Hi Everyone,

The latest version of the DNN NewsFeeds module has been released to the project beta testers. Below is a list of the changes.

Fixed bugs:

• 4314 – Channels > Search. Redirected to the initial page if “Enter” has been pressed
• 4298 – Module crashes on adding the attached rss file
• 4312 – Add stylesheet. Critical error occurs if there are some errors in *.xsl document
• 4609 – Feeds are displayed incorrectly if stylesheet’s URL is incorrect
• 4302 – Add Feed > HTML tags and JavaScript code may be added to the “Feed URL” field
• 4304 – Add channels > It’s possible to add HTML tags and JavaScript code to channel name field
• 4300 – Recursive link in category to itself
• 4073 – Install fails at Registering DesktopModule on some versions
• 3468 – News Feed – Windows Authentication fails to load RSS feed
• 842 – RSS Module doesn’t work behind an authenticated proxy
• 4319 – missing {objectQualifier} in 03.03.01.SqlDataProvider
• 4320 – issue with feeds not refreshing
• 4323 – Feed not working: http://www.midiblogs.com/categories/Cuisine/Gastronomie/index.rss
• 4325 – Ability to insert accented characters into channel or category descriptions

New features:

• 4317 – Adding feed to channel – not understood what channel do you add the feed to.
• 4297 – “Date published” is not displayed on the live page using default stylesheet
• 4313 – It’s recommended to deny possibility to add categories with equal names
• 4311 – It’s recommended to deny possibility to add channels with equal names
• 4310 – It’s recommended to deny possibility to add feeds with equal names
• 4308 – It’s recommended to display “No news to display” message
• 4307 – Add feeds > Next page does not appear even if they are added to next page
• 4305 – Add channels > Next page does not appear even if channels are added to next page
• 4301 – Categories list > Categories’ names are not ordered
• 4303 – Add Category/Channel/Feed page > “Update” button should be named as “Add”

In addition to the above mentioned issues, the assemblies were run through FXCop and identified issues were resolved.Note that I have not updated Gemini with the latest status of all these issues yet or checked the latest source into the vault. I will be doing that over the next few days. I am looking for help from people verifying the above fixes / enhancements, as well as testing it in general. I am hoping that we may finally be ready to mark this module as ready to submit to the core for final review prior to being released to production.

Thanks,
Josh

Those interested can either email me at jmcwilliam@flatburger.com or respond to the following forum post:

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/default.aspx?tabid=795&forumid=48&threadid=82872&scope=posts

• Fixed Bugs:
  • 3877 – Custom News Feed Style Sheet ignored
  • 3878 – Deleting last feed from page stays on empty paginated page
  • 2219 – Username and Password lost on update
  • 3880 – Updating Channel causes instances of NewsFeeds that use channel to loose settings
• New Features
  • 3766 – Channel Edit – Portal type should default to type selected in Portal List
  • 1066 – IPortable Support

v03.03.07

• Fixed bugs:
  • 3771 – Edit Newsfeed – Integer fields default to -1
  • 3879 – When feed inactive it still shows everywhere

v03.03.06

• Fixed bugs:
  • 3922 – Feed does not work – creates blank module content
  • 3774 – Feed Edit – feed doesn’t refresh on update
  • 3876 – Refresh rate in Edit Newsfeeds is ignored

v03.03.05

• Fixed bugs:
  • Channels do not work for multiple feeds.

v03.03.04

• Fixed bugs:
  • 41 Default view: unexpected behavior of the loaded feeds. All instances of module displays the same feed.

Thank you to everyone that has helped test this module. This project has been a great example of the many eyeballs theory (aka. ‘Many eyes make all bugs shallow’). Unfortunately, the project has been delayed due to the beta testing volunteers finding many bugs, but fortunately, this means that everyone who gets this module when it is done will experience much less of them. The News project in Gemini (support.dotnetnuke.com) has been updated to reflect the latest changes. It outlines the now dwindling list of bugs that now remain in this module that must be fixed prior to release.

I would also like to welcome the several new team members that have joined since my last update:

• Nikola Pandov
• Eric Kulaas
• Brett Juchem
• Scott Schecter

Thank you to them for contributing! I again invite anyone interested to contact me about joining the project as well, either as a beta tester or as a contributor.

• 17 Category Edit. Publishing format drop downs should go in the following order: RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, RSS 0.91, RSS 0.9, Atom.
• 18 DNN3.1.1 Error occurs when trying to add a feed, category or channel
• 19 Edit Newsfeed. After addition of the url as a source there is a page: “Server Error in ‘DNN’ Application. Runtime error.”
• 27 All pagination shows ‘Page 0 of 1′ results when there are no results.
• 32 Edit Newsfeed: After clicking “Cancel” btn existed feed in the module is disappears and then after clicking “Update” btn feed again appears.
• 33 Feed List: ‘Return’ btn should be instead ‘Cancel’ btn.
• 36 Edit Channel. It’s impossible to add a new channel without category.
• 37 Edit Channel: Portal type should default to whatever is selected in the Channel List when clicking “Add new channel”.
• 38 Localization: missing keys or existing keys but not used in the code.
• 40 The first channel entered has an ID of 0.
• 42 Default view. The page should be of the same size as default when trying to change a module title.
• 44 Edit Newsfeed. After loading first file, then channel and repeat that actions 2 or more times, channel do not displays.
• 45 DNN 4.3.2 IE. Edit Newsfeed. The page size exceeds the browser’s window
• 47 Channel Edit. It’s impossible to return at the ‘Channel Edit’ page after editing categories.
• 48 Edit Newsfeed>Advanced Settings: confusing symbols in the fields
• 49 Channel List > Settings: a popup window to confirm the delition doesn’t appear when click ‘Delete’ btn.
• 50 Channel List > Feed List > Settings: a popup window to confirm the delition doesn’t appear when click ‘Delete’ btn.
• 51 Category List > Edit Category: a popup window to confirm the delition doesn’t appear when click ‘Delete’ btn.
• 54 Category List, Category Edit > Module Help: Module Help is empty.
• 55 (IE6.0) Channel Edit: impossible to edit categories if name or category isn’t specified
• 72 News are not displayed in RSS module
• 79 Channel Edit: unexpected prompting message “Category name is required” appears when selecting the fisrt category in the drop down list.
• 80 Category List, Edit: ‘Update, Return’ btns should be instead ‘Save, Cancel’ btns.
• 81 Channel List: test page appears after clicking on ” [2], Next, Last “
• 82 Feed List: empty page appears after clicking on ” [2], Next, Last “
• 84 Channel List, Feed List: the next page is not displayed, if eleventh channel (feed) has been created.
• 85 When you add more than one instance of the News Module, if you change the Newsfeed Settings for one, it changes the other instances as well.

This list represents updates between the 03.03.02 and the 03.03.03 beta. There have been many bug fixes beyond this list as well between version 03.03.02 and the last public announcement I made regarding 03.03.00. I have updated Gemini (support.dotnetnuke.com), which was long overdue, and added the remaining known issues with this version. You should expect to see an updated 03.03.04 version before too long. I am expecting this next version to be solid enough to be considered a release client. It will of course have to go through the standard core review and release process first, which it has not yet done.

I would also like to welcome Peter Brems to the team. Peter sent in the contributor agreement and will be added as an official member of the team shortly. Thanks again to everyone that has helped out with the testing.

Feed Viewing

• Ability to select sort by field (date or title) and sort order (ascending or descending).
• Ability to select maximum number of articles to display.
• Ability to select how often to refresh a feed.
• Ability to have articles popup in a new window.
• Ability to select a pre-defined news channel for display.

News Channels

• Ability to create pre-defined aggregations of feeds in a news ‘channel’ at both the host and portal levels.
• Ability to re-syndicate news channels.
• Ability to activate and de-activate channels.

News Channel Feeds

• Ability to manually refresh an individual feed.
• Ability to set a feed refresh rate.

News Categories

• Ability to group news channels by category.
• Ability to re-syndicate a news category.

General

• Ability to automatically use RSS 2.0, 1.0, 0.91, 0.90 and Atom feeds without using a custom XSLT template.
• Ability to aggregate feeds of multiple types into a single feed.
• Ability to select the feed format to re-syndicate feeds in for channels, categories and individual feeds.
• Caching of all feeds (feeds, channels and categories) to improve performance.

Please do note that this is a beta release and is not recommended for use in a production environment. This is one reason I have only released it to those who have volunteered to do beta testing for this module. Anyone else interested in being a part of that group can email me at jmcwilliam@flatburger.com.

I have been working with DotNetNuke^TM since version 2.0. What started as “playing around” with this cool new technology for a personal site has turned into a full time job running a successful business using it. From working with customers, to developing modules, to designing skins, to putting it all together to create, test, and manage a quality solution that solves a customer’s problem, I have been involved in many aspects of what it takes to create a business using DotNetNuke^TM.

My charge now is to help others do the same. The problem we face is the old chicken and egg issue. There needs to be an ample supply of quality modules in the community in order for people to take those modules and use them to solve people’s problems. However, in order for there to be an ample supply of quality modules in the community, there needs to be sufficient demand from people willing to pay for their use in these solutions. Without someone paying the bills, it can be real hard to find the time and resources needed to create these quality modules.

My goal is to help the community gain access to the additional services, tools and resources they need in order to help push their products to the next level. I say “gain access,” because there is no single person that has all the answers. For this reason, to think that a single person, or a single company, could effectively provide those resources themselves and serve as the expert in all areas would be foolish. My job is very much one of fostering communication. For everything that I don’t know, I know there is someone out there that does. It’s helping to drive the mechanism by which people can share and exchange their collective knowledge that will yield the biggest results.

It is for this reason, that I am at Tech-Ed, talking to people, asking them what it is that would make it easier for them to create quality products. It is for the same reason that I will ask the same of you, dear reader. I want to know what you are good at and what you want to learn more about. What are the things that you provide, and what are the things that you need. I want to know the modules and pieces of functionality that you wish existed, so I can try and find people interested in creating them. I believe that for everyone that has a need, there is someone out there willing and ready to fill it. So, I invite you to help me in that effort, and email me anytime with your thoughts and feedback at jmcwilliam@flatburger.com.

So, long story short, the module isn’t going to be released as early as I had originally hoped, but it is going to have twice the functionality when it is. We decided to take the extra time to release a high quality and well architected module that was designed to implement many of the advanced features we have in mind for the future rather than rush the project with a ‘quck fix’ upgrade.

Please have patience and stay tuned for more updates. This module is going to introduce a slightly new way to think about news feeds. I need open minded people to try this module out and let us know if our proposed new way to think about news feeds makes sense or if there might be a better way to handle the ever growing world of news feeds. I am again going to invite beta testers to send me an email at jmcwilliam@flatburger.com, and thank those that have already responded.

I have updated the News project in Gemini (support.dotnetnuke.com) with some of the latest issues regarding this project.

• Display
  • Show one or more news feeds displayed as a single, merged feed
  • Ability to define how often an individual feed is updated
  • Ability to activate / de-activate an individual feed
  • Ability to customize how the news feed data is displayed on the screen per individual news feed
    • XSLT templating
    • HTML / Token templating
    • Pre-defined default templates to select from
  • Ability to determine sort order
    • Feed Name
    • Feed Title
    • Published Date
  • Ability to enable / disable HTML escaping in feed description
• Publish
  • Ability to show list of feeds that are available for syndication.
  • Ability to enable / disable an aggregate of feeds to be re-syndicated.
• Caching
  • Ability to cache feeds at the host level.
  • Ability for an individual display instance of the news feeds to determine the update frequency.
  • Ability to cache aggregated feeds for re-syndication via files to prevent load on database
• Security
  • Ability to request secured news feeds
  • Ability to syndicate news feeds securely
  • Ability to encrypt / decrypt usernames and passwords in requests.

Please note that these are currently IDEAS, NOT GARAUNTEED REQUIREMENTS at this point. Please do comment though as we would like your feedback on how we can best improve this module. Ideas and comments would probably be best added to the project forum, as a forum lends itself better to discussion.

• Research – people to figure out comparative / competitive products and document their functionality to help figure out what functionality to implement next.
• Analysis – Functionality, UI / UX and Technical Analysis are all important aspects of the project.
• Development – Development will be broken into small pieces to allow many to contribute.
• Localization – I plan to come up with localization files in English for this module early in the development process and try to seek help from people to localize these files into other languages.
• Documentation – Help, FAQs, Tutorials, etc. – all important aspects of a project.
• QA – Need help testing the module. Beta testers, regression testers, the more testing the better.
• Support – People willing to commit to monitoring support forums and/or providing additional support for modules during certain times.
• Marketing – People charged with the task of using guerilla marketing techniques to spread the word about this module. Selling this functionality of this module in competing spaces can help to sell people on DNN as a whole.

Every product should have its own team focusing on furthering development of all aspects of the product. In order for this to work, we need volunteers, so please, volunteer. No contribution is too little.