AboutRushton Prince Expertise All aspects of Enterprise Systems and Application Development. Including adaptive web-based software components, component-based systems, network hardware, Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software packages, intelligence, development processes, portal systems, ecommerce, ebusiness, security (physical/methodologies/hardware/software/data) enterprise resource management (ERP), techno know-how, technology to business need alignment (tactical / strategic), and their application to various vertical markets (business industries).
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Expert: Rushton Prince Date: 7/8/2008 Subject: Recommendation for DNN Module
Question Hi Rushton,
I am running a DotNetNuke portal and am looking for advice on a third-party module that offers more features than the default login/registration process built into DNN. I saw you mentioned DNN in an earlier post. I am using this portal to build a panel of experts in select fields.
Overall, people who visit the portal need to be able to register (Verified), answer some profiling questions, and view/edit a subset of these profiling questions. I, the Administrator, need an easy way to run queries into the database, download it locally, and back it up.
I looked into this 18 months ago and nothing was available at that time that met my needs. I evaluated UCanUse by Golko Consulting and Dynamic Registration by DataSprings. Both fell a little short back in 2007. Here are my specific requirements:
1) Complete control over which fields are mandatory and which ones are optional when someone registers.
2) Ability to add as many additional registration questions (fields) as I like. In other words, I want the registration process to include a small survey. These could be on one long page or on multiple pages.
3) In relation to #2, be able to set some of the fields to be simple question types (like select one from a predefined list, select many, enter a number, etc.) with the ability to perform some validation on the data. An example is I may ask users to type in their age in years. I want to be sure they type in a whole number between 18 and 99. If the entry is not a number in this range, they see an error message.
4) Registered users can view/modify/update their data. Here they would sign in and if they like they can go to a modify account page (that new users cannot see). Once they go to this page, they see the registration survey with all of their previous answers filled in. They can then edit their answers with one caveat. I need the ability to lock certain fields, like their email address, name, and user name so that those cannot be edited. Locked fields would be grayed out.
5) The ability to set the email address as a primary index in the database so that any given email address can only be entered once. If someone uses john@aol.com, anyone else who tries to use that email would get a message that an account for this address has already been created.
6) Give people the option to remove themselves from the panel. It would be great if the process of removal simply flags their record as removed so that only the site admin can see it. I prefer this to having their data literally erased.
7) This is critical. There must be an easy way for me to 1) export the database so that I can work with it locally in MS Access, 2) query the database online (less important if #1 is met), and 3) backup the database locally. By easy I mean something designed for non programmers.
8) Finally, the icing on the cake would be the ability to assign each registered user a unique 8-digit alphanumeric code that I would have loaded into a separate table. This table may contain 30,000 unique codes. This is so I can identify each user from this short code (i.e., W2RGUL19) as opposed to their email address which may be much longer. When user #1 takes the first code, it is flagged as used so the next user sees the second code and so on.
Thank you in advance for reading this LONG question!!! I am praying that something is out there that will do all of this. It is OK if I need to buy more than one module, as long as it is proven that they work together.
Answer Charles,
Hello. I apologize for not getting back to you sooner - I am in travel mode again.
I do not know of any DNN module per se that does all of this. The problem you are facing is a unified platform that integrates your requirements into system features. Unfortunately if you cannot find all the modules under the DNN umbrella you either have to code it yourself or pay someone to do it.
Many of the requirements you define are basic but you do have some which are unique to your vision. These are the ones which someone will probably have to code.
You can post it to the DNN community forum and see if there are any takers or you can use places like GURU.com to solicit Request for Quotations (RFQs).
