A Guide to the Development of DNN Extensions

The Ecommerce platform is continuously evolving with more and more advanced technologies coming to the market every now and then. Today, the website development has taken a huge turn with the advancements of Ecommerce CMS platforms and managing such sites has also become very easy for the publishers and marketers. DotNetNuke is a powerful and flexible platform that allows business owners to create functional websites and add extensions or modules to enhance the performance of the site. Here in this article, we will discuss with you about the development environment and tools to be used to create DNN extensions. The purpose of this document is to provide a guide to the DNN developers to create feature rich extensions that are useful to their customers.

Create the perfect environment:

·         Install the DNN Platform: If you don’t have the platform installed on your system, then set one and the extension will specify which version is required.

·         Install the latest extension package: Download the latest installation Extension package from the release page and install it on your development environment. This is done simply to install the Extension objects into the DNN platform database.

·         Install Git: Now install Git on your development system and Git for Windows is required. Other files like GitHub for Windows or Visual Studio Tools for Git can also be helpful.

·         Create own fork from the Extensions Repository:  Create an account on the GitHub and visit the Extensions Repository and click on the “Fork” button and create your own fork for the project.

·         Clone the Fork to your Local Repository: Delete the Extensions directory in step 2 and using Git Bash change to your [DNPlatformRoot]/DesktopModules/. Your new extension directory should have all the source files that include Visual Studio project and solution files.

·         Configure your project references: Now open the Visual Studio and load the Extensions from the Extension directory and add references to each file by clicking on the “References under the Extensions project”.

·         Configure the project: Now you need to set up your build target so that you can start on the DNN extension development process. The Extensions dll files will be placed into the bin directory of your DNN Platform.

Whether you are a software developer working for a DNN development company or a freelancer, there are various appropriate tools that can aid you in the development process.

The DNN Platform: This offers a number of features that allows the DNN developers to define and describe any extensions. The Module Source Editor offers basic code editing functionality for the extensions. And for advanced features, you can also use the DNN Module Creator, which is an open source module that can be accessed and installed from the extension pages of DNN.

Visual studio:  A commercial Microsoft product, this offers advanced code development and editing tools and is great for advanced developers who are willing to build complex extensions for the website.

Web Matrix: This is a standard Microsoft product that can be easily downloaded from Microsoft Web Application Gallery for free. It provides a base level editing capability and is perfect for junior developers as it provides all the essential tools that are needed for creating any types of DNN extensions.