SunBlogNuke - DotNetNuke Blog Module

We just successfully upgraded our blogging platform website from DotNetNuke version 05.01.00, to version 05.05.00. So far, so good. We finally upgraded to dnn v5.5 because this fantastic release includes lots of stabilization and new killer features, especially content localization and enhanced performance, which are what we were looking forwards to.

Another good news is that our Ultimate Blogging Module - SunBlogNuke also have been fully tested with DotNetNuke 5.5.  We are not aware of any issues at this time and it just work as we expected. Later we will release a new building v3.7.5  with fixing some more bugs and issue. Hope it makes sense for you.

Enjoy Blogging and Writing. :)

As you know, we recently released Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke v3.7.x with some enhancements and small fixes, including code refactoring. When you would like to upgrade this version, please note that if you had developed any customized theme ever you MUST modify all view files lightly, including BasicView.ascx, DetailView.ascx, CommentView.ascx, TagsView.ascx, SearchView.ascx, and PrintView.ascx. Just follow the two steps below:

1. Find out your customized theme folder which should be placed in the $YourRoot/DesktopModules/SunBlog/Themes/YourCustimizedTheme/.
2. Open up the BasicView.ascx, find the first line declaration and modify it like that:

   Original:

   <%@ Control Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" EnableViewState="false" Inherits="DnnSun.SunBlogNuke.Framework.PostViewBase" %>

   Modified:(yes, it is so easy and just modify "Framework" into "UI".)

   <%@ Control Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" EnableViewState="false" Inherits="DnnSun.SunBlogNuke.UI.PostViewBase" %>

3. Like the step 2), check out whether there is declaration about Toolkit. If exists, modify it like that:

   Original:

   <%@ Register TagPrefix="toolkit" Namespace="DnnSun.WebControls.Toolkit" Assembly="DnnSun.Modules.SunBlogNuke" %>

   Modified:(You should notice that just modify "DnnSun.Modules.SunBlogNuke" into "SunBlogNuke.Core".)

   <%@ Register TagPrefix="toolkit" Namespace="DnnSun.WebControls.Toolkit" Assembly="SunBlogNuke.Core" %>

The same process for the other view files.

In the end, make sure you MUST follow the tutorial if you had developed any customized theme ever, otherwise you will encounter the error like "Could not load type 'DnnSun.SunBlogNuke.Framework.PostViewBase'.". When you visit your good main blog page in your dnn website. If not just skip it :) Hope it makes sense for you.

The vast amount of cool customizations maybe one of the reasons why people choose Ultimate DNN Blog Module - SunBlogNuke instead of using other blog services basing on DotNetNuke platform. Today what I would like to show you one of those cool things is tag cloud widget.

Refer to the last tutorial about how to implement a customized calendar date in the Content Slider Widget of Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke v3.6.x or later version, today we continue to share a more awesome code sample for you and it indeed works well in our home page. As you go ahead do some customizations basing on SunBlogNuke, like the must-have widget module – Content Slider Widget, you will understand what the cool extendibility and flexibility our blogging modules supply for your dnn website. Firstly take a look at the screenshot below:

We’ve received a feature request from our client Tyler. He hoped that we can provide a handy way to deal with the datestamp of their dnn posts, including format and style, for example, he want to be able to pull out the day (27) and convert the month to abbreviated form, e.g., Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.

I also agree his point and indeed blog calendar date icons, which show the publication date next to each entry, provide a simple way to spice up your blog design. Using just a single image, a bit of CSS and some simple configurations this tutorial will show you how to implement something similar in the Content Slider Widget (& your own themes, which will be supported in next building). Plus we share some resources for you to use. Note that you should apply those customizations with Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke v3.6.x or later version which had been integrated with DNN Core Token APIs and provides you more extendibility and flexibility.

Today we are glad to announce that the built-in sitemap provider is available for Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke. Actually the provider is inspired by the post Creating a Sitemap Provider For Your Module. Thanks Chris' efforts and great tutorial. From the guideline, I knew that in DotNetNuke Core 5.3 there was some work done around the Core search engine sitemap provider that was referred to as "The sitemap now allows module admins to plugin sitemap logic for individual modules" in the release notes. So modules that have many pieces of content on a single page (Ex. Forum, Blog, Articles, etc.) can be picked up by the search engine sitemap provider. The basic flow is so simple and straightforward that we just took some minutes to implement it.

"SunBlogNuke gave AuTechHeads a solid and flexible foundation for members to post to its blog. Although its features are outstanding, and keep growing rapidly, one of the biggest attractions to us is the quality of the support, and responsiveness of the developer. We can't be more thrilled at the value of our investment!"

- Matt Marlor (AuTechHeads.com)

Today we are glad that the monthly release v3.6.1 for Ultimate DotNetNuke blog module – SunBlogNuke is available for download. In this building we full supported for dnn core token replace functionality and provided two new optional awesome widget - category widget and tagcloud widget, which you can add into any page at any time and point it to any blog on the portal. Later we will provide more tutorials here to cover the usage and customizations for flexible and extensible token mechanism. As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.

• Supported two new category widget & tagcloud widget, which you can add into any page at any time and point it to any blog on the portal.
• Full support for dnn core token replace functionality.
• Enhanced content slider widget with supporting category and tag tokens.
• Supported slug for category and enhanced FormatSEOFriendlyURL method .
• Added tag mouseover/hover color option to control tagcumulus flash.
• Fixed issue where critical error something not set to an instance of the object after upgrade.
• Other small fixes & more customizations.

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.

You can get it here. Enjoy blogging and good writing! :)

The SunBlogNuke Team

With more clients paying more attention to our Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke, this blogging engine for DotNetNuke platform have been used by more and more excellent websites, like db4 developer website. In the agile process of SunBlogNuke development, we embraced changes and focused more attentions on clients’ feedback or feature request. If you have more questions or any suggestions for our blog module, please feel free to let us know or begin a new post in our forum. We are there for you and will try our best to help you. Here I also would like to thank some clients for your awesome contributions in our community, like Eric and Matt.

Today I would like to cover a tip shared by Eric in our support forum. You will learn how to retrieve feed in DotNetNuke with jQuery. Please visit the demo link and db4 developer website to see how it action firstly.

As this awesome post covered, you can turn turn DNN Announcements Module into a jQuery Slider easily with some customized steps. Now I would like to show you that we also can integrated Content Slider Widget (the core widget of Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke) with a jQuery carousel seamlessly and easily make it run well as you expected. Let us go through how to build it with blog posts.