Blog 4.1.0

This past weekend a new DotNetNuke Blog release candidate was posted on CodePlex.  This version of the blog addressed several longstanding issues with the Blog module and should be the final Release Candidate prior to the official release.  In 4.1.0 we really focused on fixing some of the biggest problems with 4.0 and doing some security hardening based on feedback from our security team.  In addition we added support for custom JS and CSS and temporarily removed support for Twitter (we’ll be bringing back an improved Twitter option in the next release).

One of the features that I was really excited about including in this release was the ability to support code formatting in the blog module.  There are many different methods that I have used over the last several years to format code in my blog posts.  The common denominator in every case is that it generally required me to add some custom JavaScript and CSS in the blog post so that it could be displayed properly.  In addition to code formatting, we also wanted to support the ability of administrators to include their own CSS to override defaults.

For the last year or so there has been a lot of interest in the DotNetNuke community about how to run DotNetNuke on Windows Azure.  Many people have looked at the problem and could not find a viable solution that didn’t involve major changes to the core platform.  This past fall, DotNetNuke Corp. was asked by Microsoft to perform a feasibility study identifying any technical barriers that prevented DotNetNuke from running on Windows Azure.   I was pleasantly surprised by what I found and over the course of the next few weeks I’ll present my findings in a series of blog posts.  Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause, and he is running DotNetNuke on Windows Azure.

• Understanding Azure
• SQL Azure
• Azure Drives
• Web Roles and IIS
• Putting it All together

Part 1: Understanding Azure

Background

Prior to the official launch of Windows Azure, Charles Nurse had looked at running DotNetNuke on Windows Azure.  At the time it was concluded that we could not run without major architectural changes to DotNetNuke or to Windows Azure.  Since that time several other people in the community have also tried to get DotNetNuke running on Windows Azure and have arrived at the same conclusion.  David Rodriguez has actually made significant progress, but his solution required substantial changes to DotNetNuke and is not compatible without also modifying any module you wish to use.

DotNetNuke already runs on a number of different Cloud platforms and we really don’t want to re-architect DotNetNuke just to run on Azure.  That approach was rejected because ultimately Azure support is only needed by a small fraction of our overall community.  Re-architecting the platform would require significant development effort which could be better spent on features that serve a much larger segment of our community.  Also, re-architecting the platform would introduce a significant amount of risk since it would potentially impact every Module and Skin currently running on the platform.  The downsides of re-architecting DotNetNuke vastly outweigh the anticipated benefits to a small percentage of our user base.