Hi guys,
I do apologize up front if this post is a duplication of a previous question.
After some heavy, deep searching on Yahoo!, Bing, Google and Ask! I stumbled upon a blog entry that neatly explained the new manifest file (a similar post on this forum was of absolutely no help to me) which I tried to implement on my testing skin. Now from what I've read is that having a manifest, and HTML file with the required <object> tags embedded where necessary, should be perfectly valid for a skin type based on the new framework? Unfortunately I cannot get this statement to bid true for me, I get the following:
A critical error has occurred.
Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1
I wish I had a degree in rocket science, because that does not tell me anything about where my packages is at fault. So I thought I'd do an assessment on my package. Currently it contains 6 files:
skin.css
index.html
testing_skin.dnn (manifest)
license.txt
releasenotes.txt
index.doctype.xml
index.doctype.xml, which is the first document to get parsed by the extension's wizard from what I can see (first file in the packaged) contains only the required definition for the DOCTYPE declaration, as per previous versions of DNN. I cannot see anything wrong with this:
<SkinDocType>
<![CDATA[<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">]]>
</SkinDocType
Second to that is my HTML file. It contains only my <body> that needs to be displayed on the page. Now I've only found ASCX based examples online, but noted from Wrox Professional Dotnetnuke 5, following the traditional HTML route should still be seen as a valid DNN 5 skin allowing as long as the required manifest file has been included. The html file does not contain any TOKEN pointers, it has been replaced by the new skin object framework (<object>) so in all theory this should not case the above mentioned error.
I have to TEXT files that just contain license agreements to the skin that I'm testing.
The manifest file (testing_skin.dnn) also the name of my sking (testing_skin) contains the required fields for my skin:
<dotnetnuke type="Package" version="5.0">
<packages>
<package name="Testing Skin" type="Skin" version="1.0.1">
<friendlyName>Testing Skin</friendlyName>
<description>skin created by Joblogs</description>
<owner>
<name>Eric Truter</name>
<organization>Sixt4</organization>
<url>http://www.sixt4.co.za</url>
<email>eric.truter@sixt4.co.za</email>
</owner>
<license>No warrenties, support for Sixt4 clients only</license>
<releaseNotes>First release version of this skin for Testing Skin</releaseNotes>
<components>
<component type="Skin">
<skinFiles>
<skinName>Testing Skin</skinName>
<basePath>Portals\_default\Skins\Testing Skin</basePath>
<skinFile>
<name>index.html</name>
</skinFile>
<skinFile>
<name>skin.css</name>
</skinFile>
</skinFiles>
</component>
</components>
</package>
</packages>
</dotnetnuke>
I can't see anything wrong with this file either. The last file is the skin.css which is required as the base skin for the site, assuming that framework automatically knows that the skin.css file should be the base stylesheet for the site.
With this assessment not helping, I assumed that the system would trap more detailed errors something else (EventLog, SQL Database, log file) but no such luck.
I'm really at a loss here, and would like to start utilising the new framework, but with this obstacle in my way, I don't see me progressing anywhere. I also tried to search for similar cases, but no luck.
I would really appreciate any help with this.
Regards,
Eric