DotNetNuke Tips Community

Part 6, Community Server to DotNetNuke Moving Forum replies and attachments

Chris Hammond

Monday, May 23, 2011 12:51 AM

This is the sixth post in a series of blog posts about converting from CommunityServer to DotNetNuke. It has been far too long since Part 5, apologies for that! A brief background: I had a number of websites running on CommunityServer 2.1, I decided it was finally time to ditch CommunityServer due to the change in their licensing model and pricing that made it not good for the small guy. This series of blog posts is about how to convert your CommunityServer based sites to DotNetNuke.

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Part 5, Moving Forum threads from CommunityServer to DotNetNuke

Chris Hammond

Sunday, February 06, 2011 12:47 AM

If you haven’t read the previous posts I would recommend that! This blog talks about CsToDNN_2.sql, and assumes you have already replaced the various strings discussed in Part 3. The CsToDNN_2.sql script is used to pull over the Forum threads, not replies, but the original threads themselves.

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INETA Community Champion, Take 2

Chris Hammond

Wednesday, July 07, 2010 12:53 AM

Last week sometime, perhaps the week before, I got an email from INETA reminding me to get my submissions in for the INETA Community Champions contest for Q2 2010. I last entered Community Champion info for the Q4 2008 contest, in which I was graciously awarded a prize. Being ineligible for a year after winning I failed to keep up with all my various entries.

So the recent email got me going, I thought, boy I hope I can pull all my Community-Credit.com data over to the INETA Community Champions program, to which I found out you can’t. The programs aren’t currently linked, as they once were. That was a shame as I am pretty good about getting all my community related activities into Community-Credit.com, even though David Silverlight has basically had the site shutdown for over a year now, I figured if he ever turned it back on I would be all set!

I figured I would just get my Community-Credit info from the website manually and manually put it into the INETA Community Champions program, no such luck on that either. Something on www.community-credit.com is hosed because you can’t pull up results for anything you’ve done since July of 2009, last month it was June of 2009, and next month it will be August of 2009.

So in comes the API for CC. I have a codeplex project I created long ago for a simple DotNetNuke module that works with community-credit.com, I host an instance of the module on my site (on a restricted page of course) so that I can quickly enter all my activities via the API, which makes all my forum posting on DotNetNuke.com very easy to track. So I got to thinking, I know that the website is busted, but I wonder if the API itself works?

A few code tweaks to my module (uploaded to codeplex, vs2010 project) and boom, I was able to easily pull back a list of all my community-credit submissions over a specified date range, even for time within the past 12 months.

Then it was just a matter of filtering through that list of info to get the INETA related activities, user group organization, newsletters, meetings, speaking engagements, etc. I had a busy year! Between moving to Colorado last August and starting a DotNetNuke user group in Denver, speaking there, at the Denver User Group, DevConnections last fall, then moving to California and starting up the Bay Area DNN User’s Group and presenting at the Toronto DNN User Group, I had a lot of submissions to get caught up on. I also realized I completely left out my sessions at SDN in The Netherlands last December!

Nonetheless, yesterday I was honored to receive an email from INETA telling me that I was once again a Community Champion

What is an INETA Community Champion? Check out their website for more info, http://www.inetachamps.com/ If you are active in the .NET development community I encourage you to get your submissions in for Q3 2010. It’s a lot easier to enter them over time, as you do activities, then it is at the last minute, trust me!

Thanks again to INETA for putting on the Champs program. I look forward to trying to keep my activities up to date so that the next time I’m eligible I’m ready and waiting!

PS- if you are interested in checking out my CommunityCredit module on codeplex feel free to get the source and start playing with it. It isn’t pretty, and you likely will need to remove the Engage: Publish reference that is in there. In a future release I will likely pull that out of the project completely. It’s the Blog engine that powers my website at www.chrishammond.com and I think I just came up with a better way to get the info into community-credit.com for my blog posts ;)

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Want to go to DevConnections for Free? Speak at DotNetNuke Connections

Chris Hammond

Monday, March 29, 2010 1:08 PM

So every year in November (for the past 3 years at least!) DotNetNuke has been part of the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year (2010) will be no different as DotNetNuke Connections is back (This year’s conference is scheduled for 11/1-11/4/2010) and guess what? I can tell you how to get to go to the conference for free! (travel to/from Las Vegas not included)

How, might you ask? Well if you didn’t know this already, people who are selected to give a presentations at DotNetNuke Connections are also given a free entry into the conference (likely a $1400-1500 value) and 4 nights lodging at the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel. If you’ve never stayed at the Mandalay Bay it is an awesome place, and it is also the location where DevConnections is held.

So what’s the catch? Well, you need to be selected to speak at the conference, and in order to do that you need to submit some topics! The Call For Speakers went out a few weeks ago, and is only open for another couple of days!

So here’s what you need to do. Come up with a list of ideas on what you would like to speak on. The topic front is wide open, you can submit as many topics as you like, I would hope that you would choose one related to DotNetNuke in order to increase your chances of being selected! Once you have your list of topics you should come up with descriptions for each of those topics.

You don’t need to go ahead and create the presentations yet, you may as well wait until you find out which topics are selected, then you can create the materials for those. I would suggest coming up with topics/descriptions on something you are interested in presenting on, it will make your life a lot easier when it comes to creating the materials and delivering them at the conference.

In order to maximize the value of things speakers will be selected for at least two sessions, so based on that information, if you only submit one topic you likely won’t get considered! You should submit many topics, more than you actually want to present, to increase your odds of getting selected.

What kind of topics is DotNetNuke Connections looking for? Everything DotNetNuke related! Don’t just think of this conference as one for developers, or one for designers, or one for administrators. DotNetNuke Connections is for everyone! So I encourage you to submit topics about anything relating to DNN, development, design, implementation, to other cool things you can see the platform used for.

What if I’ve never presented at a DotNetNuke Conference in the past? If you’ve never presented before don’t worry, for these conferences there is always the opportunity for new blood! Getting up in front of hundreds of your peers is a great experience.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity I’ve been given the past few years to present in Vegas and look forward to hopefully being selected to present again this year!

Why should I submit some topics for DotNetNuke Connections? To get in to the conference and four nights hotel for free! To gain the respect and admiration of your DotNetNuke peers. To show your boss that you are an expert in your field. It’s Vegas baby!

I encourage everyone to get your submissions in before March 31, 2010 when the Call For Speakers closes.