Customer Reviews

Professional DotNetNuke 4: Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP.NET 2.0 (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is NOT for you if you need to seriously use DotNetNuke or if you are going to embark on custom module development.

This book is definitely for you if you want to know why Shaun Walker and the other core folks made certain decisions from 1.x through 4.x. This is only useful if you have to write a review or report on DotNetNuke for a magazine or blog.

I've been using DotNetNuke seriously since before it was DotNetNuke and I have read all the books written about DotNetNuke through version 4.x. Frustratingly, none of the books gets my recommendation and this particular book is at the bottom. This book is full of general explanations that do you no good if you need to use DotNetNuke.

This book is a shining example of the Achilles heel of DotNetNuke: it's a framework by architects, for architects.

If you want to see what DotNetNuke ought to be more like, get the XMod module (it's a third-party product and I'm not affiliated with it in anyway and I'm not going to give you a link to it, just search for XMod).

XMod is doing what DotNetNuke should be doing because XMod is a user's product. If you don't really want to make your own module or find that the documentation on customizing DNN just does not cut it -- get something like XMod. You'll still be using DotNetNuke but something like XMod is well documented and provides many duplicate features of DNN that accomplish functions similar to DNN but in a much, much more robust and usable way.

In the case of both DNN and XMod the "user" refers to a developer.

Don't let anyone fool you, DNN is a developer's product and you need to know a lot about all the web applicaiton technologies involved and ought to be able to use Visual Studio and SQL at a minimum.

But the nutty thing about this book is that it spends half its time speaking above the developer talking about architectural decisions and other esoterica that will not tell you enough to mimic the architecture or use the code unless you are already a DNN expert developer.

This book will drive you mad if you are a developer who is not afraid to compile a VS project and you are looking for an answer such as, "How do I just add a couple of columns to the Survey module table, a bit of extra business logic and a few cosmetic changes I need?" This book will only reiterate that DNN modules are scattered all over the place in this provider and that or this App_Code folder or that. And that DNN achieves an oh-so-wonderful but madingly obfuscatory 'separation of Church and State' architecture.

The rest of the time this book talks below the developer and gives worthless "For Dummies" information about how to use the various modules like Announcements and Links. For goodness sake Wrox, how in the world did you pass off such a disjoint amalgam of chapters?

DotNetNuke is a very good application framework. Today (Spring 2007) DotNetNuke 4.5 is the best starting point for your web application regardless of size or deployment. DNN blows the LAMP alternatives out of the water.

It remains to be seen if DNN will continue to be needed. My prediciton is "No". DNN is already being absorbed into .NET & Visual Studio and will continue to be absorbed. The only wildcard is the need for Microsoft to present the illusion of "Open Source". It is an illusion because in truth, Microsoft directly funds and virtually controls DotNetNuke. (Sorry, Shaun, it's a fact even you admit in this book. But it's okay with me and most DNN users.)

Even though this book spends and inordinate amount of time explaining "For Dummies" details, it does not provide enough to be useful! For instance, it tells yous about the editor and the discussion module and then promptly dismisses both as inferior to modules you ought to go download. So, you are left on your own to use a module that is not documented.

Trying to develop a custom module in any version of DotNetNuke is not for the uninitiated and chances are you bought this book because you are endeavoring to create a custom module. You would think this book would excel at providing assistance to the custom module developer. But alas it does not.

It is full of "we did this in version 3 because people wanted that in version 2, etc." rather than getting down and dirty into custom module development. Also the examples are incomplete snippets and only in VB.

I will conclude this epistle with a plea to Shaun and the Core: Stop writing books! Instead, provide thorough, updated online documentation, tutorials and private forums. I'd pay way more than the price of this book for a library of sample projects (And please in C#!) with tutorials and explicit instructions. For instance, take Michael Washington's tutorials. I'd pay for access to that type of resource if it were fleshed out a bit more, presented in a more organized fashion and included in-depth documentation and access to private forums to ask questions and get help when deadlines need to be met (on a pay-per-use basis if necessary).

Trying to follow an example in this book will drive you mad because it always leaves out all the REALLY IMPORTANT details like paths, settings, options, creating and configuring IIS for webhost sites versus localhost sites etc. Constantly the book says things like, "If your site is hosted, you'll have to do this part differently." REALLY!? Just HOW is it done differently!? THAT'S WHAT I BOUGHT THE BOOK FOR!

P.S. It is quite evident that few of the Core Team actually use DotNetNuke. The Core really needs to add some serious users to its ranks. Right now it is just a bunch of (very good) system programmers. System programmers we all know are topnotch in their areas of expertise but usually suck at knowing what makes an application a winner with the end users. The upshot is that we who do know the latter end up spending the bulk of our DNN time tweaking under, over and around the ugliness and clumsiness of DNN. This ugly clumsiness can be seen architecturally where too many times, when you need another of something you have to create a new modules and there is no way you (the developer) are going to let end users add modules to pages. So you end up not being able to use a module only because you cannot get "another" one without adding a new module to a page.

There isn't much more in this book than is already available for free, to registered users, on the DotNetNuke website. I develop web based applications daily in DNN and barely, if ever, refer to this book. Register for a free account at the DotNetNuke website and consult the free documentation, of which this book is a regurgitation of, along with the forums.

My expectations appear to be in sync with other developers looking for a book that really goes under the hood to explain how to develop modules for the DotNetNuke portal framework. Much of what is written here you can find in their other book geared toward DNN 3. For example, page 58 in the DotNetNuke Portals book is page 88 in this one. I also agree with others that much of the information in this book has already been covered in the DNN documentation, the online help, and more thoroughly in Lorraine Young's DNN Guide (I understand that she is authoring a DotNetNuke for Dummies book, also not geared towards the developer, and which I have a hunch will also be a re-hash of her DNN Guide - which is rather good for its intended audience).

I hate to be so harsh here but I hope that the message gets across that developers are really looking for a solid technical book with practical examples on how to program for this framework, and tips and tricks for leveraging the DNN framework as well. Daniel Egan's first book covering DNN 3 was a very good attempt (his second was yet another re-hash, though). Traincert.net has a video which describes a creative way to setup your development environment to develop DNN modules for DNN4/VS 2k5, but that's about all...

I hope that Shaun and the other's who are responsible for putting together such a terrific open source application see an opportunity here.

Without a doubt the worst technical documentation that I actually had to pay for. This book is one long self-indulgent testament to the developers and the community that has evolved around this product. Good for them, but as a technical manual it fails to deliver in any category: as a User Maunal, Administrative Guide, Programmer's Maunal or even just a Technical Reference. Worse, it hopelessly mixes this different kind of information together at the lowest levels.

Some of the other reviews allude to the high amount of "filler". The truth is though that this book is almost entirely filler; real content is scarce indeed. A staggering 54 pages are devoted to DotNetNuke and Shuan Walker's history when 2 pages would have covered it. Every tech-writer filler trick is used to get the books enormous page count(481). The pages are filled with enormous unannotated screen shots, long tables of program constants with little or no context to properly apply them and that staple of all modern bad programming documentation: extensive unannotated listings of the program's source code.

Save your money and your time on this one.

Don't waste your money. All the information in the book is available for free download at the DotNetNuke site. Just download the 4.4.0 Docs package from the site and you will have then same information thats contained in the book. The only exception is that the infomation downloaded from the site is current. The docs download information is more comprehensive than the book. It goes into greater detail and gives better examples.

While this book gives a good background on the history of DotNetNuke, including good explanations on why/when/how/where design and architecture decision was implemented as DNN evolved, it disappointed me in providing the knowledge to fully administrate a site or develop you own modules/skins. On the downside in regards to administration, is the missing details on security, how to harden a production installation, and no info on checking the configuration. As an introduction to administrating a DNN site, i can recommend it, but be prepared to have many questions left unanswered when finished reading.

From a developer's perspective, the chapters on the architecture are five stars. Had the rest of the book just been this good... but moving on to module development, things get confusing. The author swaps between Visual Studio Express, and the full-blown version, and it get very confusing, even when you know the capabilities of the different versions. Only the basics of module development is covered, and there is really close to nothing on debugging/testing/deployment, so you end up with information that is very hard to apply in real life.

So only, three stars from me, and had it not been for the excellent architecture/design overview, and me liking to know the history and background stories, I would only have given t two start. However, to me it was worth the money.

The Pros:
I just began working in DotNetNuke and I wouldn't be able to get by without it. It provides an introductory explantion to how to use DotNetNuke and gets you up and running. There aren't a lot of DotNetNuke books out there, so keep that in mind.

The Minuses:
1) In order to justify the $39.99 price, it's obvious that the authors have added some fluff to make the book seem worth it. The content could have been covered in 200 pages (I could have read the history of DotNetNuke on the web site).
2) It's open source and is ever evolving. For example, I found that the module examples used in chapters 13-15 use a legacy version of the Events module, so if you do the standard install, the book won't match. By default, you can't install an older version over a new one in DotNetNuke, so you'll need to delete the Event folders, delete the Event tables and sprocs from the database and also delete the Event record in the DesktopModules table of the database. Then you can install the legacy version that will match the Wrox book.
3) The "professional" label. This book is definitely not advanced in nature the way that most of the Wrox "professional" series books are.

Although I dove into the technical chapters when I first received the book, the "Evolution of DNN" chapter was a facinating study in how a personal "project" evolves into a world class "product". Shaun Walker obviously put his soul into this chapter and it reads like a proud papa telling the tale of his famous son.

The technical aspects of this book are excellent. The book is long enough to get you through the initial installation along with adding and creating modules, yet, it is short enough to keep you interested. There are chapters on DNN architecture, administration, how to make skins and how to localize DNN along with many charts such as the System Message Tokens and their properties.

Bottom Line, if you are in charge of your site DNN installation, you need this book.

I am very disappointed with this book. As others have said, most of the content is already available on the Net. The install chapter is the same garbage that is in the install doc that you can download from the DNN site (that was last updated in 2006). Even though the title of the book is "Professional DotNetNuke 4.0" the install chapter is heavily focused on version 3. Guess what - if I wanted to know how to install version 3, I would have purchased a book on version 3.

Here is how the version 4 install instructions start: "This section focuses only on the differences between the v3.x and v4.x Install/Source installations. For more detailed instructions, see the appropriate section in the v3.x installation instructions." So you have to read the part about version 4, but are often referred back to the version 3 instructions. This is a book on version 4. It's just pure laziness that the install instructions for version 4 aren't complete.

Do yourself a favor and find a different book.

The text is very comprehensive with plenty of in-depth discussion of the DNN core, module architecture, etc. It will definitely get you going. What's missing is a section for hardcore module development, but perhaps that is a topic for a complete book in itself.