I joined Engage back in early 2006 working with DotNetNuke skinning for both internal and clientèle projects. By working on numerous projects, I found that many people have different conceptions about skinning with DotNetNuke. And I could not satisfy myself with a clear definition of skinning in most of the books that I looked at. Today, let’s talk about skinning and its true meaning, and learn what we can do to fully accomplish a powerful DotNetNuke skinning engine.
Skinning is not a skill; it’s a profession that requires knowledge and experience in understanding the DotNetNuke platform (especially with the skinning engine), web standards, as well as aesthetic design.
I’ve seen many developer created websites and skins with very similar mistakes lately. They all lack of knowledge about principles in web design. In my post about the truth of DotNetNuke Skinning, I mentioned that skinning is not a skill; it takes a bit of knowledge and understanding of the DotNetNuke framework as well as aesthetic design. Many seems to master the first part, however, they all missed the second. By learning how to use Photoshop doesn’t make one becomes a graphic designer.
To assist with future skinning approach, here are the five principles of building a DotNetNuke site or to design a skin. These principles are of course extended to web design and development in general, but the lack of implementation in DotNetNuke community intrigued me to put them together. I hope you all enjoy!
A good friend of mine, Ian Robinson (also a Lead Instructor for Module Development at Engage), went to Texas a few weeks ago to provide training for clients. When he was approached by a potential client asking about skinning, he immediately mentioned my name thought it just helps carried on the conversation. The gentleman took it seriously and asked more about what I have done in the past. Ian struggled to pull out the hard evidence because he doesn't know all the projects that I've worked on since we haven't had time to keep our portfolio up-to-date.
Today, I introduced a quick page listed some of the projects I've done and hope it helps to give a better idea to potential clients of Engage. Although the page you find lacks of detail about the projects, it does carry external links (if applicable) to the live sites so you can have a better look. Some of them are Engage projects and some are my personal work.
I intend to provide more detail about the projects when I get some free time. So if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to talk through the detail of each.
Also, if you find thumbnail images without the links, it's either a work in progress project or an off-line site. But I sure will provide detail of all the screenshots.
DotNetNuke has grown quickly over the past few years. But it has only been major changes for the developer community. The question we should ask here is how do we bring the framework closer to the general audiences where all businesses from small to large can understand and utilize it for their online presence?
dnnGallery was introduced to help answer it. dnnGallery is the place to showcase DotNetNuke projects to all audiences from non-technical, business professionals to DotNetNuke developers.
I designed the site with layout to showcase projects in a way that provides valuable information to visitors. Then the design was implemented into a DotNetNuke skin package with XHTML/CSS and Web Standards Compliance approach.
The site was developed with great help from a very good friend of mine, Ian Robinson. Ian also a DotNetNuke training instructor at Engage Software and has extensive knowledge of module development. Some of you may have already known him through taking our training courses at Engage.