Well the overwhelming consensus for the site should be 100% width, and so that's what I'm doing, but for the skinning site, it's going to be fixed width. I think the shopping cart and the forum looks so much better.

I noticed over the last 4 days - several bug fixes going through and it's really good to note that the public forum is being well read by the core team guys, some of who are posting into the core team forum, or Gemini, and watching the fixes everyone comes up with. I know that's proving to be very helpful and while it would be great to be better coordinated, the way I see it, they're doing the best they can with the tools they have.

I've been asked in some projects about skinning for 2.1.2 for those wanting to stay on a more stable release, minus the fancy things, through to how to update in the future with new work.  All the skins I do, will be both 2.1.2 & 3+ compatible, no matter what number the build is for 3, I would still upgrade the skins to make sure that they work.  When you see what you have to work with, with DNN3, just a few fixes make it work well.

I'm not sure what Jon Henning has done on the Solpart menu, but it is ever improving and I heard on the grapevine, the CSS skinning using the solpart menu classes was on the way, or that's how I've intpreted it.

Having a few problems with my site wondering how to overcome them.  My site is a 2.03 - 2.04 - 2.1.2 upgrade.  Now, there were a few little bugs in it, things like the drop down menu for skinning doesn't appear, and in some modules, it appears the lnk click issue hasn't gone away even with the webstone patch.  So I'm installing and testing module after module wondering why there is no clickthrough showing and think this could be why.  And because I had a couple of changes, it behaves a big naughty sometimes, now this could be because there are several databases on server, but not too many in my opinion, or because I'm running sql and web on one server, which I know is a no-no, but that's part of the migration/new server setup I'm looking at to eliminate some of these things and to be honest, that's all I had the budget for.  So with that in mind, am splitting up my servers and going to the next stage of an sql server and web server only. My mail has always been handled from another server, which I'm very happy about for the time being.

So the plan is to setup a new db install of 2.1.2, with the solpart /webstone link patch applied, and import my data in and see how that goes. I'll try on my testing server and give it a run for a couple of days, and get some feedback. If that doesn't work, well, I've removed most of the third party modules and only have a couple, see that a couple are coming out in 3 already.  I'll just run with the 2.04/2.04/2.1.2 install until a solid build of 3 is out.  However I think that 2.1.2 import will work just fine. 

I've also been working on a couple of quirky things.. why the quirky things I ask you... nothing seems to run smoothly - not that it's that bad, but you think you're getting on top of things, feel as proud as punch...yep, cross off those little goals for the day and go to bed thinking, hey, I've actually mastered a few things, and then ... email, phone calls, msn in some instances, (no I don't use ICQ and MSN has been flaky -so I get email now)  Firefox..is there some sinister conspiracy that Browser authors think of to totally annoy the s#$% out of everyone else. 1 pixel here, 1 border there.. things just displaced a little. I can't work it out sometimes and just want to rip the monitors up..Sometimes I just have to get up and walk away from them because you get driven to a point of having to simply stop and say - hey - I tried, but it's not going to look as pretty in one, as it is on another... I just don't get it, and even if I tried to set some proper DotNetNuke standards, they would be DOUBLE standards to suit the dang browsers. 

Also, some of the skins I've been receiving to fix are done with literally dozens of graphics and they are all embedded rather than using CSS, so changing them is sometimes like working on a html file again.  Getting Fireworks, with no knowledge, and no naming convention and outputting heaps of tiny graphics, some skins have these spacer ones in there too because they weren't sliced correctly - Ouch - very messy to work with because most of my skins only have a couple of files in there.

You might think that's lazy or not the right way to go, but for me, I think it's the most efficient, using CSS where possible, and colour where possible and now that I have mastered Page 16 of the skinning document - well, it's a whole new world out there and I'm revisting some of my more difficult work and thinking how could I work this containers solution in.

And on top of this - have to roll out some catalook stores this week/early next week. One has a deadline by 21st January - and that payment gateway stuff wears me down a bit.  If I wasn't true to the heart about running DNN on all my work, I could have picked up other products at the drop of a hat and sometimes I wonder why I don't.  Well, the challenges are quite unique for the developers, firstly because some payment gateways are not written in asp.net, only asp, or java, or com objects, or cgi - NOT asp.net.. and it's forcing my developers to do much more extra work than normally would be required, simply because some of the tech support from the gateway companies can't / don't want to assist or just don't get it. They say - we have other solutions, why not use them, and it's not that - it's because I cannot use them, so we have to pioneer some .net solutions which have not been written. 

And I've learnt the whole payment gateway pricing/system out and written a document with price comparisons, features and charges and what an eye opener.. and some things are not what they seem. And some banks are less than cooperative to say the least.

So a few of these things have taken up a major part of my time - making the skins cross browser compatible - that has been really really hard this last few weeks - annoys the hell out of me, and not much you can do except tweaks here and there, working out the payment gateway stuff - so I can offer Australian ecommerce that is not just paypal, and my server migration.  I'm trying out one server with a colleague in the US - my first US server, but not just DNN, I'll try the loction. It's a half rack and means I have room to scale up and grow, and the pricing is affordable enough because I refuse to overfill my servers just for the dollar. It gives more headache than worth it trying to be greedy - I've seen so many times. I will then consider specialised DotNetNuke hosting for select people becuse I don't want to be a hosting farm, but I've managed my own servers now for 3 years and DNN almost exclusively for 2. I know how they work and how to manage them and have got some cool ideas and opportunities coming up in the next few months.

And my skinning site - most of the skins have been tested, putting in the categories, working out the content and may ask a few of the regulars to review it, and pass comment. It's a mix between resources, and commercial solutions and because I have the key - I get to make the final choices on how it should work - it's a bit different to normal sites and hey I might have to change a few things because they just won't work, but I'm working with a DotNetNuke infrastructure, with the modules I have access to and working them to their fullest and hoping to provide some answers for people, inspiration for those developers who keep apologising they are not graphically inclined and then also have an area where people who know a little can learn alot, and those who know alot can be inspired.

It's a catch 22 really - I either say nothing to people and just drop my work out here when it's finally finished, or, I can tell people about what's going on and if it runs over time, well, I am sorry I can't do much more than I do. My whole life in the last 10 months has been DotNetNuke consumed, from working with absolutely dreadful modules that will never work, through to being inspired by fantastic ones that make you get all new ideas, then working with skinning where there is 43 pages from which you're meant to create masterpieces that take sometimes weeks to do.. I mean not weeks full on, but you have to put things down and pick them up again because your mind is a blur and you can't get a particular way of thinking out of your head..

In the end, I have looked back on what has been my worst year financially, my biggest year in learning, my most inspiring year with meeting people, my most challenging year with juggling it all together and I have to say- 2005 will be the year of DNN!  By the time 3 is a solid solution, all these problems will be behind us and we'll wonder what all that worry was about!

That's it. .and it's only 7.35 AM on Tuesday morning for me!

Nina Meiers