes.
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Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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.
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Posted by Mitchel on Monday, May 11, 2009
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
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