Now mobile devices are essential tool for our life & work, such as iPhone & iPad. So it will be excellent if you can blog on the go with those devices, sharing any ideas or photos from anywhere and keeping your loyal blog readers engaged from your interesting things - that means you work pretty much everywhere. Do you like this very comfortable way of living? Let us show you how to blogging dnn blog module - SunBlogNuke on iPhone/iPad with the awesome app – BloggerPlus.

In common, the iOS app 'BloggerPlus' is one of other 3rd party publish tools like Window Live Writer(WLW), required to configure your blog account firstly when building connect with your real dnn blog. BloggerPlus provides following Blog services at now. Our SunBlogNuke service supports standard remote blogging service, so you need refer to "DefaultBlogType" service option. Like the screenshot below:

When click to select option "DefaultBlogType", you will need to fill in the form like that:

Just follow the notes below:

• Name: Any name that describes your account
• URL: The URL of Your blog page in dnn site
• UserID: Your username of dnn site.
• Password: Your password of dnn site.
• blogID:  Here just let "blog" is used and it is optional.
• XMLRPC: it should be like that http://yourdomain.com/desktopmodules/sunblog/metaweblog.ashx. Replace 'yourdomain.com' with your real domain name.
• RSS: You can find the feed icon in the Meta widget module and click to get the rss link.

Actually there should be lots of blogging apps in App Store, for example iBlogger is alternative one.

Other valuable resources links:

BloggerPlus features tour: http://bloggerplus.xmpp.kr/

BloggerPlus  manual: http://bloggerplus.xmpp.kr/node/111

In common, I am feel ok with the look that standard comment form of SunBlogNuke has, but sometimes it does not feel right in other themes. In favor of simplicity and convenience, we began to create a new clean & attractive comment form for our team blog; plus support Markdown. The 1st version we just adjusted the layout, such as making the label flow right in order to user easily fill out. Take a look at screenshot below:

Actually you just need to modify few styles in your current theme. To apply these changes, just replace the old styles (Begin with '#anonDetails') with the sample code below:

#anonDetails{clear:both;margin:0;line-height:200%;}
    h3#respond {
        color: #9BBDE9;
        font: italic 2.5em "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
        font-variant: small-caps;
        margin: 20px 0 10px;
    }
    h3#respond span {color:#033;font-weight:400}
    #anonDetails label {color: #CCCCCC; float: right; width: 47%; line-height: 30px;}
    #anonDetails input[type="text"] {
        margin-bottom: 0.8em;
        width: 50%;
        padding: 4px 4px 0;
        height: 27px;
        line-height: 27px;
        border: 1px solid #CDCDCD;
        -webkit-border-radius:3px;
        -moz-border-radius:3px;
    }
    #anonDetails textarea {
        width: 100%;
        border: 1px solid #CDCDCD;
        -webkit-border-radius:3px;
        -moz-border-radius:3px;
        margin-top: 5px;
    }
    #anonDetails p{margin:0px;}
    #commentCompose {margin-bottom:10px;}
    #commentCompose label{display:none;}
    .validation-summary-errors{
        background-color:#FFFFCC;
        border:1px solid #CC0000;
        font-weight:bold;
        margin:10px 0;
        padding:10px 20px;
        list-style:none;
    }
    .validation-summary-errors li{margin-top:5px;background:transparent url(images/sprite.png) no-repeat 0 -72px;display:block;padding:1px 0 5px 25px;}

That is all.

I will be more than happy if you will join to discussion in comments below.

Updated: currently we released the premium theme "Customized" in our Theme Directory and you can visit this showcase page in detail and order it there for your dnn blog page with SunBlogNuke.

Today our clients raised a help request in our forum as follow:

is it possible to hide the clickable Archive Year in the Archives widget? We'd ideally just want the months listed without the parent LI displaying the year.

The request looks reasonable and indeed the monthly archives list like that style is more common in the blog platform. Now we would like to show you how to adjust it with some simple code below:

(function () { jQuery('li.year:first').closest('ul').html(jQuery('li.year ul li')); })(jQuery);

What you need to do is that just place it in your dnn blog page, such as skin view file or any script widget.

Advanced Extension

Everything looks great now but the biggest problem with this monthly archives is that the size of the list grows every single month, taking up more and more room. The drawback is  so obvious that you may have to restore the original way of SunBlogNuke  (yes, limit years with expanded monthly archives & other clickable years with hidden monthly). Event more we would like to show you that there is another alternative way of getting around this; use a drop-down list. The drop-down takes up very little space until clicked on, and is a suitable method of browsing through the months because they are all in order, making a particular date easy to find. Just perfect replacement. :)

The code to build awesome drop-down monthly archives list is so simple like that:

(function () {
    var $dropdownlist = jQuery('Select Month').change(function () {
        if (jQuery(this).val() != '') window.location = jQuery(this).val(); 
    }); ;
    jQuery('.widget-archives li.year a').each(function (i) {
        $dropdownlist.append(new Option(jQuery(this).text(), jQuery(this).attr('href')));
    });
    jQuery('.widget-archives').closest('div').append($dropdownlist);
    jQuery('.widget-archives').remove();
})(jQuery);

Also what you need to do is that just place it in your dnn blog page, such as skin view file or any script widget. And there you have it, a much more compact method of showing the archives.

Conclusion

If you’re currently showing a long list of months on your dnn blog, then try the alternative way that we listed here. You’ll notice the different immediately. It will keep your blog clutter-free and beneficial to the user with usability.

Blog your way and enjoy life. :)

Resources links:

15 Creative Ways to Display Date Archives

Why it built?

In common, you can build the awesome blog post with some media files, and sometimes you would like to share lots of images with your friends. Yes, you want to build an album with those images in the blog post content. But it looks difficulty to incorporate display for larger images, which under normal situations would break the layout of this site. It will save lots of our time if there is some way to automatically organized images with clean & elegant layout and we just copy/insert images into Rich-Editor or WLW.

Congratulations. The "Fancy Gallery" extension is the exact tool for your dnn blog. And it is another extension for Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke. You just feel free to add your images and this extension will do the rest for you – automatically convert them into one fancy gallery with lightbox effect.

How it works?

To apply the blog extension, it is so easy and just follows up the simple steps below:

1) Make sure that you have installed SunBlogNuke v4.8.+ for your DNN blog page.

2) Download it from the extensions directory.

3) Unzip it and upload the extension assembly file SunBlogNuke.Extensions.FancyGallery.dll into the folder $ROOT/bin. Then upload another folder into blog extensions folder $ROOT/DesktopModules/SunBlog/Extensions.

Until now it has been deployed. Next I walk you through the process to add images when writing post:

1) Enter “Edit Post” panel (Or connect WLW) and focus on the Rich Editor.

2) Add images with tool button “Insert Image” of editor. Don’t worry about the layout and just make them sequence placed there.

3) Add token in the end of all the images. Note that it is the key step and make sure that all the images for album is closed in the middle section of those two tokens. It looks like that: (Red circle is your images section)

4) Complete other configurations of current post and click "update" to save it into db.

That is all. It should work like a charm - when visiting the post detail, you will see the auto-built gallery with your images in your blog post.

Summary

With a little bit of setup, it is possible to quickly add lightbox image effects to a DotNetNuke site with specific desires to implement it in the Blogging/Articles module for blog/other content.

As always, feel free to post comments/suggestions below or if you are having difficulties implementing this on your site you may post to the community forums!

Download    Demo

• ENH - Supported DotNetNuke 6.
• ENH - Supported IP field in the comment entity.
• ENH - Integrated with Comments+ module seamlessly.
• ENH - Integrated with Anti-Spam service - Akitsmet.
• ENH - Enhanced comment system & converted comment settings into one place with comments Inbox.
• FIX - Performance issue of Content Slider Widget made website failure.
• FIX - Metaweblog API not work with Posterous "Autopost" feature.
• FIX - Fail to import blogml file.
• FIX - Issues about import/export interface feature in the dnn core way.
• FIX - Social Bookmarking issue with "ShareThis" script.
• FIX - Trackbacks still occur when Disqus comments system in active.
• FIX - Integration issue with Active Social Journal.

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

The SunBlogNuke Team

Active Social Bookmarking

Configure it in the Reading Settings panel, where you checked the option or uncheck like that:

As for the "ShareBox " script, just need to replace your publisher id with yours. The sample url is like this below:

http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=xxx_id&type=website&headerTitle=Share this post

You can also customize the parameter [headertitle]. 

You can see how it in action here  - Bookmarking Widget in the end of this post. Even more you may be interested in implemented more sexy social bookmarking plugin, please refer to another tutorial - Integrate SexyBookmarks into DNN Blog and you will be surprised. :)

Customized Social Bookmarking Widget

Here we provided the "ShareThis" bookmark widget as sample. Just follow up the steps below:

1)  Go to the ShareThis website and create the button as you want.

2) With HTML editor, open up the theme view file - detailview.ascx in your current theme folder. (If you are not familiar with the theme mechanism, please refer to the tutorial - Develop an Customized Theme for SunBlogNuke)

3) Find out the original bookmarking control like this below:

<uc:Bookmarks ID="widgetBookmarks" runat="server" EnableViewState="false"/>

then remove it and append your generated button code in the step 1) in the same place.  Finally it may looks like that:

<div class="bookmarks">
    <h3><%=LocalizeByKey("ShareThisPost")%>h3>
    <span class='st_twitter_vcount' displayText='Tweet'>span>
    <span class='st_email_vcount' displayText='Email'>span>
    <span class='st_facebook_vcount' displayText='Facebook'>span>
    <span class='st_sharethis_vcount' displayText='ShareThis'>span>
    <script type="text/javascript">var switchTo5x=true;script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/buttons.js">script>
    <script type="text/javascript">stLight.options({publisher:'xxx_publiser_id'});script>
div>

4) Save it and it will work like a charm.

You can see how it in action in the every post detail of our Showcase Gallery page.

Hope you like this tutorial and find some helpful things in this. Feel free to ask anything about the article in comments section.

Blog your way and share it enjoyable.

1) Getting Started DNN Blog module – SunBlogNuke

This video tutorial covers how to get started your dnn blog with SunBlogNuke, including how to add blog module into page, create new blog instance, write first post & configure some basic settings.

2) How to Styled & Customized DNN Blog

This video tutorial covers how to style & customize more stuffs in SunBlogNuke.

3) Play with Blog Widget Module

This video tutorial covers how to play with so lots of awesome widget modules of SunBlogNuke; plus you can place any of them in any page at any time and point it to any blog on the portal.

BTW, if you have more tricks and tips about SunBlogNuke, please share it for us and then you will be able to extend longer subscription for our module(One year free upgrade in default). We are looking forwards to your news :)

Blog your way & enjoy life.

The SunBlogNuke Team

I hope everyone is having a good morning! Today we are glad that SunBlogNuke v4.7.5 is available for free upgrade, which is compatible with new generation DotNetNuek 6. In this building we just introduced little updated but focus on some issues, such as supported IP field in the comment entity & integrated with Comments+ module seamlessly. As I mentioned in the last post - Important Fixed Version 4.7.2 for SunBlogNuke, in the upcoming v5.0 we will utilize lots of core APIs & awesome features introduced from DNN5+ & DNN6, such as Taxonomy. Hope making it much easier to build and maintain Web sites with our blogging product.

Major Highlights in v4.7.5:

• ENH - Supported DotNetNuke 6.  (You can see how it action in our new launched website - http://dnnwave.com/Blog.aspx and it works like a charm with Excellent Interface.)
• ENH - Supported IP field in the comment entity.
• ENH - Integrated with Comments+ module seamlessly.
• FIX - Performance issue of Content Slider Widget made website failure.
• FIX - Metaweblog API not work with Posterous "Autopost" feature.  (Please refer to the tutorial - Autopost Posterous to SunBlogNuke)

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

The SunBlogNuke Team

1. Make sure to active the Metaweblog service and build your blog account. Like integration with wow, if you are able to write post with window live writer, the configuration is all right for autopost.
2. Go to the dashboard of your Posterous blog. If not exist, you may need to sign up your account and build your blog there firstly.
3. Click "autopost" tab in the dashboard, like the screenshot below:
   
4. Click the button "Add a service" and it will pop up a window with list of services to set it up for Autoposting. In order to integrate with SunBlogNuke, just click the link “Other Blog” to open the configure panel titled “Link Your Meta Weblog Account”.
5. Fill in your blog home url & author account information like below and Complete it with clicking the button "LINK".
   

Congratulations. Now you should be able to autopost your Posterous post to your dnn blog, which is built with Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke. Hope it helps. Blog your way and enjoy life. :)

If you have more questions about  this topic or blogging,  Please feel free to post a comment below.  I’ll be happy to help.

More exciting is that the next generation of SunBlogNuke v5+ have been on road, which will be done with DNN6 release available. It will take advantage of all the benefits of the latest dnn core framework. So here we announced that the upcoming v5.0 will not support dnn4 any more because it will utilize lots of core APIs introduced from DNN5+, such as Taxonomy. You don’t have to be worry if you are still using the dnn4. Meanwhile we will also maintain the older version 4.x compatible with dnn4.  Please stay tune :)

Major Highlights in v4.7.2:

• ENH - Supported customized property value of the dnn core profile for Author entity in the CSW, like [AUTHOR:Website].
• ENH - Added auto-ping service for trackback requests.
• ENH - Excluded handlers from web.config, which introduced lots of problems with complex dnn environment.
• FIX - Multiple jQuery conflict issue when other modules also included jQuery framework.
• FIX - Threw exception (attempted to divide by zero) when adding module into page.
• FIX - Threaded comments broken in the "_default' theme.
• FIX - Datetime token tags, such as 'PublishedDate', not resolved correctly in the CSW.
• FIX - 'Alternate Feed Url' meta tag not show.
• Lots of fixes & customizations.

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