SunBlogNuke - DotNetNuke Blog Module

I hope everyone is having a good weekend! Today we are glad that the enhanced & refactored release for ultimate dnn blog module – SunBlogNuke is available for free upgrade. In the building, we totally converted sunblognuke into c#, including the core framework. Also it implemented some requested features, such as optimize tags view to support paging navigation and one click access for comment approval or some other common blog commands, which you can refer to the tutorial (Shortcut to Execute Blog Commands) talked about in detail. As you may know, the import capability with blogML format had been built and now you are able to feel free to export the blog data for backup or transfer into another blog platform if you are not satisfied with the blogging module. That is the vision "Easy on, Easy off" reserved for our products, which ensures that our clients can get their data out of box and they should be able to do with it what they want. With those handy features, you just only enjoy blogging and don't worry about data any more. Meanwhile, we finally integrated the import dnn core blog feature into dashboard, so our clients will not feel frustrated with the import script and no idea how to get started. As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.

Major Highlights in v4.6.2:

• ENH - Refactored dashboard with fixing unavailable navigation issue.
• ENH - Optimized tags view to support paging and it works as other views, such as category view or author view.
• ENH - Supported the built-in import feature to migrate dnn core blog into SunBlogNuke seamlessly.
• ENH - Supported export blog data with blogML format so that the backup task will be easy and you can feel free to transfer data cross blog platforms.
• ENH - Supported shortcut to execute common blog command without dashboard, such as comment approval & regenerate permalink.
• ENH - Removed comment2Journal feature from core framework and developed it as a new extension - "Comment2Journal", which is optional.
• NEWS - Released new widget module - 'FlowView', which allows to display one specific post or build it as the alternative detail post view.
• FIX- missing tag cloud widget issue.
• FIX- not correctly resolve 'Enter' key in the comment form.
• FIX- Disqus plugin broken.
• Lots of fixes introduced by v4.5.

NOTE: As with any release, we recommend you perform a complete file and database backup before performing any upgrade on a production website and that you first conduct a trial upgrade on a staging version of the site. Following these guidelines will ensure that you are able to recover should any unforeseen problems arise during the upgrade process.

Note that some issues may occur if your original version of SunBlogNuke is lower version, like 3.x, and you've developed your customized theme. Please refer to the tutorial - Must-Read Note for SunBlogNuke v4.x and follow the instructions. Hope it makes sense.

You can get it here. Blog your way and enjoy life. :)

The SunBlogNuke Team

The ultimate dnn blog module – SunBlogNuke introduced the advanced feature that you are able to execute common commands in the shortcut way. With the handy feature, it is so easy to complete some common tasks without dashboard,  such as comment approval & regenerate permlinks. Just note that login your dnn website with right permission firstly, like admin account or blog owner. Please go through this tutorial for details.

One of the questions my clients most often ask is: “How do I make sure my dnn blog is SEO friendly and still interesting for my readers?”. Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines. Its features and functions guide a search engine through the posts, pages, and categories to help the search engine crawl your site and gather the information it needs to include your site within its database.  Below are some tips and tricks with the built-in features of SunBlogNuke , that will help you catch search engines’ attention and optimize your blog posts.

We’ve been using SunBlog since November of 2009 and have been supremely impressed with this development group. The blogging module is reliable, chock full of awesome features and they continue to add new ones each release. Baldwin is responsive to community needs and requests and he welcomes input from users that result in a better application. We highly recommend SunBlogNuke as a publishing tool for any dnn website.

- Tyler Jones, SystemTrends, LLC (systemtrends.net)

jQuery sliders have been spotted to be commonly used in lots of website to display the images/contents in different impressive ways. Since apart from showing large amount of core site content in a limited space on a website, any jQuery slider also has a great capability to engage the viewers and trigger their interest towards what is being shown to them. In the DNN platform,  it’s also a very popular functional widget and there are lots of slider modules for sale in the snowcovered.com. In my opinion, those modules have the vital disadvantage that they are built with static contents and independent with any content publishing tool. In the end you have to modify them one by one if you want to make it look more dynamic. Now we would like to share the alternative useful tool with building neat, elegant and versatile site components with dynamic effects. Yes, that is the Content Slider Widget(CSW) for Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke.

With the help of jQuery & CSW, you will be able to create any super content sliders with your dnn blog posts. So if you’ve been wondering how jQuery content sliders are accomplished and want to try implementing some of them on your DotNetNuke website, here this tutorial will help you with that.  Today we just showcase the amazing slide thumb on how to make viewing images or other site content more comforting and intuitive. Take a look at how the slide thumbs actions – demo link. Then let’s go ahead.

Today we are glad that the building v4.4.5 of Ultimate DotNetNuke blog module –  SunBlogNuke is available for free upgrade. It implemented the initial subscription feature with a brand new widget called "Subscription", where you can place into your blog sider bar for users to subscribe the email notification when new post published; in the meanwhile, initially it introduced the extension mechanism with more flexibility and extendibility,  with which you will extend the core framework easily and implemented the customized business logic. For example, you would like to support Markdown Syntax in comments or auto-publish to twitter/facebook (any 3rd-party social services) when writing a new post, now you can complete it by implementing the customized extensions, such as Markdown Extension or Twitter Extension. More awesome widgets are included into this building, such as alternative "Archives" widget and "Profile" widget to show the profile of your blog authors with handy template and tokens. Later we will publish more tutorials about those topics and please stay tune. As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.

Major Highlights in v4.4.5:

• ENH - Supported new 'Archives' widget, which allows you to show the blog archives with flexible settings in any page of dnn website.
• ENH - Supported new handy 'Profile' widget, which you can integrate with to show the profile of your blog authors .
• ENH - Supported new fields [PublishedDate] & [LastModifiedBy] in the post entity.
• ENH - Supported new tokens {block:customfield:xxx} and {else} in the Content Slider Widget.
• ENH - Supported to develop customized controls, which may be originally in the 'shared' folder, for the current theme.
• ENH - Supported the plus view with quick way to deal with common tasks, such as approve comment & regenerate links.
• ENH - Enhanced the Disqus integration.
• ENH - Enhanced search result view.
• ENH - Released the additional language resource packages - Spanish & Italian.
• FIX - Possible XSS vulnerability issue in the Rsd hander.
• FIX - Monthly Archive list collapses when Month clicked.
• Lots of other fixes & enhancements.

NOTE: As with any release, we recommend you perform a complete file and database backup before performing any upgrade on a production website and that you first conduct a trial upgrade on a staging version of the site. Following these guidelines will ensure that you are able to recover should any unforeseen problems arise during the upgrade process.

Note that some issues may occur if your original version of SunBlogNuke is lower version, like 3.x, and you've developed your customized theme. Please refer to the tutorial - Must-Read Note for SunBlogNuke v4.x and follow the instructions. Hope it makes sense.

You can get it here. Blog your way and enjoy life. :)

The SunBlogNuke Team

As we promised ever, we are trying to build an enhanced and ultimate publishing tool on the DotNetNuke(DNN) platform with a focus on simplicity, ease of extendibility, web standards and usability. We hope that you can build what you would like to with more flexibility and extendibility and the WordPress-level blogging engine is our target until now. Today I would like share you how to add Facebook like button into your dnn website with Ultimate Blog Module – SunBlogNuke plus integrate with Facebook OpenGraph meta .

Actually the vote/digg feature, which allows registered users to vote for your blog posts, was supported from Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke v4.0 but it is not active in default. It requires some customizations to integrate with. Today we would like to share you how to apply the awesome feature into your dnn blog.  Firstly we will introduce the basic sample with built-in feature, then extend to supply the advanced usage with developing a new vote widget and customized  styles.

In our previous posts on Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke hacks, we discussed the incredible flexibility of  SunBlogNuke, which is one of the biggest reasons for its popularity among bloggers worldwide. In particular, from v4.0 we introduced the custom fields feature, which let users create variables and add custom values to them, are  one of the reasons for SunBlogNuke’ flexibility and endless possibilities.

In this tutorial, we will compile a list of useful things that you can do with custom fields in SunBlogNuke (if you are not heard of custom fields feature please refer to the initial guideline firstly - Extend DNN Blog With Custom Fields). Among them are re-defining the <title> tag of every post and linking to external resources instead of the blog post.