If you don’t know what is re-Captcha, this article: What is re-Captcha might help you to get on foot before starting this easy implement guide to install re-CaptCha into your DNN Modules.

DotNetNuke users has long frustrated by the poor design of DotNetNuke Captcha which is has a critical flaw where the Captcha image will be cached in the server and never being refresh if you set the cache the module or the whole page. One of the common error is the DotNetNuke Captcha’s image not showing issue when the DotNetNuke has PageBlaster installed, it is a big trade off for a big site to lack of either one of them.

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One of the greatest feature of DotNetNuke is to allow use to show the module in the page they like based on the viewer’s role and permission. However, this only apply to DotNetNuke generated pages. So, how about showing a module only in a page that is generated by Blog Module for example?

The solution is simple, all you need to do is add the following lines into your skin.ascx file:

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Inspired by Think of Design’s avoid span in module title and amount of requests including myself to have a unique id for every containers in DotNetNuke, I’ve came out with this simple solution to ease the designing works in DotNetNuke Skinning.

<!-- From thinkofdesign.com -->

<%@ Control language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" Explicit="True" Inherits="DotNetNuke.UI.Containers.Container" %>

 <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="TITLE" Src="~/Admin/Containers/Title.ascx" %>

 <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Actions" Src="~/Admin/Containers/Actions.ascx" %>

 <dnn:title runat="server" id="dnnTitle" visible="false" />

 <% Dim ModuleTitle As String = GetPortalModuleBase(dnnTitle).ModuleConfiguration.ModuleTitle %>

 <div class="common">

 <h3><%= ModuleTitle %></h3>

 <dnn:Actions runat="server" id="dnnActions" />

 <div id="ContentPane" runat="server" />

 </div> 

Using the same logic, we can retrieve the module id by modifying the DNN property code:

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If you are digging into DotNetNuke website optimization, I’m sure you have been struggling on it. It’s not easy to optimize all the JavaScript and CSS in robust web application like DotNetNuke. If you’re a heavy users and afford to pay for solution, then the simplest way is to buy all in one compressor like Snapsis PageBlaster Pro to merge and compress all JavaScripts. However, this is not always the solution if you have other modules and setting in your DNN. Most of the time merging the DNN Core JS will result in break functionality to you web portal.

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Often Portal based web design will have flexible height on all content columns. However, sometimes it will be very ugly if your content is too long and leaving your right column, for example blank.

There are many scriptless, pure CSS solutions to fix this problem but turns out you have to write a lot of CSS and html to make it compatible in all type of browsers. This is just not applicable for heavy web applications like DotNetNuke.

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Recently Microsoft released its series of IIS administration tools. Finally, there’s a Search Engine Optimization Tool that best analyze ASP.NET website. Who else is better understand the limitation and problems in ASP.NET than itself? Not saying than Asp.net is not good, other framework has their own problems as well and have a lot of analysis tools since long time ago.

I haven’t test it much since it only support IIS7, It means you have to have it running on Vista or Windows Server 2008. What a shame? Anyway, it’s best if you can analyze your DotNetNuke problem before going to a live server especially if you’re on a shared server where you can test anything on the server side.

Most of the DotNetNuke users will have a long view_state problem if there is more than 5 different modules on the same page and probably get the warning message if you run the SEO Toolkit.

While past argument was that Search Engine Crawlers do not read them, it still have a great impact on your DotNetNuke Website Performance because the long view_state of DNN takes an average of 50Kb extra weight for crawler to download the page before indexing it. (more…)

If you’re using Dotnetnuke and Ventrian Property Agent to build your webpage, sure you like to know how can modify ventrian PA by yourself.

Before we start to modify Ventrian PA Module, you need to download the File below: (more…)

This is a simplified extra add on from the previous topics:

• http://www.mylifebbs.com/2009/03/how-to-modify-dotnetnuke-login-page-the-easy-way/
• http://www.mylifebbs.com/2009/03/dotnetnuke-customizing-your-login-part-2/

The DotNetNuke Customization Shortcomings

The easiest way to have a customized login module is to buy third parties modules. However, it may not fully support other Authentication Providers such as LiveID and Facebook Login, worst it may not functioning well with other DNN modules. If you want to play safe, stick to the default DNN Authentication Providers. (more…)

Often SEO geeks will advice you not to use the original Logo skin object due to that it will automatically append Default.aspx behind your domain name. This is very bad as it search engine may treat it as a duplicate page of your home page. Even Search Engine will not ‘punish’ you for that but your PageRank weight will definitely be dispersed into different URL like www.example.com and www.example.com/Default.aspx.

If you are using iFinity, most of the time the url problems will be solved. However, due to some server setting, the default.aspx name cannot be removed. In this case, all you need to do is to make a simple change to the DNN Logo Skin Object.

For DNN 5.1 Above, please scroll down for solution.

To do this, FTP access to /httpdocs/admin/Skins and look for Logo.ascx.vb.

Open it using notepad or other development programs like dreamweaver or visual developer and look for this line: (Should be in line 73 be default)

hypLogo.NavigateUrl = GetPortalDomainName(PortalSettings.PortalAlias.HTTPAlias, Request) & “/” & glbDefaultPage

Now all you need to do is to remove this code:

& glbDefaultPage

Save it and upload it back to the same directly. Walla! You can change your logo much easily from Portal Admin Setting while having a clean SEO friendly URL!

Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out a simple method to remove the Home.aspx which most of the DNN users are having the same problem. If you know how to make your DNN auto generated home page url convert into your root domain name automatically , please share with us!

Update: This is the solution to remove relundant default.aspx in DotNetNuke 5.1 Logo Skin Object.

To do this, FTP access to /httpdocs/admin/Skins and look for Logo.ascx.vb.

Look for these lines: (Around line 78)

If Host.UseFriendlyUrls Then
hypLogo.NavigateUrl = FriendlyUrl(Nothing, “~/”, PortalSettings)
Else
hypLogo.NavigateUrl = “~/”
End If

Change FriendlyUrl(Nothing, “~/”, PortalSettings) to GetPortalDomainName(PortalSettings.PortalAlias.HTTPAlias, Request) & “/”

I have trouble find the right keyword to search for skins or templates that so called accessibility. If you have no idea what is it about, please visit the best accessibility website.

DotNetNuke Accessibility issues has been raised by few people in DotNetNuke forum and blog (Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance) before but none has taken seriously by the core developers. However, I’ve managed a old accessibility skin template made in 2006 from Think of Design which the skin and skin objects are no longer available for download.

Another website is selling accessibility skin template with a annoying moving panel on the right and a expensive price of USD$119.00.

I’m helping a client to make a website for free which need to be very friendly to disable person where half of the readership will have some sort of disability. I’ve to concern for the deaf, visual impaired, blind and so on. I found that dotnetnuke may not the a good choice as I found that none of the software are able to read the DotNetNuke Menu bar (DNNNAV) which I have to replace it using hardcoded link ro houseofmenu.

The main trouble I’ve ran into is the color switcher which seems that there are no ready made skin object for that and I can’t even find some JavaScript to do it. It seems that I’ve to write it myself which it is kinda time wasting as I’m not a programmer or so.

So, if you have or know where to get some free codes or skin objects or even some tutorials for color switcher, please kindly leave a comment below and I’ll be very grateful for you help! In return, I’ll certainly give this skin for free once it is done so that more websites will be accessible for the minority.