So if you’ve been under a rock lately you might not have heard that the annual DotNetNuke conference is coming up. While in the past it has been branded as OpenForce, this year it is just simply DotNetNuke Connections, to better fit inline with the DevConnections banner.

This years event is once again going to be held in conjunction with DevConnections in Las Vegas Nevada, November 1-4. The conference is at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, a great venue that has been the amazing home to the DotNetNuke conference for the previous three years.

Over the past two days I’ve delivered a topic called Jumpstart: DotNetNuke Module Development, you can download the PDF for the presentation here. This session is a basic intro into quickly starting to do some DotNetNuke Module Development, and if you happened to have missed it you can actually watch a previous version of this presentation in the Beginning DotNetNuke Module Development course that is part of our DotNetNuke Training offerings.

In the session I point out a couple of URLs on how to do a few things, here are those URLs and what they provide.

1. Setting up your development environment for DotNetNuke
2. Customizing and installing a module development Visual Studio Template
3. Configuring and using NANT to automate your module packaging

In addition to these offerings for module development, we are offering a full day long course on Module Development before the DNN Connections event in Las Vegas Nevada in November of this year, for more information on the conference and pre-conf training check out our DNN Connections page.

If you missed the St. Louis Day of .NET this year you missed out on a great event! Be sure to keep an eye on www.stlouisdayofdotnet.com for announcements on when the event will be next year! Thanks to the organizers for another great event.

A few weeks ago (heck it’s been a couple of months now, my how time flies) I put together a couple of blog posts about module development using the WAP project type. They were how to setup your environment, how to customize a visual studio template, and how to use NANT to automate packaging of your projects.

Well, it took me some time but I finally got a VB.Net template together using the same approach as my C# template. I’ve also put together a new C# template (with a minor change to the location of the uninstall.sqldataprovider file). If you are looking to get started with DNN module development be sure to check out the posts!

Be sure to read those three original blog posts, you’ll get some good info on how to:

• Setup your environment
• Customize the templates
• Setup NANT to automate the build/packaging of your projects.

If you missed the free Basic Module Development webinar I delivered a couple of weeks ago, check out the video from that to get you jump started with some module development.

You can get the two free templates from codeplex.

I’ve been told these templates will work in VS2008 Express, though I haven’t tested them myself. I also believe that these will work in VS2010 if you want to try them there as well.

One question that comes up when I talk about the Templates that I’ve created is why they aren’t in the DotNetNuke Starter kit that you can download from Codeplex. I intend for them to be rolled into that package, but they didn’t make it into the upcoming DNN 5.5 release, I hope to get them into a future release here soon.

I’m also working on a sample project for DNN restful web services for some demonstrations for the St. Louis Hackathon (you can watch and enter the contest even if you aren’t in St. Louis!), it will be hosted on codeplex as well. I hope to have some of that sample code (developed using the C# template of course) on Tuesday.

Are you interested in going to the St. Louis Day of .NET next week? Did you fail to get your boss to approved the entry fee of $200 for this excellent two day event?

Well have I got a deal for you!

I’ve got a free entry to the St. Louis Day of .NET that I am going to give away. That means you have a chance to go for free, you don’t have to pay the $200 entry fee, but here’s the deal. You need to earn the free entry!

To get the free entry you need to write a blog post about what you are most interested in seeing/learning (choosing from the list of sessions) at the event next Friday and Saturday.

Once you’ve blogged about it, post the URL to your blog post in the comments here on my blog. You must post your blog by Monday at 5pm PDT, and from those submissions I will randomly choose one who will get to go to the event for free.

Remember, the entry fee covers the event, and even food (breakfast/lunch both days) at the event!

Of the remaining submissions I will pick 5 randomly, to get access to a discount code, saving you $75 off the $200 entry fee.

Now for the rules. Bribery won’t work, so you don’t have to say you are most excited about seeing my sessions at the event next week (though you can definitely choose those).

Hope to see you in St. Louis! For more information about the event check out http://www.stlouisdayofdotnet.com/

Just over two weeks ago I blogged about a new offering in my role of Director of Training for DotNetNuke Corp. We announced that we were going to start offering some free DotNetNuke training in addition to our instructor led training courses that we’ve been offering since May.