SunBlogNuke - DotNetNuke Blog Module

That is one review post about our blogging module - #SunBlogNuke in depth, and you will find compare SunBlogNuke vs other DotNetNuke blogging modules and why clients choose our DNN modules. And the most benefits you get from us and what SunBlogNuke is the most flexible and user friendly module of the bunch. If you are hesitant to order our blogging module, I think that this review is what exactly you need go through :)

From 2002 DotNetNuke built from scratch, until now there are indeed LOTS of DotNetNuke versions, which had made everyone headache with DNN modules/skins maintenance. :(

Luckily, there still are more or less benefits to play with DNN because it exposed a few flexible APIs to make our life better, such as IPortable interface makes data migration easily and quickly between different DNN environments. Today I would like to show how to migrate blog data of SunBlogNuke, for example, from older version to latest fresh installation.

That is a brief buzz for our development team recently.

Maybe you noticed that we did not release new version currently but just repacked installation with some urgent fixes. Actually we are still focusing more attentions on our core dnn blog product - SunBlogNuke. Yep, we are building totally version 5.0 as we promised ever. In the v5.x, we will enhance more awesome features, specially theme, widget & extension. Meanwhile we also refactored the core framework more highlight, integrity & flexibility. Always we hope that it will be the kind of beautiful, elegant and productive software.

The initial version 5.0 will include some new cool UI for admin panel, such as dashboard & new workaround for theme configure process. Please stay tune and it will be available to download. :).  Well. have a quick look at the screenshot about new theme configure panel and you can try it out in our demo blog, which have been upgraded with v5.0:

And we are looking forwards to your feedback. We know that the more feedback we get from our clients, the better our product will be and also we will know which areas require attentions next. So please tell us what you want most or leave your comment below if you are interested in Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke. Thanks a lot.

Today we are glad that the building v4.4.5 of Ultimate DotNetNuke blog module –  SunBlogNuke is available for free upgrade. It implemented the initial subscription feature with a brand new widget called "Subscription", where you can place into your blog sider bar for users to subscribe the email notification when new post published; in the meanwhile, initially it introduced the extension mechanism with more flexibility and extendibility,  with which you will extend the core framework easily and implemented the customized business logic. For example, you would like to support Markdown Syntax in comments or auto-publish to twitter/facebook (any 3rd-party social services) when writing a new post, now you can complete it by implementing the customized extensions, such as Markdown Extension or Twitter Extension. More awesome widgets are included into this building, such as alternative "Archives" widget and "Profile" widget to show the profile of your blog authors with handy template and tokens. Later we will publish more tutorials about those topics and please stay tune. As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.

Major Highlights in v4.4.5:

• ENH - Supported new 'Archives' widget, which allows you to show the blog archives with flexible settings in any page of dnn website.
• ENH - Supported new handy 'Profile' widget, which you can integrate with to show the profile of your blog authors .
• ENH - Supported new fields [PublishedDate] & [LastModifiedBy] in the post entity.
• ENH - Supported new tokens {block:customfield:xxx} and {else} in the Content Slider Widget.
• ENH - Supported to develop customized controls, which may be originally in the 'shared' folder, for the current theme.
• ENH - Supported the plus view with quick way to deal with common tasks, such as approve comment & regenerate links.
• ENH - Enhanced the Disqus integration.
• ENH - Enhanced search result view.
• ENH - Released the additional language resource packages - Spanish & Italian.
• FIX - Possible XSS vulnerability issue in the Rsd hander.
• FIX - Monthly Archive list collapses when Month clicked.
• Lots of other fixes & enhancements.

NOTE: As with any release, we recommend you perform a complete file and database backup before performing any upgrade on a production website and that you first conduct a trial upgrade on a staging version of the site. Following these guidelines will ensure that you are able to recover should any unforeseen problems arise during the upgrade process.

Note that some issues may occur if your original version of SunBlogNuke is lower version, like 3.x, and you've developed your customized theme. Please refer to the tutorial - Must-Read Note for SunBlogNuke v4.x and follow the instructions. Hope it makes sense.

You can get it here. Blog your way and enjoy life. :)

The SunBlogNuke Team

In our previous posts on Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke hacks, we discussed the incredible flexibility of  SunBlogNuke, which is one of the biggest reasons for its popularity among bloggers worldwide. In particular, from v4.0 we introduced the custom fields feature, which let users create variables and add custom values to them, are  one of the reasons for SunBlogNuke’ flexibility and endless possibilities.

In this tutorial, we will compile a list of useful things that you can do with custom fields in SunBlogNuke (if you are not heard of custom fields feature please refer to the initial guideline firstly - Extend DNN Blog With Custom Fields). Among them are re-defining the <title> tag of every post and linking to external resources instead of the blog post.

Finally our development team implemented the custom fields feature for Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke in the upcoming version 4.2, which will be available soon. The use of custom fields will be one of the keys to SunBlogNuke's flexibility and endless possibilities. Essentially, all a Custom Field does is allow you to add extra pieces of data to individual DNN Blog posts that otherwise aren’t there by default. We hope that it will change the way people look at SunBlogNuke and rise in popularity of SunBlogNuke, too.  We’ll look at how to put custom fields into practice and continues to show you some potential uses of custom fields later. Hope it makes you easier or more productive to use custom fields.

That is a brief buzz for our development team recently.

We are glad to tell you that our product is in active development and we are moving on as planned. Our guys are trying to enhance the Ultimate DNN Blog Module - SunBlogNuke and provide you the working and valuable product. In this stage we are focusing on the next building v4.0 in which we took more attentions on "Refactor". With refactor you will be able to extend more features easily. Plus, we make it stay flexible by reducing obstacles to changes so that you will respond to customers' requirements quickly. We hope that it will be the kind of beautiful, elegant and productive software.

BTW, also it will include some awesome features, like integration with Google reCAPTCHA, support for Vote Up/Vote Down and new theme configure process with providing thumbnail and preview feature. Please stay tune and it will be available to download. :).  Well. have a quick look at the screenshot about new theme configure panel:

And we are looking forwards to your feedback. We know that the more feedback we get from our clients, the better our product will be and also we will know which areas require attentions next. So please tell us what you want most or leave your comment below if you are interested in Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke. Thanks a lot.

We use SunBlogNuke for our Hearing Aid Blog. It is a fantastic DotNetNuke module. It’s easy to set up, very flexible, and very powerful. It has all the bells and whistles needed for a great blog and it’s very easy to manage and administer. Also, the developers respond to queries very quickly and professionally. Highly recommended!

- Daniel Taft (www.australiahears.com.au)

Refer to the last tutorial about how to implement a customized calendar date in the Content Slider Widget of Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke v3.6.x or later version, today we continue to share a more awesome code sample for you and it indeed works well in our home page. As you go ahead do some customizations basing on SunBlogNuke, like the must-have widget module – Content Slider Widget, you will understand what the cool extendibility and flexibility our blogging modules supply for your dnn website. Firstly take a look at the screenshot below:

We’ve received a feature request from our client Tyler. He hoped that we can provide a handy way to deal with the datestamp of their dnn posts, including format and style, for example, he want to be able to pull out the day (27) and convert the month to abbreviated form, e.g., Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.

I also agree his point and indeed blog calendar date icons, which show the publication date next to each entry, provide a simple way to spice up your blog design. Using just a single image, a bit of CSS and some simple configurations this tutorial will show you how to implement something similar in the Content Slider Widget (& your own themes, which will be supported in next building). Plus we share some resources for you to use. Note that you should apply those customizations with Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke v3.6.x or later version which had been integrated with DNN Core Token APIs and provides you more extendibility and flexibility.