This months at SalarO we have released new skin pack which is the re-release of our popular BlackBeauty skin. We have also done a video that you could see here.

Last months we released a great Web 2.0 Skin pack with J-Query module included. Please see the details for Minimalist II and the video here. Minimalist II is our three colour CSS Skin Pack for DNN, which proves that a more complex design is also possible with CSS skinning. and this is probably the one of the hardest one we did.

It only has a minimum number of tables and highest number of Divs to make up a skin pack that is fast without compromising the portal capabilities. Great pack of Containers too.

Currently we are working on number of great modules to be released in March. To name a few: we have now a Constant Contact Sign up module which allows you to get your users sign up to constant contact for your Email Marketing Tasks. You do need to have an account with Constant Contact.

iPhone Skin
SalarO team has also released the first iPhone SkinPack that you could use to create a mini site or place number of pages in your site with this skin running. The result can be seen here. We intended to produce a skin that behaves well on iphone only and we ended up producing one that behaves well on both iphone restricted window size and the normal browser windows.

Please checkout the skin at our demo site and if you dont have an iphone to checkout the width. Please have a look with the emulator here on testiphone.com/.

This skinpack comes with number of great containers to suit the skin, as well as, skin types for various situations requiring different ways of content placements in the page.

The skin and the module will be made available in our store as well as snow and dnn store in the new year.

iPhone & iPod Touch project is SalarO's first study of DotNetNuke usability within the enormously successful iPhone & iPod mobile devices arena. It is predicted that by end of this year, there will be Approx 100 million devices around the world. The Apple OS is now well defined, so now is the time to create sections in your site that are user friendly in this environment.

If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod touch to test your site then please have a look at testiphone.com/, you owe yourself some tinkering time. Keep in mind that - like all technology - the prices will come down eventually. It's a virtual certainly that within the next couple of years everyone will either have one or they'll be using similar copycat devices that are bound to join the competition in time. The touch sensitive interface is making developers think a bit differently about software development. The future is a place where mice and physical keyboards may become scarce.

What is so attractive about iPhone and iPod Touch
Both The iPhone and iPod Touch are expected to be connected to the Web at all time, either with local WiFi hotspots for a full throttle experience or via G3 or Edge network on iPhone. The main attractions are small size, long battery life, stunning user interface. This means that developing for portable devices no longer has to mean building occasionally connected, miniature, underpowered user interfaces. Both devices are good at displaying standard web pages that you may never need to develop an application specifically for the iPhone. Your iPhone users can likely use your pre-existing DNN with few, if any, problems.

Most web pages display flawlessly by default on the iPhone/iPod. I have surfed countless DNN sites with few problems. Nevertheless, if you want to develop an application specifically for iPhone users, then it can certainly be done with a carefully crafted iPhone/iPod DNN SKIN.

What are the existing problems with DNN on iPhone?
We initially tried to use mobiNuke 2.00.02 – to make our DotNetNuke mobile friendly. However, we did not have much luck with the module being very buggy. We therefore went about solving the issues with slight modifications of the core and just a optimized skin. The rest of it will be achieved by mirroring modules or keeping it simple with dedicated copy borrowed from salaro.com..

Making DNN more usable for iPhone users is to understand that a standard sized button works fine for a mouse click, but the comparatively large size of a person's fingertip benefits from a larger target. Elements can be made more attractive and usable in other ways. For example, the iPhone will automatically convert hyperlinks that contain telephone numbers into hot spots that automatically dial that number when clicked. This assumes the iPhone recognizes the link as a phone number. To ensure the iPhone will recognize the link as a phone number, format it like this:

<a href="tel:1-425-555-5555">1-425-555-5555</a>

What's Supported by DNN? What's Not?
Browsing the DNN sites the iPhone/iPod Touch version of Safari does have a few limitations, However, these limitations are surprisingly few and far between when compared with the capabilities of other so-called ‘internet enabled' devices. Notable in the list are

• Adobe Flash. This is due to the fact that plug-ins and downloads of all kinds are prohibited on the iPhone/iPod.
• Silverlight as a development option.
• Downloads

Summary
The iPhone/iPod's ultra-rich, always connected browser environment is destined to redefine the way mobile device applications are built. Now one of the Star Trek gadgets has become reality and a few touches of an iPhone is all it takes to convince virtually anyone that they are experiencing the future of user interfaces. A new wave of iPhone aware software is developing so I suggest you hop on and surf it to success!

Please see our series of videos on this subject here. And latest on on youtube here.

The key for many businesses, will be how to secure a larger percentage of the market that is available. Recently we have been getting grim predictions that a recession is definitely on the way, times may be tough, but by being proactive, persistent and a little more creative in marketing what you can offer to your clients, you can still stay ahead. You should be thinking of ways you can focus on your customers' needs, now more than ever. It makes sense to build your relationships, at a time when they may be more reluctant to invest or purchase.You may not have considered that creating a new web site, or revamping your existing site can actually draw new customers to you, as well as retaining those you already have.

Your Customers are looking for new solutions to get out of recession.

Here are some ideas for busting recession. Remember to think about how you can use your web site to promote yourselves:

• Get in touch: Stop by, make a call, send a handwritten note, send an email, invite them to a new section on your site, send them a newsletter (in that order of priority – the further up this list the more valuable the contact will be). Let them know you care. Take the effort to stay connected.
• Ask how you can help them:. with no strings and no qualifiers. We all appreciate it when someone offers us help with something. So will your customers, even if they don’t take you up on the offer.
• Enlighten them: Send an article, share an idea give them a new ideas. Once you have worked out know how you can help or what their challenges are, it will be easier to determine the best things to share based on their interests and needs.
• Focus on serving not selling: People buy from those they like, trust and respect. Sales will come. Focus on the person, building the relationship and serving them.

These are just a few simple ideas. The important challenges are to find ways to be relevant, helpful and available to customers.

At SalarO we can provide you with the resources to help you improve your new media objectives and therefore sell more or reach to your customers better.

Up to 20% Discount on the price
we charged you last time.

20% Discount on the price of all our packaged skins

DNN 5 will be released shortly. The new version has some great new functionality that is evident in 4.9. It may be time for you to upgrade the old skin we have done for you to take advantage of the new functionality, Now is time to upgrade your site so it is better secure against hackers. SalarO can help you archive both tasks.

Please see our Packaged skins. We will be bringing out a few great DNN5 packaged skins as soon as possible. We are now offering 20% off all Packaged Skin sales for the rest of the September.

DNN 5, like 4.9 will have a much better menu than previous releases. It uses a DNN Menu that is XHTML and has a much smaller footprint than the old SolpartMenu. This new menu should be much more SEO friendly and a much smaller size, so to increase your site's performance.

What you need to do to get a great QUOTE?

1. Fill out our quote form by clicking Quote. We respond with a fixed quote for various aspects of your project. If it is a skinning only project then please Click here.
2. We create a project for you in our project management system and allow you to communicate directly with our team. We have divided our team into three main sections: Programming, Design, Skinning and Content Transfer. Therefore, whatever stage the application is, you will interact directly with the right person. So you will never miss an email and neither will our team.
3. We do the work and once you are happy with the new site, then you can approve it and your new portal goes live.

Up to 20% Discount on our prices

During the last 5 years SalarO has created over 800 Skins for our Custom Skin Customers. See some of them that we were allowed to publish by clicking here.

New Releases for 2009
Minimalist II XHTML is our three colour CSS Skin Pack with DNN Navmenu, which is mainly css with good XHTML just a few Tables for content panes that DNN finds it easy to populate rather than DIV content panes.So no longer do you need to purchase external Modules or difficult hack to make this work. It has horizontal menu. and we have also developed a animation module that will allow you to upload images and replace the flash in homepage with your own content.

DNN® 4.8.3-4.9.2 Security Release Now Available! was available last year.
At SalarO we are committed to providing skinning and general support solutions to owners of DotNetNuke Portals. DotNetNuke is a highly secure web platform. Traditionally security on the web is a challenging area and DNN core team have gone to great lengths over the past 5 years to ensure the integrity of the application. DNN 5.1 will be made available in April. We strongly advice for you to upgrade then as the current 5.0 is not quite ready for a live site.

However, last year the DotNetNuke core team were notified of a security vulnerability which allowed an unauthorized user to upload a file into a DotNetNuke site. It turned out that the problem was not as severe as anticipated, as only files with "safe" extensions could be uploaded to the server. However, to eliminate these files one may have to delete the partition in which your portal exists. In some instances, these files were as much as 5 GB in size. Furthermore, deleting the files into trash, does not cure the issue. The appropriate patches were introduced in DNN 4.8.3 - 4.9.2 so any version after should be just fine and therefore it is mandatory to upgrade to ensure server integrity.

Since DotNetNuke is a mission critical application for your organization, you must have 100% confidence that the portal software you are running is rock solid. As a result the full release rather than a patch was provided, to ensure that the security fix is fully integrated with the rest of the framework and adequately tested. This therefore means that the best way of fixing all the reported vulnerabilities are to upgrade to the latest DNN 4.8.3- 4.9.2 or later.

This upgrade will also allow you to upgrade much easier to DNN 5.x when available in the next two months. So, please get a Quote now and let SalarO Project manage the process for you. Upgrade your old DNN to a brand new DNN and keep hackers away. The process may be more complex for you to handle, so get SalarO to take charge and project manage it for you. However, you may want to do most of the upgrade and let us to the bit that needs a professional hand, like skinning.

This is how the process goes: -

1. Fill out our quote form by clicking Quote. We respond with a fixed quote for various aspects of your project.
2. We create a project for you in our project management system and allow you to communicate directly with our team. We have divided our team in 3 main sections, Programming, Design, Skinning and Content transfer. Therefore, whatever stage the application is, you will interact directly with the right person. So you will never miss an email and neither will the team.
3. We do the work and once you are happy with the new site, then approve it and your new portal goes live. you will sleep happy as hackers will stay away.

SalarO can help you achieve this with a New skin and content transfer service that can indeed help you to upgrade to DNN 5.1 slowly without breaking your site. We advise you to create a new alias called new.yourdomain.com and get a fresh DNN 4.9.2 install. together we port your site and once approved you can switch off your old site.

skins.dotnuke.net is a new demo site for all our packaged skins. This site is developed for, Hosters, resellers or Consultants that would like to show our skins to their clients as their own. Since we don't show any SalarO branding on this site.

Once your clients agree on a skin, you can purchase them from us and add your own markups.

If you are buying more than one, then please contact us by using the feedback form and ask us for appropriate discount scheme on large numbers of the skins.

We are very excited with the prospect of DNN 5.1 which if current testing goes well could be released within a months. This version will have a lot of new features, DotNetNuke Corporation has done a great job in making such a great release. This exciting new release offers native support for Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and IIS 7.0. Please note that we are sill advising against upgrading to DNN 5.0 due to some late bugs found in this version. Please install DNN 5.0.1 when it becomes available.

So far we have experienced no issues in our new installs or upgrades what so ever. We strongly suggest you upgrade to this version as soon as it arrives. If you are using a very early release, we find that the best method of moving forward is to create a fresh 4.8.2 and slowly port your content across. Please ask us for a quote to make this happen for you with our content team. We are indeed doing this more and more for clients.

Recently we have had a client with a number of Joomla 1 Portals that he needed to move them to DNN. This project helped us experience for the first time the LAMP market that is improving in parallel with DNN.

Joomla 1.5 running on PHP 5.x, MySQL 5.x and Apache 2.2 is proving to be very stable indeed. The other popular platform famous for its simplicity is WordPress. This is why SalarO has finally decided to also offer services for this platform. PHP 6.x will bring much higher level of security to this platform and therefore, this is something that SalarO can no longer afford to ignore. SalarO has now setup a server running LAMP and Joomla 1.5.3 and is ready to both develop as well as host customer sites on this platform and show the ways that organizations could run both side by side and use their advantages for a better web presence.

We naturally feel that if one is starting a fresh portal, then it is much better to run on DNN. However, if one has existing investments in LAMP then it may be good to use Joomla for standard CMS web serving and use DNN for complex Application that requires high security. There are some aspect of Joomla that are much better than DNN. and some aspect of DNN that is way ahead of Joomla, so this is not an easy choice for users. In Q1, 2009 we will also be introducing Druple to DNN and DNN to Druple services.

SalarO's dedicated Joomla team to help customers on Joomla platform to move to DNN as well as help companies that have existing Joomla or wordpress sites to unify the look and feel of their site with DotNetNuke sites in parallel. We are very excited with these projects and to show the potentials for collaborations between the two platforms, we are porting number of Joomla Templates to DNN as well as porting number of DNN packaged skins to Joomla to show the feasibility of this concept. We also plan to produce modules that can bridge and port data across the platforms.

Since the last newsletter we have two great new modules for you. ConstantContact allows DNN to capture end user email details and pass it through ConstantContact API As well as a great new Flash module that currently is given as part of the Minimalist II skin. Please check it out.The other one out already is Wedding List Module for DNN. where is probably more applicable to UK couple planning a wedding. We have developed a module that allows you to put your wish list for presents you like to receive from friends and family attending the wedding. Each user that would like to purchase it for you will sign in and make it unavailable for others to see. therefore no chance of getting the same present twice.

The second one is an Enhanced Survey which is finished and should be available for sale next months.

The new store pack of goodies are almost ready for release, see SalarO STORE as well as PinkandBlueGifts.com store that is now finished and open for business. At the moment for a limited period we are setting up this store for you for a fixed price. Please email or click here to send us your requirements for a store and SalarO team can set it up for you at a fixed cost.

We are also working on porting some of the best of the Joomla modules to DNN. There are many of them that at the movement have no equivalent in DNN world.

Second Life Building and Scripting