Hello everyone;
I know Sebastian, Mitchell, et...al, will tell me to probably post a ticket on support.dotnetnuke.com, and I probably will, but for everyone else, I wanted to give you a run down of my experience with one of my DNN sites that had to be "downgraded" back to 4.5.3 from 4.5.5. I manage four DNN installations (with five more in the pipeline). One of the sites has added "profile" properties to capture additional information from registrants. It uses the standard User Profile Properites screen.
Three of the sites upgraded to 4.5.5 just beautifully; they're working great. The 4th site did not go so well, because it was throwing all sorts of errors. People are unable to register and existing users were unable to update their profile information. A big mess for a large community site.
The site is a shared plan on CrytalTech Hosting (an excellent hosting company).
Below are the errors received:
1. When attempting to edit user profiles, this Page Load Exception error occurred along with the dreaded "Critical Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object."
AssemblyVersion: 04.05.05
PortalID: 0
ActiveTabID: 42
ActiveTabName: User Accounts
RawURL: /Admin/UserAccounts/tabid/42/ctl/Edit/mid/357/UserId/23/filter/All/currentpage/1/Default.aspx
AbsoluteURL: /Default.aspx
AbsoluteURLReferrer:
UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)
DefaultDataProvider: DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider
ExceptionGUID: ec8fdf45-1241-4ff0-9d97-c817e36094dd
InnerException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
FileName:
FileLineNumber: 0
FileColumnNumber: 0
Method: DotNetNuke.UI.WebControls.DateEditControl.get_Format
StackTrace:
Message: DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.PageLoadException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at DotNetNuke.UI.WebControls.DateEditControl.get_Format() at DotNetNuke.UI.WebControls.DateEditControl.get_StringValue() at DotNetNuke.UI.WebControls.DateEditControl.OnPreRender(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
Source:
Server Name: WEBC41
2. When someone wishes to Register an account, the Critical Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." comes up --- similar errors occur with a Page Load Exception.
Of course this is unacceptable behavior for a large community site. In using DNN 4.X for over a year now, this is the first time an upgrade has been problematic for me personally. So I looked deeper into the issue and discovered that it appears that 4.5.5 doesn't like new additional profile properties over and above the core offerings. The other sites have no additional profile properties/fields added, so there's no errors. There were no offending modules that I could find.
Therefore I downgraded this site back to 4.5.3 and the problem disappeared.
Perhaps some of you DNN gurus can figure this out...but from my vantage point in looking at the databases, the skin, web.config, etc., the problem appears to be an outstanding issue when someone has added profile properties/fields and it can't be handled properly.
This is a "show stopper" issue for any contemplation upgrades. I've read in the forums and the support database that this was suppose to be fixed at least for security roles and profile properties, per the change log:
http://support.dotnetnuke.com/issue/ViewIssue.aspx?id=5930 and here: http://support.dotnetnuke.com/issue/ViewIssue.aspx?id=5916
Cheers,
Jud - DNN Enthusiast