User Roles


Modules

Modules are the meat and potatoes of a DotNetNuke site. They are the components that display relative, easy-to-update content to your visitors. Chapter 6 covers the applications of these modules and how to use them to add your content. Hundreds of free and commercial modules are available to extend the application functionality; simply perform a web search for "DotNetNuke modules" in your favorite search engine and you'll find a module to meet almost any need you may have for managing content.

This section provides an overview of many modules and prepares you for the detailed information in Chapter 6, which shows you how easy it is to use the modules to present content to site visitors. Beginning with version 3 of DotNetNuke, all the content modules were divided into separate projects, allowing you to pick and choose the modules you need for your specific installation. So, if your business requirement does not need an RSS module, for example, you can remove it from your installation without any adverse effects or any modifications of the core code. This is an important enhancement from a business perspective because it allows you to easily modify DotNetNuke to accommodate your unique business rules and needs, without programming or technical intervention.

It also should be mentioned that each of the modules is now been totally separated from the core framework and has its own release cycle. This allows for some interesting enhancements to the functionality of the modules over the coming year.

Table 3-2 describes a number of DotNetNuke modules that are installed by default.

Table 3-2: Default Modules
Open table as spreadsheet

Module

Description

Account Login

Provides the login interface as a module. In can be useful in two scenarios: when you want the login dialog to appear on the home page (without the user clicking the login link), and when you want to use it on a login page, which could contain additional modules. You can specify any page within your portal as the login page via the administration screens at Admin ð Site Settings ð Advanced Setting ð Page Management.

Announcements

Used to present a list of announcements. Each announcement includes a title, text, and a "read more" link. Optionally, the announcement can be set to expire after a specified date.

Banners

One of DotNetNuke's rich set of vendor management tools. It's used to display the advertising banners of vendors created within the portal (or as defined by the Host). Management of these vendors and creation of banners is performed in the administration area located at Admin ð Vendors (or Host ð Vendors). The module itself provides facilities to select the number of banners to display and the banner type, and tracks both their impressions and clicks.

Contacts

Renders contact information for a group of people, such as a project team, a sports team, or personnel within your department. It provides an edit page, which enables authorized users to edit and add contacts.

Discussions

A threaded discussion board. It provides groups of messages threaded on a single topic. Each message includes a Read/Reply Message page, enabling authorized users to reply to existing messages or add a new message thread. Although this is not a full-fledged forum module, it offers some functionality that you can use to enable light forum activities on your site. With the addition of the form module subproject, this module is likely to be discontinued in later releases because the Forum module offers the same functionality, but also adds many features not available with this module.

Documents

Renders a list of documents, including links to browse or download the document. It includes an edit page, which enables authorized users to edit or add the information about a document (for example, a friendly title).

Events

Renders a list of upcoming events, including time and location. Individual events can be set to automatically expire from the list after a particular date. The module includes an edit page, which enables authorized users to edit or add an event.

FAQs

Allows an authorized user to manage a list of frequently asked questions and their answers. This is a great module for reducing support calls to your customer service center because you can compile a list of the questions you receive about your business or services and present that data to your users.

Feedback

Enables visitors to send messages to the administrator of the portal. You have the ability to customize this module to send e-mails to various individuals within your organization, depending on the message content. This is one more example of how DotNetNuke enables you to assign different tasks to the correct individuals in your organization.

IFrame

A browser feature that enables you to display content from another web site within a frame on your site. Note that it is not supported consistently by all browsers. Internet Explorer displays this module very well, and it's also supported in Firefox, but other browsers have historically had problems displaying inline frames consistently.

Image

Renders an image using an HTML IMG tag. It includes an edit page that allows an authorized user to specify the location of the image that can reside internal or external to the portal. An authorized user can also specify height and width attributes, which permits the scaling of an image.

The Image module is changing to the Media module (perhaps by the time this book is released), supporting a variety of still image formats as well as rich media including audio and video.

Links

Renders a list of hyperlinks. It includes an edit page, which allows authorized users to edit and add new links. Each link can be customized to launch new windows or capture information such as how many times that link has been clicked.

News Feeds (RSS)

Enables you to consume syndicated news feeds in Rich Site Summary (RSS) format. It includes an edit page that enables you to specify the location of the news feed and the style sheet (XSL) used to transform the news feed.

Search Input

Provides the capability to submit a search to a given Search Results module.

Search Results

Provides the capability to display search results.

Text/HTML

Renders a snippet of HTML or text. It includes an edit page, which enables authorized users to edit the HTML or text snippets directly (using the configured rich text editor).

User Account

Enables users to register and manage their accounts.

User Defined Table

Enables you to create a custom data table for managing tabular information.

XML/XSL

Renders the result of an XML/XSL transform. It includes an edit page that allows authorized users to specify a location for the XML document and the XSL style sheet used for transformation.

Remember, this is not a definitive list of the modules available within DotNetNuke. You have the option of installing modules provided by third parties or to even author your own. For complete instructions on how to use each of these modules, refer to Chapter 6. Chapters 9 through 12 cover the aspects associated with authoring your own modules to solve a unique business need for your organization.

DotNetNuke also provides some additional modules that are available in the download but not installed by default in the application. They include the following:

  • Users Online: Enables you to display information about the current number of visitors accessing your portal at any given time.

  • Survey: Enables you to conduct online surveys with your portal.

  • Forums: Enables you to host a community forum for your visitors.

  • Blogs: Enables you to host a web log on your site.

At the time of this writing, several other modules are under development that will enhance the usability of the application even further. In addition, many of the preceding modules are going through a major transition to enhance their current functionality.




Professional DotNetNuke 4.0 (c) Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP. NET 4.0
Professional DotNetNuke 4: Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP.NET 2.0 (Programmer to Programmer)
ISBN: 0471788163
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 182

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