DNN News Module - Bridging the Gap

by Phil 'iwonder' Guerra (Avondale, MO)

"I know nothing is perfect, but..." That's a line I hear so much in my day to day work. Seems my job as a Technical Coordinator, System Administrator, System Analyst, Programmer, and Technology Trash man is knowing enough about imperfection to provide workarounds for those times when software or circumstances fail to reach their mark, and leaves a huge gap. Most of these moments come to me at the 11th hour in a project that I knew nothing about, because Directors or Project Managers didn't think I would be needed at the early project meetings. Anyhow, if you work in IT, you know what I'm talking about. So, what has this to do with the DNN News module?

Well, though the News v4.x module is a ambitious step forward, there are a few gaps that folks have pointed out. (Read the DNN News forum) I've been openly critical of some of these gaps, only with the intent of making it better. I have the utmost respect for the project leader, Peter. I know the personal and professional challenges in taking on any project with such a huge following, having too few resources to help, and the politics of not being able to bring innovation too quickly. So it is with the News module.

I've had a little custom XSL hanging about unpublished, as I thought maybe the gap would be filled with the next release, and it still might be. The real question is when, though. Since, I've gotten enough email about the issue, I decided, I'd go ahead and publish a solution. This custom XSL is my little innovation to bridge one gap, the lack of a sorting routine, which hopefully is in the works.

I will present a way to provide sorting by a news feed's pubDate element, using a custom XSL specifically for the DNN News v4.0.1 module in the next post.