I am happy to announce that the DotNetNuke 5.3.1 release is now available for download.  This release was focused on fixing 3 significant issues with the 5.3.0 release which caused us to remove the release from CodePlex and our DotNetNuke Support Network.  It is never easy to admit that significant issues slipped through testing and made it into a release package forcing you to take drastic actions.  The only thing we can do is to re-evaluate our processes and continue to find areas for improvement – obviously we have some work to do.  Having just finished the sprint for 5.3.0 last week, we are finally getting around to our post-mortem on the release where we will look at what went right, and what went wrong.  It is only by taking a hard look at our processes and owning up to our mistakes that we can fix the problems that allowed this to occur.  We can and we will do better.

The changes for this release are outlined below.

As with any release, we recommend you perform a complete file and database backup before performing any upgrade on a production website and that you first conduct a trial upgrade on a staging version of the site.  Following these guidelines will ensure that you are able to recover should any unforeseen problems arise during the upgrade process.

With any software product you will occasionally have a release that you wish you could take back.  Microsoft had Windows Vista, and Tuesday we had DotNetNuke 5.3.0.  We had a couple of significant bugs which slipped through the QA process and which resulted in a major impact to customers.  Rather than continue to compound the problem we have made the decision to pull the 5.3.0 packages from CodePlex and from DotNetNuke Support Network while we test a 5.3.1 release which we expect to release early next week.  5.3.1 is specifically going to address the following issues:

• Email is not delivered to end users and instead a significant number of system emails are being sent to the administrator account instead.  This impacts the ability of users to register and to get password reminders and as such is a showstopping bug that will be fixed in 5.3.1.
• Synchronize and SynchronizeFolder in the FileSystemUtils class have a breaking change in the API.  Overloads will be added to 5.3.1 to allow existing modules which call this API to continue to function.
• Updated XML module.  Although we highlighted the issues with XML module in the release notes, we were working on a fix to this module to be released this week.  This will be included with the 5.3.1 package.

I am happy to announce that the DotNetNuke 5.3.0 release is now available for download.  This release marks the fourth month in a row where we have hit our targeted release date.  That is a huge accomplishment for the project as the DotNetNuke Corporation engineering team is really starting to gel.  During this release cycle we also had a number of significant contributions by core team members. 

Over the past year, as our development methodology has undergone change and we have hired more members for the engineering team, the core team contributions have dropped off.  This was mainly because it is very hard to manage contributions when our own internal processes are not well defined.  Now that our DotNetNuke Corp. engineering team finally has some stable processes in place, it will be even easier for core team and community members to contribute to the project.  We recognize that sometimes you need to take a step back in order to re-evaluate and re-engineer your processes.  Having spent the last year doing just that, we are now in a much better position to work with the core team and the community to continue evolving the platform at a much more rapid pace to keep up with the ever changing web application landscape.  This is definitely a great time to be a part of DotNetNuke Corporation and the DotNetNuke Community.

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The 5.3.0 development cycle has been unlike any in our 7+ year history.  In some respects this is good and in others – not so much.  As I explained in my Just Like Clockwork post, we are working hard to make monthly releases a habit and to have release schedules that are predictable.  DotNetNuke 5.3.0 marks the first major release we have attempted since splitting our engineering group into feature development and maintenance groups.  As always, doing anything for the first time can be challenging.

The maintenance group has gotten into a pretty good grove with our monthly releases, but adding an external group into the mix has added an additional level of complexity.  The maintenance group is able to make our changes in a single branch and quickly test, package and release our monthly stabilization releases.  Unfortunately, the feature dev group works in a separate branch which means code merges, integration testing, lots and lots of regression testing and in general a more complex testing and release process.  We certainly have learned quite a bit from this first cycle which we’ll apply to future major releases.

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As I indicated last week, I am pleased to announce the Call for Speakers for the 2010 DotNetNuke Connections conference.  Once again, this years conference will be held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas from November 1st through the 4th with pre and post-conference training available as well. 

We could not do this show without our speakers and we have been fortunate in the past to have had some great session proposals by many well respected speakers.  Some of those speakers have been selected to present their sessions and unfortunately some of them have not been.  Such is the nature of any conference.  As usual we will continue to look for new speakers to bring fresh new topics to the conference.  So if you have submitted sessions in the past then I would encourage you to submit again.  If you have public speaking experience and some great ideas for sessions then I would invite you to submit your sessions as well.

Remember that all speakers will be required to present at least two sessions.  So make sure you submit plenty of session abstracts to improve your odds of getting selected.

Speaker Benefits

Every speaker at the DotNetNuke Connections conference will receive 4 nights of lodging at the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel along with free conference registration. Conference registration will allow every attendee full access to the expo hall, and all sessions at the DevConnections and DotNetNuke Connections conferences. (Pre and Post conference training days are not covered in the complimentary registration).

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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