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10 DNN Admin Quick Tips 

Posted on Tue Jul 22, 2008 by Tom Kraak
In: DotNetNuke, DNN Tips & Tricks | 11 Comments

Here are 10 somewhat lesser known “quick tips” for DotNetNuke administrators described in no more than a sentence or two and implemented just as quickly.

  1. Module Header & Footer Text

    Use the module header and footer text boxes (Module Settings > Advanced Settings) to inject short snippets of text and / or HTML above or below any given module. No need to drop additional text/html modules.

  2. Registration Copy

    I still see way too many sites with the default copy of “Membership to this portal is Private / Public / Verified. …” Change it via the language editor at Admin > Languages > Global Resources > SharedResources.

  3. Login / Register Links

    And while you have the language editor running, customize the anchor text of commonly used skin tokens such as Login, Register, Terms, and Privacy at Admin > Languages > Local Resources > Admin > Skins. Alternatively, most of these tokens support a “text” attribute for overriding the anchor text directly in skin.ascx:
    <dnn:login runat="server" id="dnnLOGIN" text="Sign in" />

  4. Page Header Tags

    Tucked away in the advanced page settings is a field that allows you to specify additional meta tags on a page by page basis. For instance, to keep Google from archiving the page, enter <meta name="robots" content="noarchive">.

  5. Installation Date

    Ever lost track of when you or your hosting provider installed DNN for your site? The “InstallationDate” key in the appSettings section of web.config will tell you.

  6. Terms of Use & Privacy Statement

    The default terms and privacy notice are meant as a general guideline only. If you are running a “high profile” site, have the documents reviewed by a legal professional and edit accordingly via Admin > Languages > Global Resources > GlobalResources (message_portal_terms.text and message_portal_privacy.text.) Even if the default copy is sufficient for your needs, mask the email address in the last paragraph of the privacy statement to avoid spam.

  7. Website Administrator 

    You have entered a valid email address in your DNN profile and double-checked the SMTP server settings and still don’t receive admin notifications from DNN? In case of multiple users with admin rights, you need to set yourself as the site administrator at Admin > Site Settings > Advanced Settings > Other Settings.

  8. Module Title

    The module title field accepts roughly 250 characters including HTML/CSS. That’s good enough for little tricks such as adding a small image, link or vary the font size of words in the module title. Just don’t overdo it.

  9. Copyright

    Similar to the module title field, I often enter additional information such as contact details into the copyright field (Admin > Site Settings > Site Details), which then conveniently display in the footer of your pages or wherever else you placed the copyright skin token.

  10. Module Installation Timeout

    As modules get more sophisticated and provide more features and functionality, the file size of private assemblies (PAs) naturally grows as well. This may lead to HTTP session timeouts when uploading PAs the conventional way (Host > Module Definitions > Install New Module.) While there are means to increase the session length in web.config, I prefer to simply FTP upload the PA zip file into the Install\Module folder on the web server and then change the file extension from .zip to .resources. Subsequently, the module is listed in the Available Modules section of the Modules Definition page and installation can resume from there.

At least half of the above suggestions should be applicable to any DNN version, while the other half is geared more towards DNN 4 and above.

As always, I encourage you to voice your thoughts in the comments below. But for this post, I would love to see you share additional DNN gems that you have discovered while working with the framework.




Comments

Mitchel Sellers Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 5:19 PM Mitchel Sellers says:

Tom,

One important note about #5, installation date is NOT always available inside the web.config as newer DNN versions do not necessarily add it.

However, you can always find out this information via Host/SQL by running the following query.

SELECT *
FROM Version

Tom Harris Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 5:24 PM Tom Harris says:

Great Tips!
I use the advanced setting to add additional style tags when necessary. It is a great place to set a specific margin or padding setting using div tags. Add the end div tag to the footer textarea.
Thanks!

Tom Kraak Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 5:33 PM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks for sharing guys.

John Mitchell Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 9:08 AM John Mitchell says:

The first one reminded me of one from my blogs:

Have you ever wished that your modules would align better, or have less space in between? Maybe you want to position two modules side-by-side without having to put thim in seperate skin panes.

You could also achieve this easily with a little CSS magic.

In the Module Settings > Advanced Settings, put some code in the Header and Footer to wrap the module in a floating DIV tag.
Then you can position the module anywhere you like and not be confined by DNN positioning.

In the Header put this:



And in the Footer put this:



Now, you can adjust the top and left to put the module anywhere you like.

Tom Kraak Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 9:51 AM Tom Kraak says:

Excellent tip John - thanks.

Lance Monday, July 28, 2008 at 1:31 PM Lance says:

People always under estimate the power of editor templates.

Open the file: Providers\HtmlEditorProviders\FckHtmlEditorProvider\FCKeditor\fcktemplates.xml and replace with standard layouts and mark up. For instance, any of the micro formats are a natural but also any pseudo columns etc.

Similarity, modify the fckstyles.xml file in the same folder to start using site wide styles properly.

Note: this affects all portals on the instance so add only semantically neutral content.

Ismet Dumlupinar Sunday, August 03, 2008 at 5:52 AM Ismet Dumlupinar says:

Lance your tip was helpful too, i am trying to use dynamic styles within FCK Editor, however sometimes caching prevent me configure it properly, i am still working on it with DotNetNuke 4.8.4 release.

Greg Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 4:16 PM Greg says:

Great tips Tom!

I also really like the one from John - I've seen tons of posts on DNN.com asking this question. I didn't know it was possible.

Too bad there isn't a tips section on DNN.com for knowledge like this!

Tom Kraak Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 4:22 PM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks Greg, I'm glad you found it useful.

Mark Nongkhlaw Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 5:58 AM Mark Nongkhlaw says:

Regarding tip #4, I've tried to insert a meta tag into the Page header like in the hope that the page would not be cached in IE, but it doesn't seem to have the desired effect. Similarly, trying the same with the module header and footer text to control the module caching also does not work as expected. Above were done with

Page State Persistence=Memory
Module Caching Method=Memory
Performance Setting=No Caching

in host-host settings-advanced settings-performance settings.

Additionally, in the Feedback module settings-Page Settings, I set Cache Time(secs) to 0 for the particular module.

Any tips on this?

Tom Kraak Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 10:50 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ Mark - there are no meta tags that allow you to control browser behavior. You can probably configure your IE not to cache anything, but you can't force that onto your site visitors.

And as far as the DNN cache settings go, all that happens on the server and not on the client.

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