Thursday, July 02, 2009
Welcome!

Welcome to my little corner of the Internet!

Among other things, I'm exploring all that the DotNetNuke website framework has to offer.

You can email me at Larry@LarryDaniele.com.

My Other Sites

Here's a partial list of the web sites that I'm responsible for:

  • CompanionSoftware.com - My business site and the home of the Metafile Companion utility for editing Windows metafiles.
  • SunderlandPublicLibrary.org - A labor of love for the public library in this wonderful town of Sunderland, MA USA.
  • DebbieHennes.com - A site created for an artist friend. Sometimes, simple is good.
  • BurtCohen.com - Personal website of the professor, writer, political activist and former New Hampshire state senator Burt Cohen.

For more information, you can see my website development portfolio.

I would also encourage people interested in developing their own web site to look at DotNetNuke. It's what I'm using to create this site. Once it's set up, it's quite simple to add, edit and remove content over time.

I'm using the Minimalist skin created by Evan O'Neil for the overall style of this site. It is quite flexible and easy to work with.

Latest Blog Entries

 Joe has been practicing hard on both the alto and tenor saxophones. He's in the high school band as well as a separate Jazz Band. The day of his Cabaret Night debut this past Thursday, he got a shiny new Keilwerth alto sax from his mom:

Joe and his new Keilwerth alto sax

You can watch Joe perform Take Five at Cabaret night on YouTube:



 

...

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My JanSport backpack and I have travelled everywhere together - all across the United States, Germany, Scotland, Italy and right here in lovely Sunderland, Massachusetts. I use it a lot as a ride my bicycle around town to do work and run errands.

I often throw a laptop, a few folders or some boxes to be mailed into my backpack and pedal wherever I need to in our little town. So I was quite sad when the zipper on the pack started to give way. After a while, it could no longer be trusted to hold everything reliably. What to do?!?

Go out an buy another JanSport backpack, of course! I loved my old one, so I went online and found a new one similar to it. I couldn't find my favorite burgundy color, so I settled for green (my other favorite). It arrived quickly and looked great. As I was unpacking it, I noticed that the JanSport information said simply that all JanSport backpacks come with a lifetime product warranty....

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I've been using Outlook 2003 for a long time. A couple of days ago, Outlook no longer filtered junk mail into the special Junk Mail folder. All the spam just accumulated in my Inbox. Since I have public email addresses, I get literally hundreds of spam messages an hour. I rely on the Junk Filter working properly.

I am suspicious that this behavior began right after I installed the trial version of Microsoft Publisher 2007 (so I could view a .pub document someone sent me). I'm my search for a solution to the problem, I did see some other reports of people suspecting Office 2007 (and other Microsoft updates) affecting Outlook.

I stumbled on the solution that worked for me in a forum article titled "Junk mail filter stopped working". This solution is very simple:

  1. In Outlook 2003, select Help > Detect and Repair from the menu.
  2. Follow the on-screen instructions.

After this, I restarted Outlook and the Junk Mail filter started working again!

Here is a problem experienced recently... and a solution!

 

Using Plesk 8.6.0 for Windows, I removed an SSL certificate from a domain and then added a new one back. When I went to Server > IP Addresses > 208.109.105.22, I saw the message:

 

Warning: The Plesk database is corrupt. Please launch the Reconfigurator utility to fix it

 

I also did NOT see the new certificate I had added in the combobox of certificates.

 

I launched Reconfigurator and ran all the fixes, but the problem still persisted. I rebooted the server a number of times and that did not help.

 

This problem has been reported by three other users in the thread The Plesk database is corrupt.

 

There is a Plesk Knowledge Base article about exactly this problem titled [FIX] Plesk database corruption warning on IP address management page

...

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2008 Christmas Dinner

Vickie and I had a nice Christmas dinner with Laura and her boyfriend Jim. We feasted on lasagne (both traditional and vegan), sautéed spinach and garlic and a loaf of braided bread (that Laura braided) made with stone-ground wheat flour and topped with sesame seeds. The green casserole dish (for the veggie lasagne) was a Christmas present from Sarah and Jarett that was put to immediate use!

If you are using a DotNetNuke skin that has set the body background color to a dark color (e.g. black), then when you use the FCK HTML Editor, select an image and then Browse Server, the popup window inherits the skin body color.

To fix this kind of problem, right-click on the problem window, View Source and see what CSS file might be specific to this popup. Then edit this CSS file with a different background color.

For example, I found "/Providers/HtmlEditorProviders/Fck/FCKtemplates/imageBrowser/Default/Styles.css" and added the lines:

/* customization for skin with black background */
body
{
    background-color: White;
}

This solved the problem!

 

I had a fabulous 49th birthday celebration last night. Dinner at The Teapot Japanese restaurant in Northampton with Vickie, Joe and Libby. A surprise birthday cake, Beatles t-shirt and then... 1964 The Tribute

Here's a video montage of the evening (a free service of Amimoto.com):

When doing a backup on a new server where I restored Plesk domains from an old server, I tried to do my first manual backup via the Plesk 8.6 control panel. I receieved the error message:

Invalid syntax on line 1.

Plesk backup error

I also tried doing a backup from the command prompt with the command:

domain_bu --backup --domain-name=CompanionSoftware.com --dump-file=C:\Temp\BackupCompanionSoftware.com.bak

Once again, I got the error message:

Backup process has failed for domain 'CompanionSoftware.com' Invalid syntax on line 1.

I couldn't find any help for this problem on Google or the Plesk support knowledgebase. However, I appear to have stumbled upon the problem and a solution. In the folder:

C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk\Backup

I found a 0-byte file named "certificate". Since a 0-byte file contains no information (other than its existence),...

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Joe was really using his head during yesterday's game against Holyoke Catholic. This photograph appeared in the Springfield Republican newspaper and online at MassLive.com.

 

(Thanks to Jeanne for letting me know about this!)

On DNNStuff.com site, there's a great article (with source code) IMC Example (DotNetNuke Intermodule Communication) that demonstrates how to implement IModuleCommunicator and IModuleListener interfaces in DNN using two simple modules, one that sends text and one that receives it. It is great to have simple, working code to explain a concept like this. (Note: You'll have to register (for free) on the DNNStuff.com site before you can view the article.)

 

I would like to offer one suggestion for an improvement…

 

IMC works great unless you check "Supports Partial Rendering" (i.e. AJAX) for the sender and receiver controls. This is desirable to have one module update the other without the entire page refreshing.

 

A few simple changes to Receiver.ascx.vb (steps 1-3) and ImcExample.dnn (step 4) will enable AJAX rendering to work:

 

Add a reference...

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A Random Walk
Minimize
Enjoy a few random photos from my gallery!
02. The beach at the resort
Joe, his new Keilwerth alto sax and real "fake" book
Babies Planted, Lot of Promise
With the Connecticut River in the background
875 - Ice Capades
More photos...
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