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How we created and packaged a highly functional DNN App in exactly 10 Minutes

The concept of DNN Modules has many weaknesses. What we dislike most are things like...

  1. If you install them, DNN might stop working 
  2. If you remove them, DNN might stop working 
  3. The module can only be installed once - which causes problems with upgrades and if you want to customize it...
    1. ...assuming you can actually customize them - which is usually very hard...
    2. ...because most module developers just develop what they think is important, and customizing is usually very late in the process
    3. though most modules may be open source, they use odd technologies and architectures making it inefficient to customize - it's often cheaper to just develop the thing again
  4. Most Modules are not multilingual, or not the way we need it
  5. Developing modules needs visual studio to develop, compile, test, etc.
    1. Adapting them - if the code is available - needs visual studio to develop, compile, test, etc.
    2. Much of the development/customizing time is focused on "plumbing" - getting things done, which a CMS should do for you (but DNN does not do, because it's not a CMS unless you add 2SexyContent). 

All this and more has led us to not even evaluate simple modules as evaluating the modules takes more time than creating it again. This is not the way it should be, but the way it is. 

So we decided to change it

Today we released 2SexyContent 6.0 - and it's a game-changer. And we really wanted to make sure people "get it". So I created a brand new App in exactly 10 minutes, and recorded myself doing it. In the last few seconds I even packaged it for redistribution. The App is simple, but it contains some very powerful features like

  1. Parent-Child (or List/Details) data and views
  2. Content is multi-lingual
  3. Templates are multi-lingual (using central resources)
  4. App has central settings that apply to all uses
  5. AJAX-Lightboxes for users, "normal" pages for Google
  6. Versioned data (yes, you can get back the data as it was before)
  7. Unpublished save (add data, but only the editors see it)

...and much more. This HTML-output of the App isn't production class - for that the HTML would need some more tweaking - but we're really exited because it just shows how productive things can become, if the "platform" does everything for you. Watch the real-time video below or try out the App yourself (links below...)

Try it out for yourself

  1. Download 2SexyContent 6.0 from GitHub (it's stable, but not on codeplex yet, because we need a few more instructions before showing it to the masses)
  2. Play with the App I created in 10 minutes
  3. Discover other Apps from the catalog...
  4. ...or contribute your own Apps - we would really love that!

With love from Switzerland - stay sexy :)
Daniel


Daniel Mettler grew up in the jungles of Indonesia and is founder and CEO of 2sic internet solutions in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, an 20-head web specialist with over 800 DNN projects since 1999. He is also chief architect of 2sxc (see github), an open source module for creating attractive content and DNN Apps.

Read more posts by Daniel Mettler