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www.intoxalock.com
Joined: 6/14/2005
Posts: 40
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Hmm... I appreciate the more detailed response (honestly). So, lets just put the trolling to bed on both ends. And look at solutions.
Annoucement Module
So the annoucement module, in my opinion, doesn't serve any resonable use. You might as well have a HTML Module that you manually update. Your response seems to solidify that in my particular implmentation of the module, it's just not going to work. I am curious, what do you see as the use of this module in a real world situation.
Form and List
So that leaves, as you suggested, using the form and list module. I was considering this and even tried a quick test, but the list portion of the module would need to be run in div format and would require a bit of CSS work. This might be the route I go, I am not sure yet.
Thrid Party
Another option would be to purchase a third party news/annoucement module. I have looked in to this as well, with a little disappointment in how third parties are pricing their modules (not your fault, or DNN's, I know). 3 month subscriptions for fairly basic modules is not a good option. What would you personally suggest as a thrid party news module?
Internal Development
I could also, throw my programmers into the core to correct the "issues" of the module, but I have seen on this forum that modification of the core is NOT recommended. So, I could have them develop a custom module. Which is another possiblity, then maybe we can charge 3 month subscriptions too. /grin
The Waiting Game
The final solution, as I see it, would be wait until modifications, if they are even planned, for future revisions of this particular module. This isn't going to work. Time is money and money is time.
Do you have any other possible solutions to add?
I appreciate your time and knowledge on this one Chris. Thanks for the more detailed response.
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My personal experience (and opinion not related to the project or my employer), I don't use the announcements module except to demo the basic features.
Form & List to do this will require quite a bit of CSS and XSLT, but has an XSL generator built in as well.
Third Party Modules, Ventrian or Engage: Publish (I wrote a lot of the EP code, though I no longer work there)
Core, yes, don't modify core, but modules are for a lot of parts, fair game :)
Headed out to a meeting, will try to respond in depth later.
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Bryan Myers wrote:
Internal Development
I could also, throw my programmers into the core to correct the "issues" of the module, but I have seen on this forum that modification of the core is NOT recommended. So, I could have them develop a custom module. Which is another possiblity, then maybe we can charge 3 month subscriptions too. /grin
The Waiting Game
The final solution, as I see it, would be wait until modifications, if they are even planned, for future revisions of this particular module. This isn't going to work. Time is money and money is time.
Do you have any other possible solutions to add?
I appreciate your time and knowledge on this one Chris. Thanks for the more detailed response.
To address the "CORE" modifications.
I'm a huge proponent of not modifying the core code for DotNetNuke. I've been around long enough to remember the days when everyone (including myself) hacked DNN to hell to make it do all sorts of things it couldn't do out of the box. Those of us who did this, and later tried to get our code back in sync with the main branch felt a lot of pain. That is where most of us come from when we preach to not modify the core.
Now, that being said, that is part of the beauty of the project(s) as a whole, the core is there, and you can completely change whatever you want. There are ways you can do this safely, such as documenting the hell out of your changes, so that when a new release of DNN comes up you can easily make your changes again in that new release.
As for the modules themselves, there are only a few modules that come with DNN and are installed by default. The Announcements module for example is not. So when a new release comes out for DNN, while there may have been a new release for the announcements module available it is not installed unless someone goes through and manually installs it, so you run less risk of losing any customized changes you've made.
There are a number of modules that have been written to perform the functionality that you are looking for, and if I recall correctly in the past there was discussion on the announcements team to perhaps further enhance the module to do more. I do not know what happened with that though, the modules themselves are managed by individual teams, that set their features and development cycles. So it is up to the team to keep things going, for example I run the Wiki team, and unfortunately we haven't done a release in over a year now :( Hopefully that will change in the future, but the career and life have delayed those efforts for me personally.
There is always the shot that if you make some cool modifications to the Announcements module that you can submit them back to the team and have them included in a future release! The same goes for the Wiki if anyone has anything they want to submit ;)
As for your concern about third party modules that charge a three month subscription, no one will be happy with every decision. A lot of people hate that you have to pay for any modules, or that you have to pay a lot of money for some modules, and very little money for others. The Ventrian modules are well received and used by many people over the years, they offer a lot, for a relatively cheap subscription fee (last I checked at least).
There are many different business models that people have tried in the DNN world, some work, some don't, but everyone has the freedom to try their own, and people definitely like to shoot off on their own on a lot of things :)
I'm not sure that I've really addressed your concerns, but hopefully explained things a little bit from my perspective in the DNN Ecosystem.
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www.pokerdiy.com
Joined: 4/28/2004
Posts: 2796
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At the end of the day if you want a professional module then you have to pay for it. I gradually switched from the core modules 1 by 1 to paid modules - this is not an indication of the core project teams skill or ability - it's the simple fact that they work for free (and have a life that requires income) and are far less inclined to release new versions etc. I am grateful that these basic modules exist at all (dissecting them was a great way for me to learn module dev).
For example - I realized after 2 years of asking for updates or help on the Google Maps module that it's better just to pay $50 for a maps module. There are some exceptions, but this is true for the most part. Of course, as always it depends on your needs. For testing and some internal sites/hobbyist sites some of these modules may suffice (My most commonly used module is the core HTML module. There's a couple of other core modules that work perfectly and have a good release cycle)
However, your post does ring a bell with me - I personally think the DNN Corp should abandon all of the complex core modules or at least take responsibility for them. This means either stating that a module is completely dead (like the Maps module - can you tell I wasted months on this?) or moving it forward, however slowly. No response just sucks and many people rely on the DNN brand and trust them whereas some projects are utterly dead, misleading and waste a lot of peoples time... (Store, Wiki, Gallery, Maps etc.)
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Rodney, when was the last time you used the store module? Of all the ones you point out, you should definitely take a look at the large amount of changes that have happened in that module, there was a release as recent as a few months ago I believe.
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