Recently I have started helping out with some development and support for FindEightDigital.com. FindEight has a dedicated server and has smartly split up portals into databases that correspond to the level of traffic they receive.

This presents me with a bit of a problem because I need to discover what portal is in what database and its id. After looking this up in about three databases I decide to get my friend (http://zackue.com) to write me a little query so I can always find the right database. Here is the nice little query he came up with.

IF OBJECT_ID ('tempdb..##TempTemp','U') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE ##TempTemp CREATE TABLE ##TempTemp (ID INT, Name NVARCHAR(MAX ), DbName NVARCHAR(MAX)) exec sp_MSforeachdb 'IF OBJECT_ID (''?.dbo.Portals'',''U'') IS NOT NULL INSERT ##TempTemp SELECT PortalId, PortalName...

Building DNN for clients sometimes can take finding some custom module on Snowcovered or building one yourself but there are some modules and other objects I really like to have in my DNN portal no matter what it looks like or does.

Oliver Hines Advanced Control Panel. This replacement for the control panel that admin and host accounts see is slick and optimized for the web. Makes working with the control bar just that much easier. (Download) Oliver Hines Optimized Skin Objects. Something that has been long overdue for DNN! By taking out some of those post backs it really does appear to make the site peppier to end users. (Download) Oliver Hines Primary Portal Alias. Now this little install is actually a core modification so you might want to think about it before installing but if you...

Here are a four strategies you can use to get the most out of your time at home:

When is your peak efficiency? At what time during the day are you most alert, focused and ready to go? How long does it last? Maybe you work best from 8am to noon. But, are so brain dead in the afternoon, you might as well be doing something else. Then perhaps you get a second wind after dinner for 3 or 4 hours, and voila, there’s your 8 hour day. Not quite your typical day at the office, but you’ve gotten twice as much done as you would otherwise. For some people it’s starting a 5 am, others like to work through the night. The trick here is to pay attention to your internal clock and figure out when your energy is highest. Do other things during your down time: Exercise, groceries, oil changes. If you are not the 9 to 5 type, then this works perfectly because you avoid the crowds at stores, the gym, and the garage filled with the people who only have time on weekends and after 5pm on weekdays. No line ups,...

Let’s say you are a small organization, perhaps a nonprofit or business-to-business, and you are looking to redesign your website. This might include a new graphic design, new content and functionality. As with most small organizations, you do not have an IT department or Web guru on-staff, so you have turned to a Web development company to put it all together.

The question for you now is, what can you do to keep costs low, move the project along quickly and, ultimately, make the site successful?

Outline your website

The outline will illustrate the navigation structure of your current website. A good way to do this is in Microsoft Excel. In Excel, you would enter in each page of the site and where they fall within the site structure. For example:

Home



Brief description

About Us



Brief description

...

One of the aspects I really like in Stackoverflow is that it uses OpenID. Now a lot of sites use OpenID already but none have made it as easy as Stackoverflow has. This really should be viewed as a model to get larger adoption of the OpenID standard across the web.

What’s so great about it? Well the Stackoverflow site has used images of the big OpenID providers clear (Goolge, Yahoo, AOL, myOpenID) then a lot of the the lesser ones that are used a lot (Live Journal, Wordpress, Blogger ,etc..). Simply click an icon or image and Stackoverflow uses a little jquery to try and log you in or ask you for the username at that OpenId provider. Many sites and the DNN provider included simply present the user with a field to paste in the  url of the OpenId provider. Not a problem, but not every user on the web knows what that url  is or where to find it.

My first project to make my site operate like Stackoverflow is going to be to add so enhancements to the default OpenID provider built by the DNN core group....

I love Stackoverflow! If you are a programmer and haven't heard about it or used it yet visit it today!  Stackoverflow can be as addictive as any other social networking fad out there and more so because of the shear amount of content. The ideas behind Stackoverflow seem to me to be the natural progression of the older forum setup but if you want a clone you either have to pay (http://stackexchange.com/) or you can find and use one of the few clones out there. Quench (http://anantgarg.com/2009/12/09/php-stackoverflow-clone/) seems to be an okay start, there is a simple c# implementation by the guys at RA-Ajax (http://stacked.ra-ajax.org/), and there is a Chinese language site (http://cnprog.com/) that uses a clone that is available at GitHub (http://github.com/cnprog/CNPROG). Those are all great and good starts but since I use DotNetNuke all the time I wanted a module or series of modules that would allow me to duplicate the functionality...

I have writers block! I am not a professional writer, so times like this are real stressful for me. Usually I have no problem going on and on about useless stuff, as you can tell from my other posts. Sometimes I have ideas and post them and sometimes, well, its just the regular c*** that you find on other blogs.

 

I have ideas about what to blog about but I cant seem to get the mental block out of the way to write it all down. As my main boss would say ‘I don’t see as much mental vomit coming from you’, great visual huh?

 

How do you deal with writers block would love to see your ideas!

On Twitter Antonio Chagoury came through with a nice little tweet about his new tag cloud module, DNN Universal Tag Cloud.

The module is a nice tight package and integrates into the search provider for DNN so you have to have that enabled on the portal. I was able to quickly install the package without any problems on my DNN install and add it to my Blog page without any hiccups at all (look to the left here to see it in action).

The setup for the module is very simple and straight forward. Click on settings and pick where you want the tag cloud generated from, how many tags to generate, if you want an RSS feed of the tags, and if people can sort the tags. Click update and the tag cloud is there. Clicking on a tag takes you to a search for that term. You can even designate an outside search results page such as Google if you want, great for generating a little extra...

I am so glad I found the Kansas City Startup Weekend (purely by mistake on Twitter). Excited to go and see what the hype is about but mostly eager to go and get out of the funk I am in. One of my ‘goals’ for this year was to position myself as a freelance coder and consultant. If you are in the consulting business you know how hard it can be to establish a reputation, and I have had some unfortunate and bad breaks. However, I am determined to go and be productive and find or at least be inspired by all the entrepreneurial spirit I already feel online from the event.

You can follow along if you want online, Kansas City Startup Weekend, here are some resources:

Kansas City Startup Weekend Blog Kansas City Startup Weekend Live Video Feed (via UStream.TV) Dan Meltons Vimeo Group...

Overview: This software helps its users track the hours they work on projects.  The software appears geared towards consultants that bill by the hour like coders and web developers.


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