DNN News Module v04.00.00 Released

The new release of the DotNetNuke News module brings some nice new features to the module. Peter Donker blogs about it on his DNN Blog. You'll need at least DNN v04.06.02 to integrate into your DNN website. Also, the new module has some gotchas, so visit the DNN News Forum for a review of the discussions.

Be aware that the new module is very strict in its' validating a newsfeed source, so don't expect all of your existing newsfeeds to work straight away. The issues causing folks so much trouble are mostly due to the lack of newsfeed providers to emit valid RSS feeds. The most troublesome aspect of all of all is that even certain DNN Core modules suffer this same condition.

Most feeds that are being reported as failing are due to validation failing on the newsfeed item elements that do not provide rfc822 dates or valid email information for elements that require them.

I've been using the module for a bit now, and will blog more about it later. For now, download it, install it in a test environment, and put it to the test. It's more advanced than the previous version, which only used a news source link to make a web request and transform it using xsl. The new module is the second DNN attempt at news aggregation (the FeedExplorer was the first). It works reasonably well, but newbies and some 'oldies' with little experience with RSS and newsfeeds will need help in using it out of the box. The strict RSS validation is rough going.

Also, new is the ability to use passed parameters to control some of the display of a newsfeed. You can control the number of elements and choose to display or not display the item date and details.

There are some included XSL files which allow scrolling and default look and feel. The basic approach is to provide a newsfeed display much like many new browsers are doing, but allowing several differnt types of newsfeeds, Atom, RSSv0.91, RSSv1.0 (RDF), and RSSv2.0 to be used without worrying the details. Of course, the implementation still needs some work, but the overall direction of the DNN News module is finally getting an update.

More on the module later. I'll have some tips, and workarounds posted for you.