Hi DNN Community,

I’m very excited about using DNN for some projects but have a few challenges and concerns that are currently preventing me committing to the learning time required to become proficient:

I have my dev environment successfully setup following the excellent video series for Visual Studio 2017 and DNN9 here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFpEtny5sIbbT0spov4It4Z8fswIbNZFd  

There are a few things I need to enable me to begin playing around and assessing what DNN can do for me and my clients with confidence. I’m an OK web developer and quite techy but I don’t know how to reprogram a Death Star. I’m a learner that learns by example and I need to see a full workflow first; preferably simple but extensible examples. Further to that goal could I possibly get views and feedback on the following 5 issues:

1 @ Themes Installation DNN9

I want to experiment with different Themes, I see that these were previously called skins and that in DNN9, are accessed via ‘Install Extension’, yet when I download a theme (eg any of DnnC.Contra-master.zip, DnnC.Minimalist-master.zip, HammerFlex-master.zip), login as super-user, rightclick>unblock the zip file then try to ‘upload the package by dragging the file into the field below’ I get an error [(An unknown error has occurred. Please check your installation zip file and try again. Common issues with bad installation files: Zip file size is too large, check your IIS settings for max upload file size. (THEY’RE TINY), Missing resources in the zip file. (?), Invalid files in the package. (?), File extension is not .zip. (YES IT IS) Check that you are logged in. (I AM).]

However, when I get a theme from http://store.dnnsoftware.com eg  36136_0_DnnBootster_01.00.03_install.zip it seems to work OK, yet a few themes using bootstrap and maybe a mega menu or etc would be more inspiring to begin the learning phase.

Then there is the issue of how to uninstall that (see http://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/2694/What-is-missing-in-DNN-9-Lots-take-a-look-and-se)

A: How to install and uninstall successfully? Why the undefined problems installing from zipped bootstrap downloads?

B: Where to get up to date free, responsive, complete Bootstrap themes (preferably half a dozen) to play with? I’ve looked here http://www.dnnsoftware.com/forge/ choosing SKINS but there are only 4 in the past year, 3 by Geoff Barlow and 1 by Chris Hammond.

2 @Deployment and Development

I’d like to know how to:

A. Deploy a DNN installation from Visual Studio to eg Azure including the database.

B. Add records to various database tables from local system or via spreadsheet or CSV upload and be able to update easily.

C. How is this most effectively done in DNN9 with local dev environment and Azure deployment, via VS2017 and preferably using their source control solutions, keeping the project synched on local and deployed server etc?

3 @ModuleDev

I’d like to see some simple worked examples for MVP and DNN9 within VS2017 all the way through to server deployment (and see above re deployment).

Eg

A If I wanted a little module doing something very basic in eg PHP like add images to a page if they exist in a folder, eg page called Cats gets images in folder someimages/cats, if files exist, is that an example of functionality best actioned via a module? Does the DB need to ‘know’ about the directory or can an image dump directory be created as I’ve done for some sites in the past (a bit of a hack but I like it!) ?

B I gather from the vids (url above) that the MVC templates can be used to create modules...so the template exists to create eg 6 modules that can exist and be placed in any site or portal? These are specified in the same MVC process ie an M, V and C per module or how does that practically work?

I’ve looked here http://www.dnnsoftware.com/community-blog/cid/155064/module-development-for-non-developers-skinners-dnn-beginners--blog-series-intro but this series is several years old and I know DNN has changed a lot recently (and so has .net's approach to MVC). This: http://www.dnnsoftware.com/docs/developers/mvc-modules/mvc-module-development.html is nowhere near as useful as a short worked-video example would be (to me).

4 @MakingABlog

A. What is the easiest and fastest way (and free until I’m fully committed!) to Set up a modern blog with DNN? I would hope that there are several free and up to date themes for this, I can again only find one or two vaguely modern ones and these involve extra steps and installations...where should I look? Again I'd like to see how to set up a complete installation from dev to deployment with templated content including images, slideshows etc...then one can replace those for an initial, tentative, learning project.

B. How to eg AB test blog titles, integrate with Mailchimp etc...extensions?

5 @communityAndSupport: I can’t yet reconcile the feeling that DNN almost looks like a one-man-band, with the obviously super-capable Chris Hammond and a few other MVPs providing learning material, but I don’t see a very active community- what happens if Chris injures himself at the autoX? (Hope not Chirs- I wish you very well!)...yet massive orgs like NASA are using DNN too! So is it just that their engineers have have seen the potential of DNN (it looks amazing to me as soon as I can grok the basics-beyond-the-very-basics!) and are willing to pay the large fees associated with the paid versions of DNN and get dedicated support? Many sections of dnnsoftware.com are several years out of date and some forums not had any activity over similar timespan; am I looking in the right places, is the community more active than it appears?

I guess I’ll see by responses to this…

Hoping my enthusiasm and gratitude for what I hope is an amazing platform comes across as well as my exasperation regarding mid-level video resources. I wouldn't spend the time to catalogue my concerns like this unless I felt DNN to seem very interesting indeed as a project-accelerating resource.

Very warm regards and thanks a million for any constructive responses.