I recently upgraded a staging site to DotNetNuke 6.0 from DotNetNuke 5.6.3. All in all things went very well but there were a few issues I encountered specific to the configuration of this particular site. I suspect these scenarios are not all that uncommon so I wanted to share them in this post in case anyone else encountered something similar.
URL Master by ifinity
This particular site is using ifinity’s URL Master. As stated in Bruce Chapman’s blog post, you need to upgrade URL Master to version 2.4.3 prior to upgrading your site. As a test, I didn’t upgrade and sure enough the upgrade failed. Not that I didn’t believe Bruce – he’s the authority on URL rewriting - I was just curious as to the result if I didn’t upgrade URL Master first. So, if you are using URL Master on your site, upgrade to URL Master 2.4.3 prior to upgrading your site to DNN 6. Once I did that, the upgrade went smoothly.
DDRMenu
The DDRMenu by DNNGarden is the new default menu provider for DNN 6. It’s a great menu provider that we use often and this site was no exception. However, the simplest approach was taken when implementing the menu on this site. All I did was upgrade the DNN NAV Menu to the DDRMenu by replacing DNNMenuNavigationProvider with DDRMenuNavigationProvider in the providername attribute in the navigation declaration in the skin.
changed <dnn:nav providername="DNNMenuNavigationProvider" ... />
to <dnn:nav providername="DDRMenuNavigationProvider" ... />
So, what was the problem? After the upgrade the menu did not display. DNN 6 includes DDRMenu version 1.99.05. I checked the DDRMenu CodePlex page and there was a new version available for DNN 6 - DDRMenu 2.0.0. I installed that version and the menu displayed and functioned properly without doing anything else.
DotNetNuke.RadEditorProvider
Another new feature of DotNetNuke 6 is the implementation of the dnnWerk RadEditor Provider as the default HTML editor provider (it’s called DotNetNuke.RadEditorProvider in DNN 6). We use this HTML provider on a number of our client sites and highly recommend it. The site that I was upgrading however did not have it installed but I did want to implement it. The issue is that the DNN 6 upgrade package does not include the install package for this provider. After the upgrade the editor wasn’t available. I assume that’s just an oversight and will be included in later versions, but either way it’s not hard to resolve. The solution? Easy, just download the DNN 6 install package and in the Install/Provider folder you’ll see RadEditorProvider_06.00.00_Install.zip. After you install this module you will see a new Host menu item named HTML Editor Manager. There you can enable the provider and configure it to your liking.
Conclusion
Other than having to upgrade a couple of modules for DNN 6 compatibility I encountered no other problems with the upgrade. DotNetNuke 6 is a great upgrade and as a general rule I’ll continue testing before upgrading any production sites but so far so good.
About IMI Software, Inc.
IMI Software, Inc. is a DotNetNuke Web Design and Development and Internet Marketing Company providing quality web solutions to small, medium and large businesses, Not-For-Profits and Corporations throughout New York, Queens and Long Island. We are a DotNetNuke Certified Partner and provide a diverse array of services designed to meet the specific business needs. We specialize in website design and development, search engine optimization, social media integration, internet marketing, ecommerce solutions, intranet and extranet development, print marketing services as well as SEO and social media consulting and training.