http://www.apptheory.comRSS feeds for AppTheory60http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/527/You-spin-me-right-roundhellip.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=527http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=527&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/527/You-spin-me-right-roundhellip.aspxAre you paying your agency to update your flash files on your site? If so, you could be getting taken...Ryan WoffordFri, 30 Oct 2009 20:23:07 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:527http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/526/Be-Careful-Applying-Permissions-between-Security-Groups-on-AWS-EC2.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=526http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=526&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/526/Be-Careful-Applying-Permissions-between-Security-Groups-on-AWS-EC2.aspxI have noticed that a couple of tutorials have gone into the basics for setting up DNN on AWS with two separate instances. One instance is the frontend web server and the other instance is a backend SQL server. Two security groups are created one for the Web server (WebGroup) and one for the SQL server (SQLGroup). This is a common setup that we have performed many times at AppTheory.Max SchneiderFri, 30 Oct 2009 19:38:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:526http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/524/AppTheory-at-Open-Force-lsquo09-Vegas.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=524http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=524&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/524/AppTheory-at-Open-Force-lsquo09-Vegas.aspxAppTheory will be at The DotNetNuke Open Force event again this year as an exhibitor. Come visit our booth!bryan andrewsMon, 26 Oct 2009 16:17:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:524http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/523/DotNetNuke-Gold-Partner.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=523http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=523&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/523/DotNetNuke-Gold-Partner.aspxAppTheory has joined the newly formed DotNetNuke Partner program at the Gold Level and is now an official reseller of the DotNetNuke Professional Product.bryan andrewsMon, 26 Oct 2009 16:07:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:523http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/522/DotNetNuke-SSL-Wild-Card-Certificates.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=522http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=522&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/522/DotNetNuke-SSL-Wild-Card-Certificates.aspxIn a previous blog I discussed how DotNetNuke can enforce SSL at the page level. Well, going a bit further into the SSL world within DotNetNuke uncovered a few more notes worth keeping in mind. First, you can utilize wild cart certificates using the built in DotNetNuke SSL implementation. To do this, go to Admin –> Set Settings (as host) and locate the SSL section and expand it. What you will see is similar to the screen shot below. You then need to set the SSL URL (the domain the certificate, standard or wildcard, is attached to). Setting the SSL URL will route all SSL requests to that domain (in the example, www.dnnforums.com). Setting the Standard URL will route all non-SSL requests to the domain (in the example, www.dnnforums.net). Now, the good news here is that with this setup, all my http requests get routed to my .net domain and all https requests get routed to my .com domain. After testing, I have verified it works fine and properly routes domains based on http and https. However, there is one slight issue here. It appears that when doing this the core took only the anonymous use case in here. What that means, if your domains are different you are going to be prompted for a login after a switch depending on which domain you are on (of course, this only matters if the domains are different like our example here). Hopefully, the core can be altered to add a cookie for this domain as well during the login process. Chris PaterraMon, 26 Oct 2009 14:49:08 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:522http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/525/Internet-Explorer-8-lsquoThe-XML-page-cannot-be-displayedrsquo-When-Rendering-Image-From-HttpHandler.aspx#Comments2http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=525http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=525&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/525/Internet-Explorer-8-lsquoThe-XML-page-cannot-be-displayedrsquo-When-Rendering-Image-From-HttpHandler.aspxRecently we noticed an issue on a clients site where images being rendered from an HttpHandler would display the following browser error in Internet Explorer 8 ONLY. The XML page cannot be displayed Cannot view XML input using style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.mydomain.com/mypagename.aspx'. Line... The image was rendered as expected in every other major browser we tested (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc). I did a quick code review and upon cursory inspection I did not notice anything out of sorts. Since this issue only occurred when the images where rendered via the HttpHandler and it only occurred in Internet Explorer my gut told me it was something in the response object content type that was not quite right. This is usually the kind of issue that takes quite a bit of time to track down and is very difficult to debug, but I guess I lucked out on this one. The issue was the Internet Media Type for the jpeg image format. Allow me to illustrate further, we had a switch that set a string variable ‘format’ based upon the image format.Scott SchecterSun, 25 Oct 2009 18:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:525http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/520/DotNetNuke-Telerik-amp-Ajax.aspx#Comments1http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=520http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=520&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/520/DotNetNuke-Telerik-amp-Ajax.aspxIf you have worked with Telerik you are probably familiar with the “RadAjax” component which is a part of the ASP.NET Controls suite from them. Generally, you throw a RadAjaxManager on your page/control and you are pretty much set to have full Ajax functionality in your application. From here you can include/exclude controls and add a loading panel that can be shared by all panels on the page. Finally, you code your application pretty much like before, adding business logic in Page Load and button click events, and poof you have a full ajaxified application. While this works pretty much the same in any DotNetNuke module, it is important to do two things in your module otherwise you may not get the results you expect. The first is to set the SupportsPartialRendering equal to true. If just starting, this is done from the module definition for the specific control. Otherwise, it is done from a node in your dnn manifest file for your module. Next, the other thing you need to do is on Page_Init of your control you need to place a script manager on the page (if Ajax is installed). You can do this using the following code: 1: If DotNetNuke.Framework.AJAX.IsInstalled Then 2: DotNetNuke.Framework.AJAX.RegisterScriptManager() 3: End IfOR: 1: if (DotNetNuke.Framework.AJAX.IsInstalled) { 2: DotNetNuke.Framework.AJAX.RegisterScriptManager(); 3: }Chris PaterraMon, 19 Oct 2009 14:47:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:520http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/519/Auto-Scaling-and-Elastic-Load-Balancing-with-Amazon-Elastic-Cloud-Computing.aspx#Comments1http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=519http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=519&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/519/Auto-Scaling-and-Elastic-Load-Balancing-with-Amazon-Elastic-Cloud-Computing.aspxLast week I talked about how AppTheory uses Amazon CloudWatch to help monitor our DNN instances on AWS EC2. CloudWatch also allows AWS EC2 users to enable Auto Scaling. Auto Scaling allows for the seamless scaling of Amazon EC2 instances “during demand spikes to maintain performance.” Auto Scaling also allows for an application to gracefully scale down “during demand lulls to minimize costs.Max SchneiderFri, 16 Oct 2009 21:40:43 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:519http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/518/How-can-DNN-promote-sustainability.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=518http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=518&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/518/How-can-DNN-promote-sustainability.aspxCan a website save the world?Ryan WoffordFri, 16 Oct 2009 17:29:04 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:518http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/517/CloudWatch-on-Amazon-Elastic-Cloud-Computing.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=517http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=517&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/517/CloudWatch-on-Amazon-Elastic-Cloud-Computing.aspxOne of the tools that I have been using for quick monitoring of the DNN web and SQL instances AppTheory manages at AWS is CloudWatch. CloudWatch is a monitoring system much like the taskmgr on your server that lets you see a quickly monitor your instances CPU, Disk Reads/Writes, In/out network traffic.Max SchneiderFri, 09 Oct 2009 19:39:16 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:517http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/516/A-Call-to-Action.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=516http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=516&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/516/A-Call-to-Action.aspxAre you drawing customers toward an action?Ryan WoffordThu, 08 Oct 2009 18:36:32 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:516http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/515/My-DotNetNuke-Core-Upgrade-Process-Simplified.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=515http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=515&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/515/My-DotNetNuke-Core-Upgrade-Process-Simplified.aspxThe first step in my process of testing a DotNetNuke upgrade is to get a duplicate copy of the site you are going to upgrade. This involves taking a copy of the file system, as well as the database and restoring them as  a new site. I always use the same names for the directory/virtual directory and database except I add “TEST_” as a prefix to clearly identify it. After I get everything copied, I then setup my new IIS virtual web server and assign it some new host headers (ie. test.domain.com) and make sure I have a nice robots.txt in the directory that blocks everything (. The next step is to add a portal alias directory into my PortalAlias table on in my database. Once we have this and the connection string in the web.config has been updated, we are ready to test the copied site to make sure everything is working PRIOR to attempting the upgrade (This is a minor but important detail I find most people overlook). Once I have the site loaded and I can login once as host I make sure my control panel is set to the core one (as sometimes we @ AppTheory use our own custom version) because sometimes this changes and will cause immediate errors after the upgrade and you can only fix directly in db, so take care of it now if you remember. One final thing before starting my upgrade, I generally take a backup of my new TEST_ database as well as my new TEST_ directory. This ensures that if my upgrade fails I can quickly roll back and save myself the time it would take to repeat the steps in the first paragraph. To continue, I download the appropriate upgrade package of DotNetNuke and unzip it onto the server. I then grab the release.config and use Beyond Compare to compare it to my copied web.config to see if anything has changed. If anything is different, I merge the changes and save the file as my new web.config for my TEST site. I then copy all files from the Upgrade package over top of my TEST site making sure to replace existing files and that I also replace the web.config with my merged one from the previous step. Now I call up my test URL in my browser and let the process begin. Once the installation finishes, save a copy of success/failure messages (especially if there is a failure) so you can reference it later. Remember, if you have SqlDataProvider install issues you can find those in your siteroot\Providers\DataProviders\SqlDataProvider folder. At this point, all you have left to do is update your modules, providers and any third party controls (so long as you didn’t have other install issues) and do lots of testing. Chris PaterraWed, 07 Oct 2009 20:44:28 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:515http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/514/MyListBasedControlItemsFindByValue-is-Case-Sensitive.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=514http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=514&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/514/MyListBasedControlItemsFindByValue-is-Case-Sensitive.aspxI had this one bite me the other day so I thought it would make a good blog post this week. I had the need to check a list based control’s items (in this case a drop down list) to see if a value was present or not. All my testing worked fine, however when pushed to production using the event log I was able to tell that it was not finding the value as I expected it to. My test data was all lower cased while production data had a mix. Doh! It was an easy enough fix and I bet I remember this next time; but hopefully it saves you some cycles.Scott SchecterSun, 04 Oct 2009 22:51:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:514http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/513/DotNetNuke-amp-Telerik-CSS-Clashes.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=513http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=513&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/513/DotNetNuke-amp-Telerik-CSS-Clashes.aspxThis week I was spending more time working with Telerik controls in DotNetNuke modules. While I may have several other future topics to discuss because of this, waiting on a response from Telerik before I do that though, I do have some useful information. Previously, I was using pre DNN 5.x releases to create modules. What I am about to touch on was never a problem in any of those versions. However, moving into DNN (and mainly, the new skin) I found one thing that really annoyed me. I kept seeing bullet points next to (on the left) my RadListBox. About a month or two ago I was working with RadUpload and saw a similar problem there but it went away after I played with some options/properties of that control. In the case of the RadListBox, nothing like this was available. After some research I found out it appears to be some CSS conflict in the Extropy skin (and the key here is I never thought of ‘bullet points’ as a search term).The correction is adding a class to your module.css: 1: .rlbItem 2: { 3: list-style-type:none !important; 4: } Chris PaterraSat, 03 Oct 2009 08:43:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:513http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/512/Let-DNN-manage-workflow.aspx#Comments0http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=512http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=512&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/512/Let-DNN-manage-workflow.aspxHow you can use AppTheory's content manager to solve workflow needs in your DotNetNuke content management system.Ryan WoffordFri, 02 Oct 2009 19:35:04 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:512http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/511/Tools-for-Monitoring-Performance-Issues-on-AWS-Instances.aspx#Comments1http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=411&ModuleID=1002&ArticleID=511http://www.apptheory.com/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=511&PortalID=2&TabID=411http://www.apptheory.com/DotNetNuke/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/511/Tools-for-Monitoring-Performance-Issues-on-AWS-Instances.aspxMysterious performance issues can occur with physical servers and virtual instances. I have been experiencing that issue with a client’s SQL server. This SQL server is the backend server for a couple of DNN web servers. The servers are all virtual instances on Amazon Web Services(AWS) Elastic Cloud Computing(EC2). One of my duties at AppTheory is to fix performance issues with client servers and instances. I thought a list of tools that can help detect and resolve performance issues would be handy. Here are the tools that I have used. AWS Tools : Cloud Watch – Allows for the monitoring of instances on AWS (CPU, Disk Activity, and Network) Diagnostic Tools – These command line tools require AWS Premium Support  and collect System and Network information (If you instances are in production sign up for AWS support) Windows Tools : Perfmon – Server tool that provides performance counters for Monitoring system Performance (Good for web servers, SQL servers you name it) Debug Diagnostic Tool – Great tool for troubleshooting hangs, slow performance, memory leaks, and crashes of processes. Special focus on IIS and COM+ SQL Profiler – Tool to monitor the performance of an SQL Server instance Log Parser 2.2 – Universal query access to txt files, XML files, CSV files, Event Log, Registry, file system, and AD. SQLdumper.exe – Generate dump files for SQL Server. SQLdiag Utility – General diagnostic collection utility that can be run from console or as a service. Process Explorer – Sysinternals answer to the Task Manager Sysinternals Utilities – Besides Process Explorer Sysinternals has a collection of useful applications covering File and Disk, Networking, Processes, and System InformationMax SchneiderFri, 02 Oct 2009 19:32:28 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:511