Customer Reviews

DotNetNuke Skinning Tutorial: A simple, clear, step-by-tutorial to creating DotNetNuke skins to put you in control of the look and feel of your DotNetNuke website

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This book is a typical PACKT publishing book, a meaty tutorial for basic skinning of a DotNetNuke web site. It's 140 pages though, which is too little to cover the topic in depth. In addiiton, Chapter 7: Images and Web Design is about a third of the book and unrelated to the topic. Instead this chapter deals with creating graphics, rounded boxes and other design-oriented fluff. In a basic web design book this might be a useful chapter, but here it seems to have been stuffed in to fill space in an otherwise tiny book.

There is still value in the book though. The walkthrough of creating a development environment and creating a skin is thorough but concise. There are gems of information scattered through the text, almost too scattered, but those gems can be lifesavers when designing a DotNetNuke skin.

Unfortunately, when 40 pages or so are devoted to material with little connection to the topic and only 11 pages cover creating module containers, an important piece of skinning a DotNetNuke site, the value of the book drops dramatically. Only four pages on packaging a skin, one of the more confusing tasks for beginning designers, is also too few and the lack of any advanced skinning discussion is a deficit to anyone already moderately experienced with DotNetNuke skinning.

The book was dissapointing for what seems to be a subject in great demand. The somewhat limited DotNetNuke skinning information on the internet compares to the material in the book, so unless you're a rank beginner needing a jump start this is probably a book to skip. Not worth the $40 (US) cover price.

As a developer one of my greatest areas of weakness is in the area of design. Where I have always been able to make a site functional, my designs have been merely passable.

The author, Darren Neese, takes you from concept to finished product. This book is aimed at beginners, so it is perfect for me, perhaps it will fit your DotNetNuke Skinning needs as well.

First, let me say this, I love DotNetNuke.

Second, I hate skinning DotNetNuke. As a developer that is my weakest area. In fact, to quote Scott Hanselman:

"The difference between a Designer and Developer, when it comes to design skills, is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it." - Scott Hanselman with apologies to Larry Miller

DotNetNuke Skinning Tutorial makes the design element of DotNetNuke a little easier. It does not automatically make your designs pretty, but it opens up the mystery of creating a design that is functional and usable.

I must say thanks to PACKT Publishing for continuing to produce books that break down complicated task in a clear and concise way.

If there were one thing that I would add in the next edition of the book, since they use the DotNetNuke Starter Kit install package, is to expose how to install the Starter Kit on Visual Studio 2008, when Visual Studio 2005 is not installed on the PC. I understand that when the book was written VS2008 was not released and by the next release of the book this may be fixed on the DotNetNuke side, but if it is not, there is a small amount of pain to install the package on VS2008.

This excellent book goes step by step with actions and explanations on how to create a Dot net Nuke skin. It is useful for the experienced who learned by doing but it is particularly useful to those who might be new to CMS and DNN in particular. You need to understand a bit of HTML (Nothing too elaborate) and a bit of CSS (Again, nothing too elaborate). I have created many skins in the past but I really learned a lot from this and also where I have been going wrong and doing it the hard way. <a href=[...]></a>

I got this book because it's the only book available that is devoted solely to DNN Skinning. This book tries to be everything in one book - how to install DNN, how to install VWD, how to create table based layouts (a looked-down-upon practice in the web design world), and how to slice images in Photoshop?? I agree with the previous reviewer, the slicing chapter was out of context with the rest of the book. My biggest issue with the book as a whole was that it a) only gives you the table-version of creating a skin, and b) Is already severely outdated as of DNN 5. Where is the CSS analysis? Where is the step-by-step ascx/CSS way of creating a skin? I've got a basic knowledge of how DNN works now, but I didn't come away from this book knowing how to create a skin.

With other online DNN training options being more expensive, this $40 book may seem like the cheap way out. Don't waste your $40.