Table Of ContentBuilding Websites with
DotNetNuke 5
Quickly build and deploy your own feature-rich website
with DotNetNuke 5, VB.NET, C#, and Silverlight
Michael Washington
Ian Lackey
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
http://avaxhome.ws/blogs/ChrisRedfield
Building Websites with DotNetNuke 5
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
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First published: April 2010
Production Reference: 1310310
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847199-92-8
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by John M. Quick (john.m.quick@gmail.com)
Credits
Authors Editorial Team Leader
Michael Washington Aanchal Kumar
Ian Lackey
Project Team Leader
Lata Basantani
Reviewers
Rahul Singla
Andrew The Project Coordinator
Joel Goveya
Acquisition Editor
Dilip Venkatesh Proofreader
Lynda Sliwoski
Development Editor
Mayuri Kokate Graphics
Geetanjali Sawant
Technical Editor
Smita Solanki Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Indexer
Monica Ajmera Mehta Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
About the Authors
Michael Washington is a website developer and an ASP.NET, C#, and Visual
Basic programmer. He is a Microsoft MVP in Silverlight. He has served as a
DotNetNuke Core member for many years. He is the author of the Custom Module
Development chapter in Building Websites with VB.NET and DotNetNuke 4
(Packt Publishing).
He has authored over 100 pages of tutorials on his sites at http://ADefWebserver.
com and http://OpenLightGroup.net, covering DotNetNuke and Silverlight.
He is one of the founding members of the Southern California DotNetNuke Users
group (www.socaldug.org). He is also the author of The DotNetNuke 4 Module
Development Guide, as well as numerous popular DotNetNuke modules such as
http://ADefHelpdesk.com.
He has a son, Zachary, and resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Valerie.
I would like to dedicate this book to my Valerie and my son Zachary.
I do it all for you!
Ian Lackey worked as a systems engineer for a St. Louis-based ISP from
1999 to 2002. At that time, he began developing web applications using ASP
and migrated to ASP.NET shortly before the 2.0 release. Ian now works as a
full-time programmer analyst II for Washington University in St. Louis Medical
School - Department of Pediatrics. He also runs a small business, DigitalSnap Inc.
(http://www.digitalsnap.net) that provides complete DotNetNuke solutions as
well as individual modules (http://www.itlackey.net).
Currently Ian is involved in community-driven areas such as the OpenLight Group
(http://www.openlightgroup.net), which manages open source projects including
several DotNetNuke modules and many Silverlight-based applications. He will also
be speaking at the St. Louis .NET user group (http://www.ineta.org) meetings
this year.
Ian currently lives in a small town in Illinois, just East of St. Louis, with his wife Julie
(http://www.calljulie.info) and two daughters, Britney and Brooklynn.
To everyone in my family, especially Loven and my little B's, thank
you so much for your love and support through many long nights
behind a laptop. You all are my greatest blessing. Love you forever
and always.
About the Reviewers
Rahul Singla is a software professional (often filling the additional roles of
Business Analyst and Project Manager) based in Karnal (India).
A university topper in his college during graduation and post graduation, he
currently operates a software firm, called Imbibe Inc., and a technical training
institute, Imbibe Knowledge Enterprise. His work has ranged from developing
proof-of-concept JME applications to end-to-end solutions for organizations. He
often freelances on medium to large scale projects, has had some popular articles
on CodeProject published, and also maintains a CVS account at drupal.org.
Particularly fond of sharing his development experiences with his students, he likes
to indulge in micro-flying, travelling, and just lying around in his vacant time. Pretty
wary of his schedule, and his inability to spend time with his family, his newborn
nephew is his new attraction.
You can find more about Rahul at his portal http://www.rahulsingla.com. You
might also want to check out his technical blog at http://www.rahulsingla.com/
blog, where you can find free DotNetNuke 4.x/5.x modules. You can contact him at
rs@rahulsingla.com.
As always, I will dedicate my work first to the Almighty, who gave
me the strength, perseverance, and opportunity to reach here, and
then to the three most important people in my life, my father, my
mother, and Rmi (my brother).
Andrew The ("The" is his last name, pronounced Tay) currently works as a
developer and system engineer for the Los Angeles County of Education in Los
Angeles, CA. Andrew started programming in Oracle's PL/SQL on Sun Solaris.
Since then, he has worked with various platforms, databases, and languages (AIX,
Perl, Korn Shell, DB2, HTML, SQL Server, and C#). He now primarily works with
the Microsoft stack (Windows, .NET, and SQL Server).
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: What is DotNetNuke? 7
Open source web portals 7
What is a web portal? 8
Common portal features 8
Why DotNetNuke? 10
PHP-Nuke 11
Joomla! 11
DotNetNuke 11
Benefits of using an established program 14
The DotNetNuke community 14
Core team 14
The DotNetNuke discussion forum 15
The bug tracker 15
The DotNetNuke project Roadmap team 16
The license agreement 16
Coffee Connections 16
Determining client needs 17
What is a user story? 17
Advantages of using user stories 18
Coffee Connections user stories 19
Summary 19
Chapter 2: Installing DotNetNuke 21
Installing DotNetNuke (local version) 22
Clean installation 22
Downloading the code 22
Setting up an application 23
Verifying default documents 26
Setting security permissions 28