Aug 27

Written by: host
8/27/2008 11:53 AM

  I corrected some issues with the Soap Box.  Originally I was only showing Username, and was asked to make it Display Name, which makes more sense.  But rather than just go in and switch it, I opted to create a toggle in the settings that allows the Administrator to choose which he wants to show.  That was fairly easy to code.  Where I got stuck was with packaging up the code.  I had to create a stored procedure to add a new field to the settings table.  The way you do this is with an alter command that puts the field into the table.  After that, because it was empty, I added another piece of code to populate the fields with a default value of 0.  I'm sure there is someway to do it when using the alter command, but I didn't research it. 

  With DotNetNuke, you have to put those commands in a text file, so that when it gets installed on a new or preexisting installation that it adds the field.  The problem I was having, was the test portion.  Specifically the piece where by I would check to see if the field already existed and then carry-on with the SQL commands.  (Because we don't want to add the field twice, as that would throw an error, and then overwrite any data with zero.

  It was basically a learning experience with SQL and DNN to find the right commands that worked in both.  I eventually got it, packaged it up, and placed it on my test server.  But low and behold the test server has issues now.  I think it has some residual binary files from a previous version causing problems.  I may have to just pitch everything and rebuild that website.  I don't have the strength to do that right now though, so I tested it on my live site, and there were no problems.  I hate using the live site for that sort of thing, but I was on a deadline to get it done.  (Sleep was calling.)

  In the meantime, I found a partner named Andrew who is just as ambitious as I am, and wants to learn how to skin these DNN apps, so that he and I can start doing some serious web development for customers.  I don't think skinning is difficult, but they make it difficult by providing the subject matter for someone at a programmer level.  They really need to just make a tool that allows you to build skins without having to install Visual Web Developer / Visual Studio, and a full version of DotNetNuke.  That's a little overkill to the guy who just wants to put something together and deploy it on a test server.  There should really be some sort of balance here.  Making skins shouldn't be this daunting, because it's not like the DNN installation is some easy thing that works out of the box.  It's always ripe with problems that no art major wants to sit around and try to debug. 

  Anyway, I'm doing my best to help him understand the skinning, and once he has it, we'll be moving forward with a number of cool projects.

  I noticed there are no fantasy sports modules for DotNetNuke.  I thought about making my own, but there doesn't appear to be an XML server that provides all the NFL (Or any Sports) statistics.  You would really think they'd put something like this together.  I don't know how Yahoo or Sportsline or any of these other major shops get their data.  I know there has to be some sort of datafeed out there for this, but I'll be damned if I know where it is.

  A full fledged Fantasy Sports app would be pretty daunting to try and write by myself.  I thought about making a more simple one and then expand on it, but even that seems daunting.  (The draft process alone would require a ton of code.)  I'm still kicking the idea around.  But I can't do anything about it without a data source.  So I dunno.  I imagine the reason there aren't any is the lack of a web service providing folks with the data, and then others would have done it already.

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