DotNetNuke Websites Problem Design Solution

The objective of this book is to enlighten you in the ways of DotNetNuke by showing you how to design and implement a professional, real-world DNN website solution, while taking the opportunity to outline and detail many of the terrific features of the DNN framework. While describing in detail how to take full advantage of just some of DNN's feature set, the book explains explain most of the problems you'll face when building your website, and offers one or more solutions for solving them. In the end, the result will be a great deal of knowledge surrounding a key set of features that includes a myriad of functions you may not have thought were possible from an open source application framework. Many beginning to intermediate users will be surprised, by the depth and power of DNN and the ease at which professional-level, modern functionality can be implemented. More advanced users may already be utilizing DNN in similar ways but should also find the information contained in this book to be helpful and insightful.

This book is basically a large case study that starts with a foundation and works its way through to completion with a series of designs and solutions for each incremental step along the way. What sets the Problem-Design-Solution series apart from other Wrox series is the structure of the book and the start-to-finish approach to many aspects of a completed project. Specifically, this book leads the reader through the development of a complete modern, sophisticated, highly functional, and professional DNN business website solution including many of DNN's key built-in modules/functionality:

• Account login/registration, roles, and permissions

• Announcements

• FAQ

• Media

• Links

• Survey

• Text/HTML

From an administrative point of view, the following features and problems are also covered:

• Full DNN Administration to manage many aspects of the website solution

• Skin deployment

• Content deployment

The implementation of each of these features provides the opportunity to present various processes of creating, designing, and developing our DNN website solution such as the following:

• Skin and containers/site layout

• CSS customizations

• Security: site membership, roles, and profile management

• Detailed content implementation: working with pages and modules

This book covers DNN's key built-in features and demonstrates how to get the most out of them to create a complete, professional website solution. All of the features are explained and presented in detail to make you aware of all of the options that are possible. At the end of the book you will have learned many of the best practices for using DNN and will have acquired a well-rounded foundation to use it comfortably on a day-to-day basis, allowing you to gain proficiency and efficiency in developing more professional and profitable DNN website solutions.

This book provides the foundation to build a complete, professional DNN website solution based on a key set of built-in features. All chapters are self-contained components within the overall solution, build on the chapters before it, and are structured in three sections:

• Problem: This section defines the problem or problems to be addressed in the chapter: Which key DNN features should you take advantage of and why are these features important? What restrictions or other factors need to be taken into account?

• Design: After the problem is defined adequately, this section describes what features are needed to solve the problem. This will give you a broad idea of how the solution will work or how the solution to the problem will be accomplished.

• Solution: After preparing what is going to be accomplished and why (and how it solves the problem defined earlier), we will produce and discuss the code, page, and module configurations, and so on, and any other material that will realize the design and solve the problem laid out at the beginning of the chapter. Just as the coverage of this book as a whole is weighted toward solution, so is each chapter. This is where you will get hands-on practice and create the code.

This book is intended to be read from cover to cover, so that you start from scratch and finish with a complete website solution. However, the book follows a modular structure, so every chapter is quite self-contained and implements DNN features that, if necessary, can be "turned on or off" at any time.

This book is not for advanced programmers who use DNN at the core level to create modules or extend the project. This book is intended for beginning-to-intermediate users, as well as some advanced users, who want to learn:

• How to create a great-looking DNN website and how to customize it with CSS

• How to use DNN's built-in functions and modules to implement a complete professional, content-driven business website solution while providing the necessary core skills that will help you become proficient in your day-to-day usage of the framework

While the book does not explain every last detail of the DNN technology, it does concentrate on functionality that is found “under the surface” while walking you through many processes and details that will allow you to take advantage of the DNN framework.