Overview

A little over 18 months ago we had the first meeting for the DotNetNuke User Group in the Cleveland Ohio area.  Unfortunately, that was our only meeting.  It was always my intention to help get the Cleveland area DotNetNuke User Group off the ground but as the months dragged on other events just always seemed to take precedence.  Since that first meeting I have had the opportunity to speak at several different .Net and DotNetNuke User Groups.  The more I saw the success of the Capital DotNetNuke User Group (CDUG), the Los Angeles DotNetNuke User Group, and the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group (ODUG) and even some of the smaller, growing groups like those in St Louis, Connecticut, Dallas, and Arizona, the more I get excited about having a user group in my own backyard.  The Europeans also have several large and very active user groups like those in the Netherlands, Germany and France.

This area has a really strong base of DotNetNuke users and even some well known DotNetNuke related companies.  Onyaktech, IHostAsp.net, AspDotNetStorefront, Technology Workgroup and Voller Solutions are just a few of the DotNetNuke organizations in the area.  Having local companies who are active members of the DotNetNuke ecosystem is certainly a big help in that it gives us a nice foundation upon which to build a local User Group.  It also means that we have a wealth of local talent that can help keep the group going so the full weight does not fall on one persons shoulders.

With all of the that said, I would like to announce that we are now ready to really get the Cleveland DotNetNuke User Group off the ground.  I invite all those Cleveland area DotNetNuke users and developers to our meeting as we kick this group into gear.  You can find all the pertinent details for the meeting below.  If you are in the area, but are unable to attend, please leave me a comment so we can make sure you get early notification for our upcoming meetings.

Meeting Information

Date:  Wednesday, August 18th, 2009

Time:  6:30 PM

Location: 

Energy Focus Inc.
32000 Aurora Rd.
Solon, OH 44139

If you get lost then feel free to contact me at 330-564-6898 for help.

Topic/Speaker:

DotNetNuke and jQuery
The featured topic this month will be a presentation by Joe Brinkman on DotNetNuke and jQuery.  Over the last couple of years, jQuery has been growing in popularity.  This ultimately resulted in adoption by Microsoft as part of the AJAX strategy for ASP.Net and will be shipped with Visual Studio 2010.  Shortly after Microsoft’s announcement, the DotNetNuke team announced that we would be supporting and shipping jQuery as well as part of DotNetNuke.  In this session we’ll look at jQuery and show how easy it is to use it in DotNetNuke.

Since this is our first real meeting, we’ll spend the first part of the meeting getting input around group logistics.  What is the best meeting time and day, identifying a permanent meeting location, coming up with an official group name and other items like that.  I would really like the users to feel that this group really represents them and so we’ll try and cater to what works out best for the whole group.

Food/Drinks:

We are still looking to line up some sponsors for our meetings.  For tomorrow’s meeting we’ll have drinks but no pizza or food, so grab a quick bite before you come to the meeting.  If you would like to sponsor the meeting or would like additional information about sponsoring the user group, please contact me at joe AT dnncorp.com.

User Group Website:

IHostAsp.Net has agreed to provide hosting for the user group website.  Once we have a final name picked out, we’ll start working on getting the groups website setup.

Over the past 6 years I have watched as DotNetNuke matured into a well-rounded platform that is capable of meeting the needs of a wide variety of individuals and organizations.  One of the keys to the platform’s success is that it continues to leverage technology to make it easy to build sites the way you want. 

A user recently asked me how they could re-use the content from one page on another page in their site.  A couple of years ago I would have suggested that they make a “copy” of the module using the built-in capabilities.  This works well when you are trying to duplicate the entire content of the module, however, there are times when you just want a portion of the content.  In the past the answer would have been to split up the content on the original page – which might require changing your skin and may not be possible when using 3rd party modules.

The optimal solution would not require me to make any changes to the original page, but would instead allow me just to grab specific content and display it on a new page.  Thanks goodness we added jQuery support in 4.9 and 5.0.  This problem is really easy to solve with some simple html and a jQuery one-liner.

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Over the last 5 years, DotNetNuke has been blessed a large number of books being written about the platform.  I was fortunate to be part of the team that co-authored a couple of the first books on the platform, and I continue to try reading every book that comes out on the platform.  Some books, like Professional DotNetNuke 5: Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP.NET cover multiple aspects of the DotNetNuke platform and is a great book for Administrators, Developers and Designers, but it necessarily can’t cover every topic in depth.  Other books, like DotNetNuke Module Programming, are narrowly targeted at Module developers.

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