Edit:

A fix for the problem caused by DNN 4.4.0 has just been released on SnowCovered. The new version of Aggregator, 4.0.3 should only be installed on DNN 4.4.0 or higher. For all versions of DNN 4.x below 4.4.0, please install Aggregator 4.0.2. Thanks to everyone who provided testing.

Original:
The current version of Aggregator, v 4.0.2 has a small problem in DNN 4.4.0. When you save your Aggregator setup, an error is thrown (DotNetNuke.Common.Utilities.DataCache.ClearTabCache(Int32, Int32)).

I'm working on a fix for it as we speak. The work around is to just refresh the page after you save your settings. That should clear the error and everything should be fine. The error happens after the settings are saved so anything you put into the Aggregator should be there.

I should have a fix posted by the start of the week.

Well after much work and testing I've released the latest version of Aggregator tonight. Here are the details:

Aggregator (Tabbed Modules) is a flexible module that acts as a tabbed container or localization container for 1 or more modules.

New to version 4.0 (DNN3,DNN4 only):

Multiple modules per tab

• Choose the 'Add new tab from module' option to pick a module and have it add the tab and module at the same time
• You can insert a break after any module to move it down below the previous module for positioning

Localization

• Any tab or module can be defined specific to a locale so it only shows for users in that locale.
• All locales (the default) shows always
• Fallback locale only shows if it's only module or tab left after deciding on whether to show any specific locales. For instance, you could have an NL-NL tab and a Fallback tab. If you were logged in as NL-NL locale then it would only show the NL-NL tab, the fallback would not be shown. Conversely, if you are logged in as anything other than NL-NL, then it would only show the fallback tab

Prev/Next

• If this option is selected, then Prev/Next buttons will be shown. To change the Prev/Next text, edit the App_LocalResources/Aggregator.ascx.resx file (for English) or it's localized alternative for other languages
  

Hide Single Tabs

• If this option is selected and there ever happens to be a single tab (either because only 1 tab is defined or 1 tab is left after the localizations are determined) then the tab will not be shown essentially making it appear as a normal module. This is useful if you wanted to localize a text/html module for 5 different locales. You could add a single tab, add 5 text/html modules each for a different locale (actually 4 locales and a fallback) and when it is rendered, you wouldn't see a tab at all just the specific text/html module that applies to the locale of the user

Tab Skin

• Skinning has been simplified with the use of a skins directory beneath the DestopModules/DNNStuff - Aggregator folder. Each folder below that is a skin, and includes subfolders for Top,Bottom,Left,Right and Inline. The skin has to have a styles.css file and any images it needs in these folders. The most complex example of this would be the BlueSteel skin. This will make it much easier to bundle skins together and deploy them without having to edit a module.css file etc.
• The old 'theme' skinning syntax still works and if you upgrade from an older version it will maintain this setting although you have the option to override to the new skinning ability

Active Hover

• If this option is selected, the tabs will be automatically selected whenever the user hovers over them. Your users will absolutely love this feature!!!

Well, after putting it off for as long as possible I finally decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the site to DNN 3.2 last night. I had been running on DNN 2.1.2 for well over a year and although it was very stable it was time for me to put DNN 2 to bed. As of now, I will only be releasing new modules in DNN3 or DNN4. I will continue to release critical bug fixes for any existing DNN2 module owners but the DNN2 modules will not receive any upgrades in functionality.

One lessson I learned through this upgrade experience was, "When you purchase a module, purchase the source so you aren't left out in the cold." I had purchased a few modules that could not be upgraded due to a now non existant supplier and had to either remove the functionality from the site or find a new module that replicated the functionality. Purchase modules from developers that are in it for the long haul and not those with a passing fancy to make a quick buck. You may save a little time and money at the beginning but in the long run it'll end up costing you in time and aggravation when the next upgrade comes along.

That said, I'm shopping around for a new forum module now and will hopefully be saving the existing content and getting it back up soon. Also, I'm planning on replacing the Free Text Box with something else because it continues to give me nothing but grief.

Also, there may have been a few lost user accounts along the way. I am working on restoring the remaining accounts. If you are one of the unlucky ones and need access immediately, please re-register. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Note: All user accounts have now been restored!

Well, onwards and upwards. I'm looking forward to finally utilizing some of the increased functionality of DNN 3.2 and maybe in a couple years I'll upgrade to DNN 4 :)

The Google ™ Analytics module  is a non visual utility module that allows you to easily add the Google ™ Analytics  tracking javascript to all pages of your portal. This module does not perform tracking or reporting of any kind, it merely allows you to easily add the javascript required by Google Analytics so that Google Analytics may track your page hits, visitors etc.

Google ™ Analytics tracking is a free service from Google ™ and can be found at http://www.google.com/analytics/. The service is encountering some growing pains due to the overwhelming demand and you may not be able to sign up right away. If you can't sign up, there is a notification form you can fill out and you will be notified when they are accepting new accounts. I think this will only be a temporary problem though.

Since the release of DNN 3.2 and DNN 4.0, I have been testing all of my modules. Everything worked as planned except I was having troubles uploading the Aggregator and Module Rotator module in DNN 4.0. The error I was getting was  ExceptionSystem.ObjectDisposedException: Cannot access a closed file. at System.IO.__Error.FileNotOpen(). The solution that seems to work is to add the requestLengthDiskThreshold attribute to the httpRuntime in web.config.

 requestLengthDiskThreshold="8192" />

Since getting that upload problem worked through, I've been able to test in DNN 4.0 and all of the modules are working fine. If anyone has a problem installing anything, please provide details and post in the forums and we'll see what we can do to help you out.

DNNStuff is pleased to announce the release of an exciting new module named 'Module Rotator'.

Module Rotator is a versatile module that allows you to rotate the content of multiple modules in the space of a single module.

Features include:

• Both DNN2 and DNN3 versions included! Double the value!!
• Saves valuable screen real estate by rotating any number of DotNetNuke modules within a single module
• Hide the titles of all the rotated modules with a single setting

There are two modes of operation:

Timer (Client Side):

• Choose the timer option and pick the duration in milliseconds.
• Rotation happens on the client so no ugly postbacks are necessary to show the content
• An optional setting allows the rotation to pause when a user hovers over the show module

Non Timer (Server Side):

• Rotation to the next module happens only when a postback is made
• Quicker inital loading because only the shown module is rendered

Security:

• Rights mimic the modules they contain and will only show if the user has the proper privileges

Samples:

• Take a look at the sample page for just a few of the many looks you can achieve.

Demo:

• There is a fully functional demo available upon registration. The only exception being that it will only operate on localhost webs.
  

I'm pleased to announce that I have just released a new version of the Aggregator module for DotNetNuke 2 and DotNetNuke 3.

New features include:

• Both DNN2 and DNN3 versions are included now! Double the value!!
• Nested tabs - Aggregator modules may be nested within each other for a multi-level drill down effect (See sample here)
• Customized captions - Tab captions can be individually customized with images, text or replacement text using predefined tokens
• Caption tokens include
  • [DNN:IMAGEURL] = ~/images/
  • [DNN:PORTAL.PORTALID] = PortalId
  • [DNN:PORTAL.PORTALNAME] = PortalName
  • [DNN:MODULE.MODULEID] = ModuleId
  • [DNN:MODULE.MODULETITLE] = ModuleTitle
  • [DNN:TAB.TABID] = TabId
  • [DNN:TAB.TABNAME] = TabName
  • [DNN:USER.USERID] = UserId
  • [DNN:USER.FULLNAME] = FullName
  • [DNN:USER.USERNAME] = UserName
  • [QUERYSTRING:var] = 'var' from QueryString  

Existing customers should receive a patch notification through SnowCovered for a new set of PA's or Source depending on the version purchased.

I've updated the Intermodule Communication sample and posted the Private Assembly and Source Code for DotNetNuke 3.

If there are any other samples that you'd like to see posted or any of your own you'd like to share, please contact me.

Rodney of dumbTV.com Smart-Thinker.com sent me a link to his site today. Over the weekend he changed around his entire site to rely more heavily on the space saving features of the Aggregator module. While you're visiting, check out his new Smart Thinker Events module which allows you to handle event booking and invitations online.

Thanks Rodney. Looks great!

ED. Rodney has changed from dumbTV.com to Smart-Thinker.com

A new Aggregator theme named 'Square' has just been posted on the Aggregator - Samples page. This sample demonstrates how to use CSS to include some additional graphics to your tabs using the background and background-position properties.

Robb Anderson from JustNorth sent me a link yesterday to show me how he's using the Aggregator module. Robb has a lot of content on his site and I like the way he's used it to group all of his links in categories as an alternate means of navigation.

Thanks for the link Robb. If anyone else is using the Aggregator module on their site and would like to show how they've used it, send me an email and I'll try and get it up here.

Here's another happy Aggregator user! Brian Reisman says "One of a small list of modules that should be part of every DotNetNuke portal!". Brian is using the Aggregator module in three different spots on his JoltCoder site, and has just recently released a new Amazon Ads module which looks great.

If you're an Aggregator user and want to show off what you've done with it, please send me a note and I'll try and get the word out.

Today we have our first user contributed theme named Apple from ARTO, Harold Schaepkens (http://www.artro.nl).

Harold writes: “.. just bought your module. It works perfect.” Thanks Harold! It's always great to hear feedback from users of the Aggregator module.

Here's a sample screen snap and you can pick it up over on the Aggregator Samples page.

This morning I released an updated version of the Aggregator module for DNN3.

As promised, all purchasers of the DNN2 version on record as of last night (3/15/2005) will be receiving a free copy of the DNN3 version later tonight through email. Thank you to everyone who has been so patient and supportive. Also, a special thanks goes out to Erik van Ballegoij who supplied me with a Dutch localization.

If anyone else would like to provide localization for their language, please contact me and I'll send you the required strings that need converting.

Now that this version is out, I will be concentrating on upgrading the functionality of both versions to include some new features that have been requested.

In the move to DotNetNuke 3.x, the core team has decided to support the new membership provider API that Microsoft is introducing in ASP 2.0. The new model brings enhanced functionality and extensibility to DotNetNuke, but it also removes much of the profile data from the Users table to a new table named aspnet_Profile. This has essentially removed access to this data from SQL queries and joins because it is no longer stored in individual fields like in DNN 2, but now resides in a blob type field instead. This article will show you how to get it back !

Back by popular demand, the Aggregator module is on sale for the month of February. You can purchase the private assembly for only $29.95 (a 25% saving) or the private assembly plus full source code for $59.95 (a 25% saving).

In addition to the DotNetNuke 2 module, you will also receive a free upgrade to the DotNetNuke 3 version as soon as DNN3 goes live. If you're developing DNN3 sites now, I will personally send you a beta version of Aggregator for DNN3 by request after purchase.

I'd like to extend wishes of health, happiness and success to everyone for 2005. Thanks to everyone who made 2004 a great year.

I was over at the DotNetNuke site this morning and noticed they were using version 3.0.8. Although they haven't announced it on their homepage yet, if you go to the download section you'll be able to grab it. Even though the core team has been going like crazy fixing bugs, hopefully with the holiday season over, the official release won't be too far away.

There are a couple of new samples posted on the SQLView Samples page. One shows how you can find out when you were last Googled and the other one shows who the top referrers to your site are for the last 6 hours. If you want to vary the time span just replace 360 with the number of minutes you are interested in.

Does anyone have any interesting queries they are using for DNN administrative reports?

The CSS Include module has been ported to the new DotNetNuke 3 format and provided as a free member download. This is a straight port from the existing module with a few minor differences. In the previous version, there was a separate menu entry to maintain the CSS file that would be included. This has been removed and placed directly into the module settings dialog since the new DNN3 architecture now allows me to do that. The module has also been localized as per the official DNN spec but alas only in English at this time. Since there is no visible user element to this module, it was probably overkill to localize it but I wanted to work through the process none the less.

If you've been noticing that the modules you are placing inside the Aggregator module are getting cut off on the right side in IE, here's a little remedy.

When you choose the 'Auto Hide Titles' option, your module is rendered within the default 'notitle.ascx' 'no container.ascx' container located in the \portals\_default\containers\_default folder. Open up 'notitle.ascx' 'no container.ascx' in a text editor and you'll see that the table width is set to '100%'. When I changed mine to '99%', the right border of my content pane seemed to behave properly and not extend beyond the enclosing

Tonight I got a little inspired by a colour combination that I thought looked nice over at Silverlabs. I made a couple of changes including adding some Mozilla specific css for rounded corners and pushed the tabs to the right.

You can find it over on the Aggregator Samples page.

The price of the Aggregator module has been reduced for the month of December to $29.95 for the private assembly and $69.95 for the private assembly plus full source code. This also includes a free upgrade to the DotNetNuke 3 version soon after the full public release plus free gift wrapping :)

I've released a new version of SQLView, a free DotNetNuke module, tonight which includes a number of requested enhancements.

• added support for paging
• pager position (top,bottom or both)�
• pager type (numeric, prev/next)
• pager style
• rows per page
• added styles for header/footer text areas
• added an initial 'order by' clause setting if sorting is enabled
• fixed sorting bug if column titles contained spaces

Well, it was a little off target but the first public beta of DotNetNuke 3.0 (3.04 actually) is finally out. I've been testing the previous betas in the 30 for 3.0 program and I can tell you first hand that the core development team has done a fantastic job in moving this ahead. There are many, many enhancements for both users and developers in this release.

I will post updates to all my components as soon as I can. Because of the namespace changes and other things, none of the 2.x components you have will work in DNN 3.0 without changes.