DNN 5 Beta Part 1

I know I know it’s a beta – it’s important to understand that when in beta mode, things are not all going to work well, but with an open mind, a couple of hours up my sleeve, I thought I’d see what could be done with it.

Firstly – the installation worked as expected.  The wizard stepped through flawlessly, as you would expect, and the permissions tested nicely without a hitch.

I’ve created some screen shots of the process to give you all a first hand view of what the dnn beta install looks like.  And for those who are interested to see how it ended up – http://www.dnnbeta.com is the place to go.  I use this URL for testing, and because I’m interested in seeing what marvels we can expect in this revolutionary relase, I felt it important to try it out.

It was made available to vendors of the DNN Marketplace.  I don’t have anything on there but my sources do and they were happy to share for me to give my opinion.

After I got the site installed and running, I thought I’d take a look around at the usual places – you know – Host Settings, Admin Settings, Page Settings, Module Settings – to see what little features and goodies have made their way into the build for the much talked about Cambrian release.

Handy settings for quick snapshot on the configuration in the Host Settings page.

As promised, easier management for header types – handled in the Host Settings – as shown giving an option of transitional, strict and legacy – and I would assume that this would be able to be modified from a resources file somewhere for those wanting more options.

You’ll also see there is an option for allowing the ‘remember me’ check box for the login controls.  I wonder if this is just something for administrators to turn off when they are totally mad about the fact it doesn’t remember even when it should. :-;

When viewing the settings in as Host under the Admin Settings / other area, you’ll see now a whole new range of modules where all the administrator modules are now listed in the dropdown list, but most are only visible as host when you are logged in.

I was initially a bit confused about how this works, as even though they are listed there, I can only see them when logged in as host, and you need to change the permissions for the administrator to view them as well.

To do this – it’s under a new tab called EXTENSIONS – which handles everything – skins, modules, skinobjects – etc.

So from the host settings perspective, these were the main changes I picked up as I first looked around the site.  I’m sure there were other things I may have missed, or perhaps aren’t in there yet, but since I primarily wanted to see if I could actually install something or get a skin working, so I simply took a few snaps along the way for interests sake.

There is the new sections with the extension management, but it scares me – to be honest… it looks like you can delete every module. I’m hoping that’s not the case.

There are two different places you can install modules from based on how I first understood things.  I was able to install modules from both – so not sure just yet on how it all works, but the Extensions location is the new place for installing the modules that are found in root/install/modules/ folder – you know the ones with the .resources extension – that’s where they re now.

There is a wizard now that steps you through the process of the install, I’ll provide some screen shots on them in the next few days.

Now, I want to tell you that I spent about three hours on this and found the beta was just a little too flaky for my liking.

I was unable to get a skin installed and working.  I have broken the site somewhat and will need to ftp some files to overwrite the skins and am concerned that if you develop skins in anything but the HTML method, you could be in for a hard time unless the legacy skin behaviour is better than what this was.  

I expect this is just because it’s a beta.  I was hoping to see the new skin  – here’s a snapshot of it here -  It should be quite slick when it’s completed and hopefully the project team brings out something that is compliant by default – it will be interesting times.

 Interestingly – there was not text html module that worked – which could be why the initial install only had the links module and the media module working.

However, after installing the latest version of the Scott’s Article Module – I was able to add some text through the editor – Interestingly enough – the module wouldn’t show the editor for the introduction but showed it for the full description. I don’t know why.

Installing PageBlaster and the Snapsis menu didn’t break the site which was great news, but menu doesn’t actually work.  The skin uploaded, but there was no menu on anything.  Nothing in the logs to show why it wouldn’t work, it just didn’t.

I installed a solpart menu skin – but that broke entirely- the name change – solpartmenu.ascx is in fact menu.ascx – it works in 4.8 skins but not in 5.

I installed a nav menu skin but none of that worked – but wonder if that has something to do with the name changes in the css that will occur – I need to investigate that.

All the containers were broken and in fact that’s where I had to leave it – once I logged out, I’m unable to log back in again until I overwrite those files.

I’ll post some screenies and more information over the next few days so if you’re not wanting to try but want to check it out, then you can at least get an idea.

So my first impressions – good with the fact it actually installed first time without error – I think that is a big challenge.

Overall, well, I’m waiting for the ‘WOW’ factor and because so many things didn’t work as expected, and I know it’s in beta, but I will reserve my judgement on this until I explore a few things more. 

So there you have it – Part 1 – the Host Settings space – Next I’ll cover the ‘Extensions’ experience.

Nina Meiers

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