Jan
20
Written by:
Chris L Bennett
1/20/2010 10:33 PM
For some time I’ve had problems with the base DNN Blog Module and I had just reached the point where I was ready to find or purchase a commercial module to replace it. Of course, I checked out the ones available on Snowcovered SunBlogNuke and NukePress. I didn’t really want to drop $100, so I kept looking around. I came across the News Article Module by Ventrain Systems. I saw a couple different sites that used the module as well as other modules from Ventrain Systems. And I was close to the point of paying the $30 to get access to the source code for 3 months.
Since I’m a .Net developer I went back to the thoughts of just modifying the Blog Module to do what I wanted it to do. Although, I can make the changes, I would really prefer not to touch it as I have other distractions on my time at the moment. The thought also crossed my mind to switch to WordPress. I do have several WordPress blogs on other topics; however, I just didn’t feel right to switch to WP. I really wanted a CMS system not a Blog System. So I have a choice …..
And then, I came across something a reference to updates on the way for the base DNN module. Turns out, version 4.00.00 beta 3 was just released on 1/7/2010. The list of enhancements looks quite impressive:
Categories & Tagging
- Added Support for categories
- Categories can be organized in a hierarchy
- Added Support for Tagging
- Added functionality to manage / retroactively apply tags through a “batch” tag editor
- Auto-complete on tags in the web interface
- You can select multiple categories and tags per post
Windows Live Writer Integration Enhancements
- Support for multiple/hierarchical categories in WLW
- Support for tags in WLW
- Support for summaries in their own text box (switch on Supports Excerpt) instead of using the ‘split post’ function
- Syndication (RSS) Enhancements
- Additional content (tags, body)
- Ability to feed body of post if allowed by admin by adding ‘body=true’ to RSS request
- Feeds are now cached
Other General Improvements
- Added new modules:
- Recent Entries
- Recent Comments
- Tag Cloud
- Categories
- Added a Control Panel in the MainView which allows those who are upgrading, to automatically add the newly added modules, such as the Category View, Tag Cloud, Recent Entries, Recent Comments etc
- Implemented the publish and pubdate properties that get passed back and forth between WLW and the module
- Ability for Administrators to enforce clear text summaries. This is now an option for the module. Default is the old behavior. Obviously I’ve had to add a regular textbox to Edit Entry to switch between HTML and textbox.
- Fixed issue where, under certain conditions, no automatically generated summary appears in the RSS feed (details of this issue in this Gemini ticket)
Before you run out and install it, don’t install it in production. There is no guarantee they will have an upgrade path to the final version. If there was a path, believe me, I would have had this blog updated before this post was out. Currently, I do not believe a demo environment exists to play with the new blog module. So I’m going to go ahead and create a DNN 5 install in my environment and provide access for everyone to create a blog and use the module. It will take me a day or two to get everything setup and ready for your use. Look for my next blog post with access information.
Happy Blogging …