DotNetNuke Tips for Skinning, CSS, and Design

I got the inspiration for this blog about 8 months ago from a Smashing Magazine article entitled, “Designing for Content Management Systems”. So, why write another blog but, specifically for DotNetNuke? Well, they did a great job on their post but, they were generic to just CMS’s in general, and we all know that DNN has some challenges of it’s own.

The main challenge that I have found to be when designing for DNN, is planning for unknown content. You just never know what’s going to happen once you hand the keys over to the client. So, a lot of my designing is actually trying to plan ahead for the many different amounts/content of what could be added to the site. This includes not just content panes, but also menu items. For some reason, once a client gets access to adding their own content, one of the first things they do is create new main menu items. Now, some of my designs have been very specific and the site structure has been discussed w/ the client and they actually understand that they need...

Earlier in the year I was contacted by PACKT Publishing to review an upcoming DotNetNuke book, Building Websites with DotNetNuke 5 by Michael Washington and Ian Lackey. This was my first book review, but there was no way I was going to turn down a chance to check out a new DNN book!

I received the book leading up to a holiday weekend and thought it would be a perfect opportunity to dive headfirst into it. I began reading it and saw very quickly that it was a book that would be a valuable resource for an Administrator of a DotNetNuke website or someone who is just getting into DotNetNuke. To be honest, I had been hoping for something more advanced, but it was a very comprehensive book for a beginner. And, I only read the first half of the book. But, more on that later.

I was setting up a new install of DotNetNuke today and started thinking about what modules do I add to my install before working on it.

Here are some that I add right away (These are all FREE - although, please consider donating to them):