Professional DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals wrox phần 3 docx

Figure 3-5

You can see by this example that the use of containers offers you a lot of flexibility with controlling the

display of content to your users. Normally you will want your containers to match the colors and design

of your site, and most skins provide these complements as part of the package. Many commercial and

free versions of skins are available for DotNetNuke that you can download or purchase. Refer to the

DotNetNuke web site for links to a wide variety of skins and containers. Creating skins and containers

is covered extensively in Chapter 13.

Modules

Modules are the meat and potatoes of the DotNetNuke application. Modules are the components that

allow DotNetNuke to finally serve its intended purpose of displaying relative, easy-to-update content to

your visitors. The applications for these modules and how to use them to add your content is covered in

Chapter 6. Hundreds of free and commercial modules are available that you can obtain to extend the

functionality offered by the application. Just perform a web search for “DotNetNuke Modules” with

your favorite search engine and you will be able to find a module to meet almost any need you may

have for managing content. This section of the chapter provides an overview of each module and pre￾pares you for the detailed information in Chapter 6, which shows you how easy it is to use the modules

to present content to your users. With version 3 of DotNetNuke, all the content modules have been

divided into separate projects, which allows you to pick and choose the modules you need for your

installation. So, if your specific business requirement does not need an RSS module, you can remove it

from your installation without any adverse effects or any modifications of the core code. This is an

important enhancement from a business perspective because it allows you to easily modify the applica￾tion to accommodate your unique business rules and needs.

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Account Login

The Account Login module provides the login interface as a module. In can be useful in two scenarios:

❑ The first scenario is when you would like the login dialog to appear on the home page (without

the user clicking the login link).

❑ The second scenario is to be used on a login page, which could contain additional modules. You

can specify any page within your portal as the login page via the administration screens located

at Admin ➪ Site Settings ➪ Advanced Setting ➪ Page Management.

Announcements

As its name suggests, the Announcements module is used to present a list of announcements. Each

announcement includes a title, text, and a “read more” link. Optionally, the announcement can be set

to expire after a specified date.

Banners

DotNetNuke provides a rich set of vendor management tools. One of the tools provided is the Banners

module. This module is used to display the advertising banners of vendors created within the portal.

Management of these vendors and creation of banners is performed in the administration area located at

Admin ➪ Vendors. The module itself provides facilities to select the number of banners to display and

the banner type.

Contacts

The Contacts module renders contact information for a group of people; some example groups are a pro￾ject team, a sporting team, or personnel within your department. The module provides an edit page,

which allows authorized users to edit and add contacts.

Discussions

The Discussions module is a threaded discussion board; it provides groups of messages threaded on a

single topic. Each message includes a Read/Reply Message page, which allows authorized users to reply

to existing messages or add a new message thread. Although this is not a full-fledged forum module, it

offers some functionality that you can use to enable light forum activities on your site.

Documents

The Documents module renders a list of documents, including links to browse or download the docu￾ment. The module includes an edit page, which allows authorized users to edit or add the information

about a document (for example, a friendly title).

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Events

The Events module renders a list of upcoming events, including time and location. Individual events can

be set to automatically expire from the list after a particular date. The module includes an edit page,

which allows authorized users to edit or add an event.

FAQ

The FAQ module allows an authorized user to manage a list of Frequently Asked Questions and their

corresponding answers. This is a great module for reducing support calls to your customer service cen￾ter because you can compile a list of the questions you receive about your business or services and pre￾sent this data to your users.

Feedback

The Feedback module allows visitors to send messages to the administrator of the portal. With version 3

of the portal software you have the ability to customize this module to send e-mails to various individu￾als within your organization depending on the message content. This was not available in previous ver￾sions because all e-mails sent from the module were sent to the portal administrator. This is just one

more example of how DotNetNuke allows you to assign different tasks to the correct individuals in your

organization.

IFrame

The IFrame module is an Internet Explorer browser feature that allows you to display content from

another web site within a frame on your site.

Image

The Image module renders an image using an HTML IMG tag. This module includes an edit page that

allows an authorized user to specify the location of the image that can reside internal or external to the

portal. The authorized user can also specify height and width attributes, which permits you to scale

the image.

Links

The Links module renders a list of hyperlinks. This module includes an edit page, which allows autho￾rized users to edit and add new links. Each link can be customized to launch new windows or capture

information such as how many times that link has been clicked.

News Feeds (RSS)

The News Feed module allows you to consume syndicated news feeds in Rich Site Summary (RSS) for￾mat. This module includes an edit page that allows you to specify the location of the news feed and the

style sheet (XSL) used to transform the news feed.

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Search Input

The Search Input module provides the ability to submit a search to a given search results module.

Search Results

The Search Results module provides the ability to display search results.

Text/HTML

The Text/HTML module renders a snippet of HTML or text. This module includes an edit page, which

allows authorized users to edit the HTML or text snippets directly (using the configured rich text editor).

User Accounts

The User Accounts module allows users to register and manage their account.

User Defined Table

The User Defined Table module allows you to create a custom data table for managing tabular

information.

XML/XSL

The XML/XSL module renders the result of an XML/XSL transform. This module includes an edit page,

which allows authorized users to specify a location for the XML document and the XSL style sheet used

for transformation.

Remember, this is not a definitive list of the modules available within DotNetNuke; you have the option

of installing modules provided by third parties, or to even author your own module. For complete

instructions on how to use each of these modules, refer to Chapter 6, which covers the administration of

the DotNetNuke base modules. Chapters 9 through 12 cover the aspects associated with authoring your

own modules to solve a unique business need for your organization.

Additional Modules

DotNetNuke also provides some additional modules that are available in the download but not installed

by default in the application:

❑ User’s Online: This module allows you to display information about the current number of visi￾tors accessing your portal at any given time.

❑ Survey: This module allows you to conduct online surveys with your portal.

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