Most Informative – DNNSKINS

DotNetNuke Community Choice Awards

XD Design Most Informative Website Finalist  – DNNSKINS

Well, can you imagine my feelings when my own project DNNSKINS.com was nominated as a finalist in this competition. I was quite excited and honoured because there are quite a few sites around built on the DNN platform that offer information the public, so it was good to see that our very busy website made the cut.

I will share some information about this website for those who may not know and help you understand how and why we manage things in this fashion because it is slightly different to many of the download sites that are around, and there was a balance between actually being able to manage things without needing a large team of authors and editors and technical people. To a certain point, perhaps the actual structure doens’t make it as easy to engage other participants, but as DNN changes, we are now able to look at other methods of providing community information that is able to suit our style of site management.

I used to have lots of free skins on http://www.xd.com.au, but I found that it was somewhat confusing for people coming to my website who were not DNN savvy and had no idea what to expect, and the domain name XD didn’t have any relationship with the product when you think about it. I didn’t own dnnskins.com at the time, it was owned by Josh Weinstein who was a part of the core team and was started back in 2003 with great gusto. And it was at the time, fairly self sustaining where people could upload skins, write about them and people could download and comment on them.

This all sounds great, but as it grew, and DNN grew, it got very difficult to manage, and updating, intial interest by those who put skins online waned a little, and what happened was as DNN grew and changed, the skins didn’t. There was the challenge of getting an online store working within DNN – which didn’t ever eventuate on DNNSkins because to be honest, DNN wasn’t as stable and robust as it is now, and we had a period of very difficult times over the years, in particular – DNN 1 >DNN 2 – where skinning became a reality, then, the horror years where DNN 2 became DNN 3. I think that was the most painful time because while it wasn’t a rewrite of DNN, it might as well been with the problems of moving the project forward and when I acquired DNNSkins a few years ago, it was built on the DNN 1 framework. Most of the skins were for DNN 2, and we were already on DNN 3 and the skins weren’t compatible, no one was supporting them because they were busy, not interested, not there any more, different focus, whatever… the point is I needed to review how to move forward with something that was very close to my heart.

I’ve been an advocate of providing a level of free information and products to the community because I love the project and since I can’t write code, I turned my skills to skinning. And while I am not by any means a javscript or css guru, it’s the understanding of DNN as well as a very good knowledge of skinning that I feel sets XD Design apart from others when it comes to offering skinning solutions. We dont’ take short cuts, no matter how much I would love to, I feel it would simply come back and bite us with support issues which we don’t have the infrastructure or desire in handling. EG.. do it once, do it right so, so while we’re not the cheapest, we certainly give exceptional value for money by way of advice along the way and really beautiful skins that our clients never seem to have problems with.

So, having said that, let’s look at why dnnskins.com is like it is… XD Design is a very lightweight boutique style business, we don’t employ staff we don’t need when we can contract out to the best developers in the world, quality projects and work with them on delivering solutions. But the downside to that is we don’t have lots of staff on hand to ‘manage’ sites and most of it is done by me. I personally manage too many sites and have found that it has come back to haunt me when I can’t be in 5 places at once, so last year, after getting a new accountant, some good advice and a couple of the ‘right staff’ set about making changes to how we handle things.

It meant that I had to do things differently in the handling of our free skins and while for some it seems a bit odd, we use a shopping cart by Catalook, setup as a gallery where people can browse, pick and choose their skins, add to cart, then check out and download. I did this because it meant I could manage the products online through importing rather than individually managing each product and, if someone wants to put a skin online, they can, as we have the setup to allow others to upload skins and put them online for free.

We also had to redo every single skin we had in the upgrade path between dnn 2, dnn 3 & 4, and earlier this year, redid every single skin we had to dnn 5 and are at the stage of not doing any more skins for dnn 4 to be able to extend what we can do because managing these skins and uploading them is quite a challenge. We have over 300 files online of both free and commercial skins and have segmented them where possible to make finding them easy.

I wasn’t sure of what people wanted or if people really cared about what they downloaded, in as much as how much was the community growing and was finding that it was a very one sided website as it seemed that all people would do is log in and download a skin, without me knowing much about what it was people were looking for.

It was then I thought – how do I ask and interact with people and find out what they’re after, and then decided that I would provide an incentive, not by way of money, but effort to see if people really were around wanting to download skins or should I perhaps be looking at scaling this back and just leaving it, as so many other sites end up going. DNNSKINS.com has more users than any other project out side the dotnetnuke.com website. I would love to talk my subscribers more, but have really struggled with finding robust and affordable email solutions. For me to email users on a regular basis, if I had a paid product like constant contact or exacta or mailchip would cost me literally thousands each month and for a free site it just isn’t feasible and this mail problem is the main reason we dont’ send out mail on a more regular basis. Having said that, we have a new client coming on board where we will be sending close to 1 million email per month so we have built a new server, and when that has been rolled out, then I expect that to be our next change – more regular updates. I think sometimes people are not aware of the logistics of managing sites and data and information like this. At XD Design we handle alot of data and alas, on our beautiful dnnskins site which is my pet love and project, it can be frustrating sometimes for me to simply have to put things on the back burner to manage the ‘paying’ projects. So I digressed a littled but you have more insight now as to some of the innerworkings of our sites.

Anyway- I thought – how about a facebook page.. what is the purpose of it? Well, I thought – if you want something, talk to me, show me if you’re interested, so I know. I don’t want a site filled with google ads and things not relevant to the audience.. but I need to know what you want .. The facebook fans page really worked out well. I said for every 20 fans we get, we’ll put on a free skin, and the fans have come, voiced their opinions, we listened and now, we have over 500 fans and interesting interation .. and I’m sure alot of ‘lurkers’ who watch and see what Nina comes up with next. It’s not orthodox in how we do things, and I do not apologise for that, and our next step is to send out a simple email to our users and ask them about put in a vote for our site, and what their feelings are if the next lot of free skins we put online are only dnn 5. We have 6 new skins to put online to keep up with our fans page, but need to streamline the work involved and rather than change it to be 1 free skin for every 50 users, which we package for dnn 4 & dnn 5, can we move to keeping 1 free skin for every 20 fans and only for dnn 5. That would really assist us in the skinning, packaging and deployment. We would also like to start working with some of the cool widgets that dnn 5 can offer, but as you can imagine, we have to draw a line somewhere.

We have found the catalook store is quite a nice solution for us, but have found that we have so many nice FREE dnn skins online that it’s not much incentive for people to buy them, because I’m hearing this … “Nina – it’s not that we dont’ like your work, but there are so many good quality skins for free we dont’ need to buy anything to solve a problem”… and.. Our free work is much better than over half the skins for sale on snowcovered… but in reality, our new free skins are just nice looking css skins that we have converted and are quite lightweight and minimal in size but give our members the ability to start with something.

We use the active forums module for forums, but dont’ get that many posts, and not sure why, except that I think dnnskins.com really is the premier location to download skins and pick up some tips and information. That also reflects the articles we have online.. they are focussed towards the audience we have and as much as I’d love to put more online, I get a terrible dose of… ‘what do people want to hear’ … and difficulty at times in how to explain how things are done without a combination of video and audio.

I hope you have enjoyed this overview on this project which I really do love working with, and if I had I never had to worry about paying my bills, I think I’d dedicate much more time to this site, but you know the old story- you do what you can do with the time you have. I am very grateful I have a wonderful husband who understands why I’m awake at 2am in the morning sometimes.

Thanks for reading this – I’ll have our ecommerce sites overview next and if you love this site as much as I do please support it by voting for it in the competition.

Nina Meiers

http://www.xd.com.au

XD Design Most Informative Website Finalist  – Oamps Insurance

This website was a pleasure to do. Most sites are, but this website in particular gave us the opportunity to work with a developer company who were still learning the ins and outs of building out a dnn portal. This particular project was created and built on the XD hosting environment, and then packaged for deployment on the developers staging server, and then to the live location where it currently resides and, is actively updated.

The purpose of this project was to provide a company the ability to self manage their sites and manage the many clubs and associations they support, and DotNetNuke with it’s incredibly robust portal replication, was the perfect choice. As I observe the progess of this company and how they have encompassed all the power DNN has to offer, I can’t help but be impressed. As you can see, either by these screen shots or visiting this site, they have maintained an element of the ‘global look and feel’ of their child sites, but given each a unique and tailored look. We setup a primary portal which contains all the day to day company information they require, but being active and supportive in many sporting associations throughout Australia,

This was one of few sites I’ve worked on where we were able to have complete say over the structure and implementation and our advice, after consultation and questions were taken on board, so that now, after handover, the site is update by their staff and remains elegant and consistent throughout. I have seen a couple of small glitches now and again, but they are quickly rectified once the site administrators have simply gone back and looked at the original setup to follow.

That’s what I love about DotNetNuke. It’s much more forgiving and flexible than people realise and XD Design offer very structured and tailored support on our projects, so, when we have a specific style or method of use of a particular module, we’re able to advise clients on how to manage it in relation to their site. By that I mean, adding images to DotNetNuke, sometimes we have specific classes assigned to them to allow them to be displayed in a specific way that meets the marketing team’s demands, but have to advise the web adminstrators on the techniques we have setup for them so they can comfortably update their website without the need to call us each time. There are quirks that are not always related to DNN in how imformation is displayed

So simply by providing this company with a professional tailored setup, the reseller was able to provide an incredibly slick solution. They used our expertiese and judgement on how best to deploy the project and the end result is a stunning solution that allows many sporting associations the ability to be represented online wherebye the have an overview of the type of insurance offered in relation to that particular association, the logo of the association to allow familiarity when a person visits that website, including primary contacts, phone numbers, claim forms and an overview of services / insurance that affects the particular association represented on that portal. A link to the club’s website is also provide, so with the logo, link and images of the sport/association, it gives further assurance and confidence to the site visitor they are in the right place.

All of this was made possible by XD Design providing the advice and portal build that would allow for consistent delivery of information, structured branding and look and feel, ease of maintenance and management, and, efficiency. At XD Design, we run lean and green installs and we have NEVER had an instance where our clients have complained about speed. We squeeze every bit of bloat and unrequired ‘stuff’ from the site to make the whole team love working on their websites. So if you’re DotNetNuke website is running slow, then perhaps you need to visit us..

Some of the modules we used were, once again, our favourite Ventrian News Articles module, html, a custom employment module, customised Inventua menu and of course the Snapsis CSS Menu, all of these module developers still supporting the DotNetNuke community with commercial products that make it possible for people like myself, who are not developers, to build great solutions.

At the completion of the job, we packaged the whole portal and database up, where the developers were simply able to attach and deploy a live site with very little handling on their side and we do many projects like this because we are setup and geared to handle DNN in the most efficient manner and turn solutions around quickly and we know when we deliver, the sites work, without error, and therefore it leaves the end user (client) with very little requirements to actually get the site to go live. And when there has been an issue, the deployment, go live date for the project is not hindered by unforseen technical issues as there have been several occasions where we have hosted the live sites until technical problems are resolved. This is another part of the incredible service and value for money we give clients and with XD Design, the problems stop here. We are known for solving problems, not being the cause of them.

So, here you have another insight to how we handle DotNetNuke and the end results and why our websites are Finalist worthy!! Please vote for us if you think this website really does meet your expections of what a good information site is about.

Nina Meiers
http://www.xd.com.au

This site was one done for a reseller who orignally came from a php background, familiar with xmod and tried out joomla first before seeking our advice on how to get a site to look as his customer expected. We didn’t have anything personally to do with the customer directly and all matters regarding design and implementation were done through our reseller.

From the onset, we knew the job was going to be a challenge as the designer in mind has a vision on how the site should operate and look, one completed.

The project was very challenging and at times we had to redo things several times over until we got the finer details right, but once we had set the ‘agreed requirements’ in place, it was smoother sailing, although even right to the end, alot of time was spent in getting the details right.

Unfortunately, we were not able to give the 100% compliant thumbs up, and that was something I would loved to have taken to the next level, but alas, when the money runs out, the money runs out and it was decided that the look and feel of the package was more important from the designers perspective.

There are some unique elements to this project that I’ve not done before or since, and I never get tired of looking at this elegant, subtle yet quite cleverly put together website.

With a mix of some hard coded elements, customised login controls, css trickery (I call it that when you have to push CSS just that little bit further that you really like to), we were able to and after evaluating the clients requirements, set about working with the configuring the job appliction page with one of our favourite modules – Property Agent – from Ventrian – and guys, this is a must have subscription for marketers, resellers, developers and end users alike. We love this module and have use it extensively in our projects. You should too!

Some of the finer details I would like to share with you, that were requested by this client include incredibly tight colour coding. As you can see with the selected colours of Red, Blue & Green, every section of the site was carefully colour matched and no detail was spared in getting the icons, bullet points, flash, branding, you name it.

Multiple skins were required to achieve the final result and a mix of menus including the inventua side and top menu which worked well with their ability to be coded elegantly with css to get the look and feel the client was after.

The designer of the website provided a set of guidelines, and to be honest, there wasn’t much flexibility at all – somewhat demanding and interestingly enough, DNN was the choice for this php based company because there were unable to get the look and feel provided by the designer using their other solutions.

The designer was also a Mac dude.. who only ever looked at things in Safari – and that was also a challenge, because a while ago, Safari wasn’t as good as it is now, so we had the added overhead of browsers to contend with and when tweaking and working with CSS as much as we did, it does become somewhat fragile.

After seeing that this could cause some issues, we set about tightening and toughening up the skin to allow the web administrators to add content without fainting and with some instructions and modifications to the html editor were able to deliver something that the non technical owner was able to use.

Overall, this site, although subtle and light, is incredibly unique in it’s overall result with an eye for detail on all aspects of the different areas, talent, foundation and evolution. Unique, consistent and incredibly clever in how it’s been put together.

Here is a quick overview

• Individual Flash
• Extensive and individual CSS
• Clickable menu bars
• Customised menus
• Customised Login control
• Customised Editor

This really was a beautiful website and the clients are very happy with it and enjoy the features and functionality that DotNetNuke has enabled them to have. It was also quite satisfying to know that DNN was chosen above the resellers normal xmod and joomla platform to provide their customer with a solution they simply did not want to compromise on.

I hope you have enjoyed this overview.

Nina Meiers