SunBlogNuke - DotNetNuke Blog Module

As you know, jQuery image galleries and sliders are very popular these days and found on many many websites, including those ones based on DNN CMS. There are several interesting use cases for image/content sliders, however I think it is most common to use them on the front page to showcase featured articles, latest blog posts or products. Unfortunately, there are so lots lots of free jQuery plugins & premium DNN slider modules available that you no idea which is the best & worthwhile. In this post we’ll see tutorials that can provide you with the resources showing you how image gallery/sliders can be created from ground up for your dnn websites.

Today we would like to share with you "How to Set up Paging for Content Slider Plus". That’s exactly  the issue raised by our clients in the forum because we did not implement the built-in paging feature in both content slider widgets. The original aims of both widgets was to build content slider with a list of posts, like latest posts or featured posts and also to retrieve top x posts to show in the list view or slider view. Further, because of the highly configurable design, you can even add some "Content Slider Plus" magic yourself without too much effort. Let us go ahead with putting Active Paging on to your dnn “Content Slider Plus".

As you know, the DNN 6.2 Social API enables developers to write applications that access and control the activity feed, user relationships, social groups, user profiles and notifications. Quickly these are modules (not distributed with the core) that are integrated with new 6.2 features (relationships, journal, notifications, services framework, etc.), such as Active Forums 5.0 & DotNetNuke Q&A 1.x. Now our ultimate dnn module - #SunBlogNuke will be one member to embrace those social features, especially for the journal activity stream. Let us go through how to apply it now.

I hope everyone is having a good morning! Today we are glad that SunBlogNuke v5.3 is available for free upgrade.

In this building, we continued to embrace Social Networking features with providing "post to Facebook" option in the edit post panel so that you can update the post status in your Facebook feed easily. More exciting is that we implemented a new extension called "SyncJournal", which support to update the blog post/comment to new journal module in DNN 6.2 and you can refer to this tutorial how to apply it. And as we promised in the old posts, we did have plan to utilize lots of core APIs & awesome features introduced from DNN5+ & DNN6 - we decided to include sitemap provider into the core framework this version. Due to this upgrade, it will require min dnn version dnn 5.3.1.

As usual, we collected clients' feedback and requests from our forum – in the building we finally tried to implement the enhanced version of core "Content Slider Widget" and called it "Content Slider Plus", which initially implemented multiple blogs & categories  support and highly customizable with lots of popular slider effects. You just have to configure it with UI, some attractive slider with blog posts will be there at once. Take a look at how it action in the bottom of feature page.

Major Highlights in v5.3:
Min dnn version required: dnn 5.3.1

• ENH - Implemented a new extension called "SyncJournal", which support to update the blog post/comment to new journal module in DNN 6.2 and you can download it in our extensions directory
• ENH - Included blog sitemap provider in the core framework.
• ENH - Enhanced blog theme with the ability to include "script.js" in customized theme folder.
• ENH - Added 'post to Facebook' button in the edit post panel so that you can update the post status in your Facebook feed easily.
• ENH - Supported multiple blogs & categories in Content Slider Plus, which is the enhanced version of core "Content Slider Widget".
• FIX - import/export bug & supported meta description with NULL - invisible in the tag view.
• FIX - enableEventValidation issue with custom field in the edit post panel.
• FIX - Updated assembly 'CookComputing.XmlRpcV2.dll'.
• FIX - Removed assembly 'Recaptcha.dll' because it may be conflicted with other modules also applied with this assembly.
• Lots of other small fixes

The complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.

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

The SunBlogNuke Team

I hope everyone is having a good morning! Today we are glad that SunBlogNuke v5.2 is available for free upgrade, which is totally compatible with new generation DotNetNuek 6.2. Following the social trend of dnn core framework, we also embraced Social Networking features and implemented social aware application with SunBlogNuke. In this building, we introduced lots of bigger changes, such as implemented "Post Thumbnail" feature & integration with our brand new gallery module - GalleryPlus, supported Open Graph meta tags & more popular social services, added ability to tweet your post status etc. Now let us dive into details about those fantastic changes.

As usual, it is the time to monthly release of Ultimate DNN Blog Module - SunBlogNuke :) Now it is v5.1 with some enhancements & lots of fixes. In this building, we focused on the feed output. We looked into deeply the rules of the RSS specification and rewritten all the codes  about feed generator. Not only the new feed output passed the Feed Validator, but also it supported with more useful feed elements, such as enclosure, 'content:encoded' & webmaster etc. For example, with element 'enclosure' we will be able to associates a media object such as an image, an audio or video file with every feed post; with 'content:encoded' it offers a means of defining item content with more precision than the description element as the specification said:

The content:encoded element can be used in conjunction with the description element to provide an item's full content along with a shorter summary. Under this approach, the complete text of the item is presented in content:encoded and the summary in description.

Also we provided one alternative way to customize the categories tag output. Now you can use the new method

/// <summary>
/// Separated category links with desired separator(such as commas) and format token.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="separator">The desired separator, such as commas</param>
/// <param name="format">The format token</param>
/// <returns>The category links</returns>
protected virtual string CategoryLinks(string separator, string format)

In common, you can use it like that in your customized theme view files, BaseView.ascx & DetailView.ascx

<span class="blog-icon post-cat">Filed in <%=CategoryLinks(", ", "<a href=\"{0}\" title=\"View all posts in {1}\">{1}</a>")%></span>

Major Highlights in v5.1:

• ENH - Supported tab title with culture code of multilingual sites in the blog manage panel.
• ENH - Rewrite feed generator and supported more elements, such as enclosure, 'content:encoded' & webmaster etc.
• ENH - Publish date section in the edit post panel & NavZone with active effect.
• FIX - not retrieve theme view file correctly.
• FIX - tagcloud widget with Non-Unicode characters issue.
• FIX - Recaptcha.dll version conflict issue.
• FIX - Dashboard issue without any blog instance there.
• FIX - Related date options in the general settings panel.
• FIX - jQuery conflict in dnn5.+, including dnn6.

NOTE: from v5.0 the SunBlogNuke will begin to not support dnn4 any more because it will utilize lots of core APIs introduced from DNN5+, such as Taxonomy. If you are still using the dnn4, you don’t have to be worry about it because we will also maintain independent branch of the older version 4.x, which will always be compatible with dnn4 and may be updated with fixes without new features any more.

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

The SunBlogNuke Team

In common, the most important feature for blog platform is its usability so that your reader can get what they want easily. In order to keep your blog clutter-free, you must pay more attentions on your blog’s design, such as the sidebar content & widgets. Today I would like to share you some tips & tricks about monthly archives widget of Ultimate DNN Blog Module - SunBlogNuke. You will learn alterative awesome to display monthly archives list with usability.

Finally the SunBlogNuke 5.0 is available to free upgrade today and it will be first version of next generation blog optimized for DNN5 & DNN6. In this building we completed few critical performance optimizations with cache mechanism and enhanced admin panels with uniform UI for better user experience, for example, we provided a new dashboard, which allows you to see the both published and draft posts, categories, tags, and comments pending approval at a quick glance.

Major Highlights in v5.0:

• ENH - Implemented paging control with better user experience.
• ENH - Included dashboard panel with lots of awesome widgets, such as Statistics & Quick Press.
• ENH - Optimized theme configure.
• FIX - Bookmark not compatible with the latest 'sharethis' widget code.
• FIX - Update failure on the configure 'Module Extension' panel due to invalid email address field.
• FIX - Import bug with blogml - views & permalink not updated correctly.

NOTE: from v5.0 the SunBlogNuke will begin to not support dnn4 any more because it will utilize lots of core APIs introduced from DNN5+, such as Taxonomy. If you are still using the dnn4, you don’t have to be worry about it because we will also maintain independent branch of the older version 4.x, which will always be compatible with dnn4 and may be updated with fixes without new features any more.

You can get it here. We hope that with this generation dnn blog module  you can enjoy the blog writing and it will make your life better; plus if you have any good advice about our products, please feel free to leave a comment or contact us.

The SunBlogNuke Team

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.

As you know, the comment is so important to any blog platform that you may have to build an attractive comments form that users will enjoy filling out. Usually forms are pretty classic with standard fields, submit buttons - nothing more, nothing less. But still even little change of field background, border style, layout, rounded corners can make huge difference. Sometimes adding live comment preview, smiles or some simple CSS bold, italic, underline effects to give more options to advanced comment writers, such as Markdown may be a good choice to satisfy these requirements. Today I would like to share you how we redesign our own comment form. If you indeed want to really stand out and create something super in your comment form, please do your own research and considerations, what you like/dislike and why it is so. Ok, let's go ahead.