Over the past several months we have been making some significant changes in our release process.  We have made a commitment to monthly releases, opened up our code repository and in general have made a move to be more transparent.  During this same period we have also made some changes to our development processes to separate our feature development from our bug fixes.  The DotNetNuke 5.3.0 is our first quarterly feature release that is benefiting from this new development process. 

In addition to splitting out our feature development, we are also using a more formal Scrum methodology and have broken down our features into different code sprints.  This process allows us to deliver a set of features that can stand alone  and be tested independent from other features or enhancements which might be delivered in later sprints.  This flexibility also enables us to be a little more fluid with our quarterly releases which are often timed to coincide with major marketing events.  This Alpha release is a merge between the 5.2.3 codebase and DotNetNuke 5.3.0 Sprint 1 development branch and includes the following features:

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We are once again in the heart of the planning season for the DotNetNuke DevConnections and SDC conferences. It is that time of year when we ask all of you to submit your session abstracts for this years DotNetNuke North American conference.  Later this week we’ll be opening up the official Call for Speakers on DotNetNuke.com, but I wanted to take the opportunity to give speakers a heads up so they could start preparing their abstracts so that they are ready once we open the submission form.  Like the last three years, we are accepting  session submissions in 4 different topic areas:  Development, Design, Administration and Open Source.

Development – These are basically session dealing with code.  Whether it is topic on module development or building custom providers or dissecting the internals of DotNetNuke, anything that would appeal to the software coders is fair game.

Design – This topic area is targeted at the web designers.  This goes beyond just talking about skins.  It also includes topics like SEO, and accessibility and can even include Localization.  These sessions should focus more on the aesthetic and usability aspects of building a DotNetNuke website.

Administration – This topic area is where speakers present sessions that address the needs of the end user.  How do they install DotNetNuke, how do they configure it for a Web Farm or to run in the cloud(this is different that writing a module that uses cloud services), how can they improve site performance.  These sessions really focus on the day to day use and administration of running a DotNetNuke website.  This topic area is also a catchall for any business related topics.

Open Source – This final topic area is designed to show attendees how they can incorporate other Open Source tools into their development, design and administration tasks.  It might be a topic on using Watin for testing or using GIMP and Paint.Net for creating your skin elements.  The idea here is to expand the attendees view of the Open Source community and to bring in fresh and complimentary ideas from other Open Source projects.  These sessions should still be relevant to DotNetNuke in a very meaningful way.  A topic showing all the wonders of using Wordpress for blogging is not appropriate.

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DotNetNuke recently moved to an Open Repository that is hosted on CodePlex.  As Phil Beadle recently noted, the synchronization process is now fully operational and is running nightly to ensure that the CodePlex repository mirrors our internal version control system.  Of course, having access to the source code and understanding how to use the source code to get to a working build is two different things.  The source code package that we deliver with each release is slightly modified from our own internal repository in order to minimize confusion for the community.  Over the years the core team has become accustomed to these steps, but for new people, getting DotNetNuke up and running from source code can be a bit daunting.  Hopefully I can help dispel the mystery and make it a little easier to understand why DotNetNuke source code is packaged in this manner.

NOTE:  For the remainder of this post I will assume that you are familiar with DotNetNuke and that your system is already configured.  The source code version of is not intended for people who are just getting started with DotNetNuke.  If you fall into this category then I would recommend starting with one of the install packages to better acquaint yourself with DotNetNuke.  If you use the install version with the Web Platform Installer, then it will ensure you have all the necessary pre-requisites installed.  For more information on installing DotNetNuke you should review the Installation Instructions or watch the Installation Webinar which are available on the downloads page.

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