Live Blogging from OpenForce Connect Orlando
Posted by Tom on Sunday, June 08, 2008 to DotNetNuke, DNN News, OpenForce 08
Welcome to a day of live blogging from OpenForce Connect Orlando. After a few days of family fun in Cocoa Beach, I’ve made my way to the Orange County Convention Center. Of course, I parked just outside the North Building and learned shortly thereafter that the event is held in the South Building in room S210E. I never mind a walk though, except when I’m wearing a shirt and jacket and it’s over 80 degrees at 8:00 am … welcome to Florida!
It’s about 8:30 am now and people are making their way into the room. The first session is scheduled to kick off at 9:00.
Shortly after 9:00 am, Brian Scarbeau, founder of the Orlando DNN user group, greets a good-size crowd and sets the stage for the day by quickly reviewing how this first OpenForce Connect event came about. Then Brian continues in a well articulated way to provide an overview of the DotNetNuke web application framework and shows how to get a local install up and running based on the DNN starter kit. He goes on to point out blogs, tutorials, and other resources (including Vasilis' site) to help newcomers ease their way into the world of DotNetNuke.
At 10:00 am, Will Strohl, lead developer of RezHub.com, takes the stage for his presentation on DNN Skinning Tips and Tricks. He starts off with a high-level overview of the DNN skinning engine including fundamental concepts such as skin tokens, panes, and skin packaging. In between bombarding the audience with RezHub swag, Will outlines techniques to make panes collapsible, sheds light on taking advantage of about.htm as part of the skin package and tries hard not to get drawn into the heated debate of HTML table-based layouts versus CSS-based skin layouts.
Next up is Raul Rodila of Arrow Consulting who talks about understanding and using settings in custom modules. As this was a very developer-focused talk, I’ve turned most if my attention to writing up the morning sessions. Check back later in the week for links to all sessions and downloads.
Tracy Wittenkeller of T-WORX, Inc kicks off the afternoon with his session on building websites with DotNetNuke. Tracy sets the tone of the talk by asserting that the “core modules” included with DNN provide a powerful set of tools that is often overlooked. He proves his point by walking through the most important settings and configurations of the Announcements, Links, Media, and Surveys modules highlighting the power of layout templates along the way.
With his session on securing the DNN connection string, Darrell Hardy of Hardy Consulting, rounds out a day of local speakers. He stresses the importance of hardening your DNN installs by following general security guidelines such as using strong passwords and installing only trustworthy modules. Then Darrell goes deeper into various methods of encrypting and decrypting the DNN connection strings in the web.config file. This was an eye-opening session for me and I strongly encourage you to download Darrell’s slides and code as soon as available.
The last session of the day is presented by Nik Kalyani, co-founder and CEO of DotNetNuke Corporation and Microsoft MVP. Nik gives a preview of the enhancements to the DNN skinning engine to be released with Cambrian (DNN 5.0.) According to Nik, the overall goal of these new features has been to let the designer be a designer instead of having to grow into “half-programmers” just to be able to skin and style DotNetNuke. Most interesting to me is the introduction of layout and “super” stylesheets to guide skin developers on their way to a more CSS-based approach to skinning.
And finally, Shaun Walker, Nik Kalyani, Joe Brinkman, and Scott Willhite, all founding members of DotNetNuke Corporation, took the stage for an open panel discussion on the past and future of the DNN web application framework. The guys revisited the major goals (social networking, dynamic content localization, workflow and versioning, and skinning enhancements) for Cambrian set forth at last year’s OpenForce conference in Las Vegas and updated the audience on the current status of these new features and enhancements as well as the overall development status of the upcoming release. The team has worked through 5 betas and is currently “pretty much” in feature lockdown mode. The first iteration of Cambrian will include the above mentioned skinning enhancements as well as an installer roll-back feature and the decoupling of admin and host pages and modules among other enhancements. These new features will form the base necessary for the more “involved” goals of taking on social networking, dynamic content localization, and workflow and versioning.
The inaugural OpenForce Connect conference in Orlando set a high standard for similar events to come. Thanks again to Microsoft’s Joe Healy for spearheading the event and providing the facilities. Further appreciation goes to the entire team of the Orlando DNN user group for their organizational talent and attention to detail. Thanks again also to my fellow sponsors who made this event possible … see you all no later than November in Vegas!
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