I have been using the Dynamic User Registration module over the past week for a job I am working on.   The module is put out by Data Springs and is pretty sharp.   I did find a bit of a bug in it, but after spending an afternoon shooting emails back and forth with the developer he got me patch to fix the problem.

The module really does allow for some neat setup of user registration scenarios.

If you are needing a unique registration process or just needing a way to do some dynamic role additions for users, etc, you should definately check out the demo of the module over at DataSprings.com.

I have created a private assembly that will create a module out of the Newsletter feature that is only available to Administrators in Dotnetnuke.

This solution is pretty straight forward, however, due to the way that Dotnetnuke handles the creation of modules via Private Assembly it takes an extra step to get working.  I am hoping to come up with a normal install routine soon, but for the time being this should suffice.

Download and Install the Newsletter PA that I created here. Once you have installed the module you need to go to the SQL page under Host and execute the script below UPDATE {databaseOwner}{objectQualifier}ModuleControls SET  ControlSrc = 'Admin/Users/BulkEmail.ascx' WHERE ControlSrc = 'DesktopModules/Hilbert Solutions, LLC - Newsletter/Admin/Users/BulkEmail.ascx' That is it, now you will have a module called Newsletter that you can use on any page you want. ...

Read More »

Here is how to change the text of the password failure in Dotnetnuke:

The password specified is invalid. Please specify a valid password. Passwords must be at least 8 characters in length and contain at least 1 non-alphanumeric characters.

1. Host
2. Languages
3. Language Editor
4. Shared Resources
5. Locate the InvalidPassword.Text

If you want to directly manipulate this go to \App_GlobalResources\SharedResources.resx

Most User Profile fields can be changed through the User Profile management page available from the Settings menu on the User Account module.

However, a few profile fields which are required by DNN cannot be.  These fields include such fields as password, email, etc.

If you wish to change the text on these fields you need to head over to

1. Admin
2. Languages
3. Language Editor
4. Local Resources
5. Users
6. App_LocalResources
7. User
8. Locate the resource you wish to change

or browse and open the following file \admin\Users\App_LocalResources\User.ascx.resx

I recently had a client who had very precise requirements on passwords.   They wanted each password to be at least 8 characters long and contain at least one capital and one lower case alphabetic character, as well as at least on enumeric and one special character.

Dotnetnuke can handle all of these requirements but it took some researching to figure out how to exactly implement the changes.  

For all of these changes we are heading to the web.config for your Dotnetnuke install.

Locate the line of the configuration that starts with

We are going to modify the properties and add some additional properties for our needs.

First we are going to set the minRequiredPasswordLength="8" because that will meet the needs for each password to be at least 8 characters long.

Then we change minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="1" to 1 becuase that indicates we require at least one special character.

Finally, we add a regular expression that meets the other requirements passwordStrengthRegularExpression="(?=^.{6,10}$)(?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[!@#$%^&*()_+}{":;'?/>.<,])(?!.*\s).*$"...

Read More »

It was announced that Dotnetnuke 4.9.0 was released today.   In the next few weeks I will be migrating the site up to the new version.   I am not one to jump on new releases, as I like to let the bleeding edge people work out the bugs and issues.   4.9.0 does offer a number of security fixes and enhancements and I am eager to get my hands on it.   I usually download and install the latest releases into my development enviroment so I can take some time to see how it runs, run some tests and overall evaluate it before making it live.

Here is a quick tip to display one of those cool pages to people when they either try to get to a page on your site that doesn't exist or when something happens and an error occurs on your site.

Open up your web.config file Locate the line that starts wtih Set the mode equal to "On" Then create another attribute in the tag labeled "defaultRedirect="URLOfErrorPage" The tag will end up looking something like this Note: This only works for pages ending in aspx, for pages ending in something else you will need to either configure IIS or see if your web host provider offers the ability to configure custom error pages.

Or you can check out this great article by SEABlick Consulting regarding 301 redirects which you can easily use to setup 404 redirects http://seablick.com/blog/articletype/articleview/articleid/114/understanding-301-redirects.aspx

Read More »

You can add mandatory fields by doing the following:

1. Login as a user with at least admin privelages.
2. In the Admin menu click on User Accounts.
3. In the Module Settings menu for User Accounts click on "Manage Profile Properties"
4. In this window you can create new profile properties, specify their order and mark them as required.
5. Once done click the Apply Changes button.
6. Back at the User Accounts main module go to the Module Settings menu for User Accounts click on "User Settings"
7. Put a check next to "Require a valid Profile for Login".

That should do the trick.