The most popular question lately has been, “What’s up with Active Profile?” If you visit our website on a fairly regular basis you probably know by now that when we are quiet it means a product release or big announcement is imminent. Some people actually thought we took some time off after the Active Forums 4.0 release. We did take an extended lunch after the release and had an Xbox night at the office, then it was back to work!

While it may appear that our focus has been on Active Forums for the past couple months, that is certainly not the case. The truth is our focus has been on creating the best community solution for the enterprise and social networks within the DotNetNuke framework. I know that sounds like a marketing line so let me explain what that really means.

As I mentioned in previous blog posts, Active Forums 4.0 not only introduced several new features but also incorporates an entirely new architecture which can serve as a framework for other forms of content. Active Forums 4.0 also added new ways that we could easily integrate with not only our own modules, but third-party modules as well. Obviously you need more than discussion forums to have a successful community. Over a month ago I posted a blog about the “upcoming” Active Profile 1.5. We could have released Active Profile 1.5 by now, but I have a problem with releasing a product when I know there is a weakness that still hasn’t been addressed. I’m not talking about a bug or usability issue. I’m referring to a problem that exists in every profile or social networking type module for DotNetNuke. It’s actually not just one problem, but a series of small problems that are focused around the same larger problem: Seamless, yet flexible integration with the DotNetNuke Core Profile functionality. Now let’s break this into smaller parts.

What’s important to your end users?

• One profile that can be easily managed and accessed.
• Search options that are intuitive and related to the profile.
• Display relevant profile information when browsing or searching.

What’s important to site administrators?

• Ability to define additional profile fields and properties.
• Creating a search or browsing experience that’s intuitive and related to common profile data.
• Site performance, scalability and responsiveness.
• Extending the actual user profile page to meet specific site needs.

I’m sure I left out a few other related problems, but those are the main issues that you will face when using any of the social networking type modules for DotNetNuke on the market today. Keep in mind at the beginning of this section I stated how we knew this was a common problem that needed to be solved. Now for the good news—Problem solved!

The next version of Active Profile is focused on three key areas: replacing ProfileId with UserId, full integration with the DotNetNuke profile and a new template engine. We will still support the basic profile fields that are currently in the product, but I don’t see the need for that to be enhanced any further as people become more familiar with the DNN Profile capabilities.

For some, this article will not be entirely good news. Every Active Profile customer had the opportunity to participate in a survey to help us determine the importance of certain features. We needed to make a temporary trade-off between improving the overall ease of use and adding much needed capabilities. Active Profile 1.5 will not include the ability for end-users to modify the layout and design of their profile. We had over 50% of our Active Profile customers participate in the survey. Over 85% of those who responded felt it was more important to prevent the user from changing the design and layout of the profile page. We still feel allowing the end-user to personalize their profile page is a fantastic feature. This feature will be added back before the end of the year.

I will post another blog later in the next few days that explains the full benefits of the DNN Profile and the new template capabilities. Here is a quick summary of the new capabilities related to the profile integration:

• Admin option so that users do not have to create a profile in order to appear in the directory. A default profile is automatically created when the user registers.
• Easily adjust the profile summary template and included any field.
• Define which profile fields can be searched.
• Text based profile templates with editor for administrator.
• Admin can define where profile is managed: DNN Account Page, Active Profile Edit Page or both.

When will Active Profile 1.5 be released? Really the only thing remaining is a good default layout for the search and profile views. If you are a designer or just have a good idea for the default templates, please contact us.