10 DNN Admin Quick Tips
Posted by Tom on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 to DotNetNuke, DNN Tips and Tricks
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.
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.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.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" />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">.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.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.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.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.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.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.
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