But this post is not about there servers randomly going down. It’s about another bad customer service experience I had with GoDaddy support. Every time I asked for the support expert (ha) to check to see if something had gone wrong on their end he said, “nothing has gone wrong, your site is scripted wrong.” Even after explaining that I had not touched my site in ages and the other was install by GoDaddy… he continued to disregard any my suggestion/queries has to what might have gone wrong.  In the end all I wanted was the sites up and not to point a finger.

I even started a post on their forums and without surprise other users have been experiencing the same problems for 30+ hours. Honestly they could have just checked and might have found/suggested something like “please try restarting your application pool?!?!”

http://community.godaddy.com/groups/web-hosting/forum/topic/sites-down-1/

It gets worst they edited any (if not) all the comments on the forums that made the server failures their fault. Again saying it’s our fault. Big time, NO NO!!!

After writing this I will still keep the sites mention with them because moving the sites will be such a hassle and their prices are one of the lowest for Windows hosting. But as for future sites and any potential customers they might have had going to them from me… the count is now ZERO.

So if you are considering GoDaddy web hosting. Be very very careful.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

-Thuan

DNN/Providers/HtmlEditorProviders/Telerik/Config/ToolsDefault.xml

I suggest that you only comment out the tools that you don’t want, you might find them handy later on…

If you look within the DNN/Providers/HtmlEditorProviders/Telerik/ folder you will also find the EditorOverride.css file. Which I found I needed to edit because by default the editor used the same “imaged background” and “centered” properties the site used.

Finally, if you find that you don’t like Telerik’s RADeditor, you can always revert back to the original FCKeditor via the web.config file…

find:
<htmlEditor defaultProvider=”TelerikEditorProvider“>
… change it to:
<htmlEditor defaultProvider=”FckHtmlEditorProvider“>

Happy Coding,
Thuan

Dotnetnuke BC30451: Name ‘Initialize’ is not declared.

It is most likely you didn’t change your reference paths in Visual Studio.

Brian Dukes ran into this problem, discussed here. His solution was to copy a fresh copy of the core Dotnetnuke.dll into your root /bin folders but if you don’t change the reference paths in Visual Studio, each time you compile your custom module the Dotnetnuke.dll will be replaced with the an older one if it exists.

Don’t forget to change the reference paths for both your main module project and the corresponding sqldataprovider project because it will also have the same reference paths.

HTH, Thuan.

The site upgrade in question was going from DNN 3.3.7 to DNN 4.9.0 and the error I kept on getting was an infinite loop redirecting me back to this URL: http://mysite/default.aspx?alias=http://mysite/myalias with a blank screen.

Internet Explorer didn’t know what to do with it so it infinitely reloaded the URL.  Firefox was a little smarter, it detected the loop therefore stopped it and gave out this error message: “Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.”

So the search was on, using these keywords… dotnetnuke, infinite, redirect, and loop. I found a couple promising articles with potential solutions to my problem…

http://www.bestwebsites.co.nz/dotnetnuke/solving-the-dotnetnuke-redirect-loop/

http://weblogs.asp.net/christoc/archive/2008/06/19/dotnetnuke-homepage-won-t-load-keeps-redirecting.aspx

But after  much trial and error with my trust settings and going straight to the database and changing my portal’s aliases per those solutions, I was still at a dead end.

It wasn’t until I carefully read this John Mitchell forum thread did I find my solution. The problem was the new Default.aspx page. After the upgrade the page code went from…

<%@ Page Language=”vb” AutoEventWireup=”false” Explicit=”True” Inherits=”DotNetNuke.Framework.DefaultPage” CodeFile=”Default.aspx.vb” %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix=”dnn” Namespace=”DotNetNuke.Common.Controls” Assembly=”DotNetNuke” %>
<asp:literal id=”skinDocType” runat=”server”></asp:literal>
<html <%=xmlns%> <%=LanguageCode%>>
<head id=”Head” runat=”server”>
<meta id=”MetaRefresh” runat=”Server” http-equiv=”Refresh” name=”Refresh” />
<meta id=”MetaDescription” runat=”Server” name=”DESCRIPTION” />
<meta id=”MetaKeywords” runat=”Server” name=”KEYWORDS” />
<meta id=”MetaCopyright” runat=”Server” name=”COPYRIGHT” />
<meta id=”MetaGenerator” runat=”Server” name=”GENERATOR” />
<meta id=”MetaAuthor” runat=”Server” name=”AUTHOR” />
<meta name=”RESOURCE-TYPE” content=”DOCUMENT” />
<meta name=”DISTRIBUTION” content=”GLOBAL” />
<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”INDEX, FOLLOW” />
<meta name=”REVISIT-AFTER” content=”1 DAYS” />
<meta name=”RATING” content=”GENERAL” />
<meta http-equiv=”PAGE-ENTER” content=”RevealTrans(Duration=0,Transition=1)” />
<style type=”text/css” id=”StylePlaceholder” runat=”server”></style>
<asp:placeholder id=”CSS” runat=”server” />
</head>
<body id=”Body” runat=”server” >
<noscript></noscript>
<dnn:Form id=”Form” runat=”server” ENCTYPE=”multipart/form-data” style=”height: 100%;” autocomplete=”off”>
<asp:Label ID=”SkinError” runat=”server” CssClass=”NormalRed” Visible=”False”></asp:Label>
<asp:PlaceHolder ID=”SkinPlaceHolder” runat=”server” />
<input id=”ScrollTop” runat=”server” name=”ScrollTop” type=”hidden” />
<input id=”__dnnVariable” runat=”server” name=”__dnnVariable” type=”hidden” />
</dnn:Form>
</body>
</html>

to…

<%@ Page language=”VB” %>
<%@ Import Namespace=”DotNetNuke” %>

<script runat=”server”>

Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)

Dim DomainName As String
Dim ServerPath As String
Dim URL() As String
Dim intURL As Integer

‘ parse the Request URL into a Domain Name token
URL = Split(Request.Url.ToString(), “/”)
For intURL = 2 To URL.GetUpperBound(0)
Select Case URL(intURL).ToLower
Case “admin”, “desktopmodules”, “mobilemodules”, “premiummodules”
Exit For
Case Else
‘ check if filename
If InStr(1, URL(intURL), “.aspx”) = 0 Then
DomainName = DomainName & IIf(DomainName <> “”, “/”, “”) & URL(intURL)
Else
Exit For
End If
End Select
Next intURL

‘ format the Request.ApplicationPath
ServerPath = Request.ApplicationPath
If Mid(ServerPath, Len(ServerPath), 1) <> “/” Then
ServerPath = ServerPath & “/”
End If

DomainName = ServerPath & “Default.aspx?alias=” & DomainName

Response.Redirect(DomainName,True)

End Sub

</script>

This made me look at all my files a second time. What I found was that the old Default.aspx was backed up as old_Default.aspx and a new one was created. So my solution was simply to replace the original Default.aspx page with the new one generated from the upgrade.

And although, my solution got the site working again and under ASP.NET v2 (the reason for my upgrade), it also leaves me to question what I did, if I messed anything fundamental up, and why the Dotnetnuke Team changed the Default.aspx page.

If anyone could enlighten me on this, please leave a comment.

Here’s my Psuedo/Logic:
1) Load Repeater with list of “UNmoderated” items
2) Put a checkbox inside the repeaters ItemTemplate
3) Add code to button (dosomething if checkbox is checked)

Problem:
I couldn’t locate the column with the PrimaryUniqueID because there are no columns in repeaters, but my Stored Procedure “requires” the PrimaryUniqueID.

Button code:
Private Sub MassApprove_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MassApprove.Click
Try
Dim MyRptItem As RepeaterItem
For Each MyRptItem In MyRepeater.Items
Dim chbxMassApprove As CheckBox = CType(MyRptItem.FindControl(“chbxMassApprove”), CheckBox)
Dim PrimaryUniqueID As String = MyRptItem.DataItem(PrimaryUniqueID) PROBLEMATIC LINE
If chbxMassApprove.Checked = True Then
‘DO THE MASS APPROVE
‘LOOP THRU STORED PROCEDURE
End If
Next
Catch exc As Exception
Response.Write(exc.ToString)
End Try
End Sub

Solution:
I used this as a workaround if this helps anyone…

Front End:
Text=’<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container, “DataItem.PrimaryUniqueID”) %>’

Back End:
Dim PrimaryUniqueID As String = ckbxMassApprove.Text.ToString

System.Web.UI.WebControls.PagedDataSource

What we have to do for us to paging through our data vs. displaying all of it at once? We simply inject the paging into our data before displaying it. In my case, I am using a repeater:

'get the data
Dim myData As System.Collections.ArrayList
myData = ** myStoredProcedure **
'ensure there is data to work with
If myData .Count > 0 Then
'create a new instance of PagedDataSource
myPagedDataSource = New System.Web.UI.WebControls.PagedDataSource
'set my pagin preferences
myPagedDataSource.DataSource = myData
myPagedDataSource.AllowPaging = True
myPagedDataSource.PageSize = 5
myPagedDataSource.CurrentPageIndex = myCurrentPageIndex
'then finally bind the data to my repeater
myRepeater.DataSource = myPagedDataSource
myRepeater.DataBind()
End If

Quite simple to use. Knowing that the webcontrol is there really is the hard part of it all.

1. Download the software from the DNN site
2. Upload the files to the shared hosting
3. Ensure permissions for the ASP.net user are correct
4. Setup the database and user
5. Config the webconfig, ie. enter in the DB connection data/string
6. Go to browser, invoke install @ http://mydomain.com/install
7. Change admin and host passwords

Thats is normally it, unless you run into permissions problems; which is often on shared hosting servers.

But while trying to setup my Freedotnetnukeskins.com on Lunarpages.com servers, we (support and I) discovered that the directory “skins” CANNOT be used as your virtual directory. My guess is this might be in the DNN manual somewhere, but we were using the “auto install DNN” plesk so it was hard to pick out.