Supported "Post Thumbnail" & integrated with media galley module - GalleryPlus

If you always interested in our dnn products, you should noticed another dnn brand module developed by us. We called it "GalleryPlus", which aim is to simplify the process of creating professional media galleries and slideshows for the dnn website. Integrated with GalleryPlus module, you can take it as media galley for your dnn blog and can feel free to include any resources, such as images, audios & videos, into the post content. The process is so easy for new 'Post Thumbnail' feature - only add those post thumbnails with one specified album in GalleryPlus, then you one-click to select any post thumbnail when writing new post; plus, now you can build attractive magazine style for your dnn blog with 'Post Thumbnail'.

How to select post thumbnail in the edit post panel

Choose post thumbnail from GalleryPlus album

Supported Open Graph meta tags & more popular social services

As you know, the Open Graph protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph. Facebook is the leading global social networking website by leveraging the power of the social graph. So in order to increase your web presence, building Open Graph meta tags is the must-have step. We ever implemented one blog extension named 'OpenGraph' for this extended requirement (The details covered here Integrated Social Graph into DNN Blog). Now we would like to include it into the built-in core extensions so that it have been there and works like a charm when building your blog/news. More existing things,  redesigned social network widgets can take advantage of those Open Graph meta tags, including new social service - Google+, Facebook, Pinterest. All the enhancements should boost your blog traffic & sharing.

Tweet your post status easily

Our clients requested lots of features when our dnn products moving on. The extra feature requested more was auto-publish feature -> Twitter, Facebook or other SNS services. Even though there are lots of third-party service to complete those social auto-publish action, such as Feedburner (Only burn your feed and it will tweet feed when any new feed item published), but we still hope to simply those similar tasks and implement the built-in integration with Twitter & Facebook. In this building, we tried out a highlight solution for "Tweet your post status" in the edit post panel. Every time you completely add new post or updated your post with some changes, the action button "Tweet post status" will be showed in the right-bottom position. Just clicking it will direct you to share a short summary in the twitter website. We will provide Facebook action and enhance this feature more in next building. So if you have any feedback/advice, please feel free to leave your comments below.

Meanwhile, we continued to introduce other excellent features & enhancements for some existing issues. As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.

Major Highlights in v5.2:

• ENH - Added OpenGraph & Canonical into core extensions.
• ENH - Added 'tweet' button in the edit post panel so that you can update the post status in your twitter easily.
• ENH - Included Linkedin, GooglePlus, Pinterest into social bookmark widget.
• ENH - Supported post thumbnail with options, such as resizedwidth & thumbnailsize.
• ENH - Implemented 'post thumbnail' as feed Enclosure element
• ENH - Integrated with GalleryPlus module.
• ENH - Resized profile/comment avatar with better quality.
• ENH - Provided a workaround for avatar failure issue with host accounts.
• Lots of small fixes.

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

The SunBlogNuke Team

As Day of DotNetNuke Charlotte 2012 coming soon and the dnn 6.2 will be released in May 15. We would like to be ready for this important updates with a ton of new capabilities, more excellently for us is that it includes two huge areas: social and service framework. In order to make everything run well, yesterday we began to upgrade our dnn website sunblognuke.com with stable core framework version 6.1.5 firstly. It took some hours to complete the whole upgrade process, including some fixes & UI adjustments. In this post we will share a bit around the growing pains that were experiences throughout the process and hope it helps with everyone, who also like to upgrade their dnn website.

Issues & workaround

1) Open RadEditor/popup invokes or script error "c.defaultView.getComputedStyle". Resolved it with upgrading jQuery from 1.4 to 1.6 in the host settings. You can refer to this link
http://support.dotnetnuke.com/issue/ViewIssue.aspx?id=17360&PROJID=2.

2) Login is successful, but login popup/page remains opened/there. The post (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Forums/forumid/200/threadid/426842/scope/posts.aspx) mentioned the same bug with solution – configure IIS App Pool with ‘integrated’ and framework 4.0. But we solved this issue with unchecking the compression option as ‘None’ – you can find it in the host settings.

3) Forum 5.0 not compatible with dnn 6.x anymore so required to upgrade with the latest version 5.0.4. Please download it from here http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Extensions-Forge/view/ProjectDetail/project/dnnforum.aspx.

4) iFinity.FriendlyUrlProvider not compatible with dnn6 anymore and required to upgrade iFinity.FriendlyUrlProvider_05.03.00. Please download it from here https://friendlyurlprovider.codeplex.com/releases/view/86647.

5) Note that you need to back up the “portals” folder and some style files, such as default.css, with your customized styles there. As a rule, we will exclude the portal.css in the default.aspx.cs – just find out the following line code and comment it:

ClientResourceManager.RegisterStyleSheet(this, PortalSettings.HomeDirectory + "portal.css", 60);

Some great things to be shared with

1) Our blogging module #SunBlogNuke work with dnn 6.x and there is nothing to do for this upgrade.

2) Another brand gallery module #GalleryPlus also compatible greatly with dnn 6.x and runs well. Here we announced that our new clients with professional license of SunBlogNuke module will be able to get this dnn gallery module for free in our website. This rule applied for any clients with renewal.

3) We will release a new release SunBlogNuke v5.2 soon with lots of awesome features, such as integration with GalleryPlus module & more social 3rd party services (Google+, LinkedIn & Pinterest) in bookmarks widget.

Blog your way and enjoy life. :)

The SunBlogNuke Team

Image slideshow and content slider are now very popular with thousands of blogs and dnn websites. Indeed it is really useful to show the featured contents and to attract your visitors with more web traffic. In order to fit so common requirements, there are many dnn modules that provide some sort of slideshow/rotator/banner/slider functionality and on sale in DNN Store. Today we would like to showcase our brand gallery module with implemeting the same feature with more attractive effects.

What is the GalleryPlus?

GalleryPlus is ultra meida gallery framework built on top of DotNetNuke(DNN) platform. The aim is to simplify the process of creating professional media galleries and slideshows for the dnn website. Out of the box, you can manage your albums, including images, external photo service feed & videos. In default it includes lots of media viewers & attractive themes with many customizable display options, such as lightbox, prettyPhoto & slideshow; plus feel free to build your own customized interface by lots of external resources without any complicated code, such as any jQuery gallery & slider plugin you can find.

How to build dnn rotator with GalleryPlus?

With lots of built-in templates & themes, not only GalleyPlus provides more attractive layouts for albums presentation also you can build awesome rotator without knowledge of Html/jQuery/Flash - so much technical savvy. For example, customers can use this dnn module with specified album for advertisements, news feeds, promotional campaigns, announcement etc. The configure process is so easy with few steps as follows:

1) Create a new album with uploading the photos for your content slider. It supports drag & drop way to upload photos easily.

2) Edit every item of this slider, for example title, description, external url & tags.

3) Enter the configure settings panel. Then just check your target album and choose the template view with 'Slides' option. Next you also need to specify the resized size (width & height) for this content slider.

4) Update settings and return to presentation view. Now you should see the rotator runs as charms. Take a look at how it action.

5) (optional) you may would like to create your own effects with template settings, which we supports lots of options to be switched.

Share anything with your way and enjoy life. :)

Some other ressources:

http://www.freshdesignweb.com/80jquery-image-slideshow-and-content-slider-tutorial.html

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

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 id="monthlylist"><option value="">Select Month</option></select>').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 social bookmark/sharing so important?

If you ever read anything about getting traffic to blogs you will be told thousands of times that you need to get your blog in as many social networks as possible. Indeed, social bookmark buttons on blog are very important for the growth of the blog and has some critical benefits for any blog or any website.

1) Get your blog indexed quicker by the search engines, for example, if your blog post shared with Google+ circle, it will be crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

2) It builds an audience of visitors which find your content useful in your niche, which provide target traffic to your website. Then targeted traffic will lead to returning visitors, RSS subscribers and more followers on social networking sites.

How to implement bookmark widget easily in DNN Blog - SunBlogNuke?

As the most popular #dnn #blog #module, SunBlogNuke would like to build better user experience for your blog writing & shared actions. Also clients ever raised issue that the bookmark configure looks little difficulty and no idea how to make it work. Fortunately, the SunBlogNuke v5.0 simplify the settings configure without losing flexibility. Here let us go through this process step by step:

1) Switch "reading settings" tab of control panel of your blog.

2) Find out "Social Bookmarking" option, where you find it out like that:

3) Configure above as follows:

• [Active] - specify whether you would like to show social bookmark widget in your post detail view; in common, it is placed in the bottom of the post content but you can customize with the theme view.
• [1st textbox] - it is optional and if you don’t like the default social buttons system provided, you can build your own html tags for social bookmark widget, for example, you can create your own custom sharing widget with following 3 simple steps in sharethis.com - http://sharethis.com/publishers/get-sharing-tools (the default option - 'Website'). In the last step, you should get the some codes there and copy the html span tags into 1st text here.
• [2nd textbox] - like the 1st textbox, just fill in script code here. It is optional and let it blank means that there is not any external scripts with your own social sharing widget.

4) Click "Save settings" to make those options work.

That is all and if you configure all well, the social sharing widget should work like a charm. Take a look at how it actions in the bottom of the current post

If you have any good advice about our #dnn products, please feel free to leave a comment or contact us via email.

Blog your way and enjoy life. :)

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 I just would like to complete the tutorial for Facebook comments integration. Actually the configuration process is similar with Disqus section (Take a  look at it if you are not familiar with this process):

1) Enter the configure panel with the left-top action menu of current comments+ module.

2) Switch to Facebook comments with checking the option [Comment type] as "Facebook". Those options are so self-explained and easily configured;plus some notes below":

• Application Key: it is "API Key" generated by your own application and requires you create it in the Facebook developer. And please refer to this recourse - How to get Facebook Api key.
• Identifier key: It is part of the thread identifier key and will append to the "Identifier prefix" in the Disqus thread. In common letting it blank is all right. Meanwhile, it is more useful to integrate Comments+ with other 3rd party modules, for example, when integrating dnn core blog module you can fill in the query parameter "entryid" as the Identifier key, it will check out the query parameter in the load process. If not exist, the comment system will not show. So just visiting the post detail, the comments+ will work as expected.

3) Click "Update" to save the settings.

Congratulations. Now the Facebook comments system will work like a charm. :)

If you need any help or question please feel free to leave your advice or comments.

If you are finding a highlight solution to display pictures on your DNN website, the Gallery Plus module will be exactly what you need. It is ultra photo gallery framework built on top of DotNetNuke(DNN) platform. The aim is to simplify the process of creating professional image galleries and slideshows for the dnn website.

Overview

Out of the box, you can manage your albums & photos; plus feel free to build your own customized interface by lots of external resources without any complicated code, such as any jQuery gallery & slider plugin you can find. Some initial awesome features as follows:

• Multiple & sortable albums.
• Ability to upload multiple images and a zip package with images.
• Alternatively snazzy HTML5 drag and drop multiple images upload like Google+ (yes, only supported by Firefox & Chrome browsers).
• Automatic thumbnail generation.
• Dynamic image sizing when uploading images - Images can be scaled automatically and set to a maximum scale to ensure that there’s no loss of quality.
• Highly customizable with lots of popular image effect : Fancybox, Lightbox or PrettyPhoto.
• Simply drag to sort images with lots of options, such as uploaded date, title, modified date etc.
• Support themes with template-driven.
• Support tags.
• Support cache with high performance.
• Support friendly url with album view.
• Automatically lazy load to minimize page loading time.

Share photos with your way and enjoy life. :)

Screenshots & demos

Have a look at the screenshots below:

Integrated with Flickr feed:(How it actions)

Delicious-style theme with Fancybox:(How it actions)

DNN Flash Viewer with Full Screen Support:(How it actions)

Html5 Polaroids Theme with Lightbox:(How it actions)

Roadmap

Next we will enhance it with better user experience and cool features as follows:
1) Integrated with cloud storage service providers, such as AWS, Dropbox.
2) Lots of views & widgets to fit your requirements, such as tags view, gallery widget for category.
3) Include the extendibility to be completely customized with lots of different look & feel based your expectations.
4) Social share, such as Social Active module integration.
5) more & more.

If you have any good advice about our products, please feel free to leave a comment or contact us via email. :)

Get it from Snowcovered »

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