Active Social 1.9 - Updates for Messaging

We were planning to release Active Social 1.9 this morning until we found a bug with messaging that prevented messages from being sent.  As I was trying to debug the problem I found a few other issues with messaging that also needed to be addressed.  A couple aspects of messaging were long overdue for an update so I decided to make some updates this afternoon.  The updates are complete and now installed on activesocial.com.  We will go through one more round of testing in the

Using Active Forums for a Question and Answer site

In reply to my latest blog post, Mitch Labrador of TribalHut asked, "How would I setup Active Forums for a Question and Answer site?"  Quite frankly, Active Forums is still missing a few key components, but we are getting closer.  This is actually something we have been considering for quite awhile.  With Active Forums 4.3 we will be even closer to being able to use forums for a variety of different applications and I think a question and answer format would work well. There ar

Building Mobile Apps for DotNetNuke and Active Social

Hopefully you have heard about the Mobile DotNetNuke Hackathon that will be taking place tomorrow in St. Louis Missouri.  Don't worry if you can't make it to St. Louis.  They will also be streaming the event live.  This is going to be a fantastic event and great learning opportunity for anyone that wants to learn about building mobile apps in conjunction with DotNetNuke.  In order to build a mobile application for your website you need to have something that will allow for co

ActiveSocial.com now running Active Social 1.8 Beta

Just a quick update on Active Social 1.8.  I've just installed the first beta for Active Social 1.8 on activesocial.com.  We still have a few more things to clean-up, but I wanted to start testing performance and security testing.  I have enabled the new journal security options which you should see with each journal tool.  Hopefully you will also notice some improved performance as well.  Tomorrow I should be posting the final API documentation along with some sample co

Custom Journal Types and Access Control

Starting with Active Social 1.8, you will be able to create and allow other applications to add content to the journal.  In my previous blog post I covered Journal Types and the purpose they serve for managing the journal content.  In this blog post I'm going to cover Access Control in more detail along with creating Custom Journal Types.  Access Control - the gatekeeper for the Journal APIThe journal API has a couple layers of security.  The available security methods also d

Customizing the Active Social Journal

I know I said my next blog post would be about the Journal API, but we need to cover a few more items first.  While this blog post isn't going to dive right into Journal API code samples, the information I will cover should be considered a prerequisite for anyone considering working with the Journal API.Journal TypesThe journal is made up of various types of content that is categorized by a Journal Type.  Each journal entry must be assigned a single Journal Type.  Active Social in

New Feature for Active Social 1.8: Security Options for Journal Entries

Active Social 1.8 includes many new enhancements to the Journal.  The Journal is probably the most complicated, but extremely powerful,  feature of Active Social.  This is one reason why we have tried to keep the configuration options as simple as possible.  Before implementing any new feature we spend a lot of time trying to find a good balance between simple and advanced configuration options.  We have had the actual journal security implementation completed for a coup

Beta Release of Active Forums 4.2 and Active Social 1.5

Beta versions of Active Forums 4.2 and Active Social 1.5 are now available to Active Forums Enterprise and Active Social Customers.  Active Forums Enterprise customers that do not have Active Social will also have access to Active Social 1.5.  We have also added an extra incentive to beta participants that encounter and report any bugs that they may find.  Each beta release also has a supported upgrade path to the final production release.  I don't expect the beta release to

What to expect for Active Forums 4.2

This is the first major release for Active Forums in over a year.  I know there has been some confusion between Active Forums 4.2 and 5.0.  I want to clear a few things up and make sure we set some expectations prior to the release.  Active Forums 4.2 is not a replacement for Active Forums 5.0.  Active Forums 4.2 fixes two major aspects that will not be visible as features.  First and foremost is performance.  Active Forums has always been known for

Active Social 1.5 Quick Start Wizard

We are just a couple days away from releasing Active Social 1.5 and Active Forums 4.2.  One of the main goals for this release was to make the setup process for Active Social even easier.  We want you to have your site up and running quickly; not overwhelm you with dozens of module options.   The Quick Start Wizard will provide you with 3 options: Simple, Standard and Expert.  If you select Simple or Standard everything will be configured for you.  This includes cre

What do you think about Google Buzz?

Still trying to check out all the benefits of google buzz.  Since it is integrated so well with GMail, I think it has potential to attract a much larger audience than google wave.  I can already see a few ways to integrate Buzz with DotNetNuke sites and Active Social.  Google Buzz does require a user profile which appears to integrate with other google apps.  I wonder what demographic they could pull away from Facebook or LinkedIn?

Webinar: Building Social Networks and Online Communities with DotNetNuke

Building Social Networks and Online Communities with DotNetNuke How can you make your site more "social?" Do you want to improve communication with your customers? Would you like to add more capabilities to your existing community? Are social tools a good fit for your site, your users and for you? We will look at what capabilities exist today within DotNetNuke along with administrative and maintenance tasks that you should consider. We will also review what modules and widgets you can easily

Webinar: Getting Started with Active Social

Getting Started with Active SocialLearn how quick and easy it is to add Active Social to your site.   We will walkthrough the setup and configuration of activesocial.com and show how to setup a site from scratch. " border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> Join us for a Webinar on February 11

Social CRM - The Power of Groups

Active Social 1.3 introduced a new feature for you to categorize groups.  While this is a great feature for helping you organize your social groups within your DotNetNuke site, there is still much more you can do with a group.A group has some fairly common data elements.  A few of which include: Name, Description, Address, and Web Site.  A group is also an easy way to associate multiple users with a common interest or entity.  Within Active Social, a group also has numerous f

Active Social Comments Module

We have been trying to make many of the core components within Active Social as reusable as possible.  This makes adding new features easier and keeps the overall package small.  Evidently I have been doing a better job of this than I realized.  We have made several improvements within the Events area for the Active Social 1.3 release.  One more feature I wanted to add was the option for you to leave comments on events.  I thought this would be a good time to a

Active Social 1.2 Profile Visibility Options

DotNetNuke 5.x changed the way users are deleted from a portal.  Instead of actually deleting the user, the user is marked as deleted.  Depending on your situation, this can be a feature or a flaw.  One thing is for certain, the way it is currently implemented in DotNetNuke 5.x is not a complete solution.  DNN Corp is aware of this and will be correcting this behavior in DNN 5.2.  However, this still means that managing deleted users will be different for DNN 4.x and 5.x

Active Social 1.2 is getting closer to release

I knew as soon as I set a date for release something would come up.  The good news is that the past week has been very busy with new customers and existing customers preparing sites for release.  This of course increases our support demands.  When I see an increase in support requests the first thing I try to figure out is what we can do differently.  This usually involves more documentation and/or changes within the application.  We have been working very hard the past

Active Social 1.1.2 Highlights

Active Social 1.1.2 includes several bug fixes, some performance improvements and a couple new features.  The biggest performance improvement is in the Messaging area.  Previously, users with large quantities of messages in their inbox would experience SQL timeout problems.  We addressed this issue in two ways.  First, we optimized the database queries.  In previous releases, the query to retrieve 300 messages for a user would take over 5 seconds.  Now the query wil

Active Social Registration Wizard

Here is a brief video I just put together that takes you through the sign up process using the Active Social Registration wizard.  Keep in mind that all of the fields you see are defined using the DotNetNuke Profile Properties.  You can create as many or as few steps as you like and also choose fields or groups of fields to display in the template.   Active Social Registration Wizard Screencast 

Active Social 1.0 Feature List

Below is a list of some of the features that you can expect to see when Active Social is released on January 15th.  General Benefits & FeaturesSingle module w/ multiple views - easy to install and configureComplete integration with DotNetNuke ProfileSocial Journal keeps track of site activity.  Easily filter by Portal, Group, User or journal activity.100% Template based - complete design and layout controlUnique notification system allows users to define alerts in addition to sendi

Active Social or Active Profile for DotNetNuke Social Networking

I know there is a bit of confusion regarding Active Social and Active Profile.  Hopefully this article will clear up the confusion.  ------------------------------------------Active Profile only addresses the user profile aspect of DotNetNuke Social Networking.  Active Social includes user profiles, groups, messaging, forums and a few other capabilities.  This will provide you with a complete social networking solution for DotNetNuke--------------------------------------------Active Profile allo

Simplified approach to building complex modules

You just installed a brand new module.  As far as you know, you only installed one module.  You create a new page, go to add the new module...What?  You don't have one module, you have 2, 3, 4 or 20 modules from just installing that one new module.  You only installed one module, but now you have "Vendor X - Module A", "Vendor X - Module B", "Vendor X - Module C", etc.  Now you are stuck trying to decide which of the multiple entries that now appear in the list to add first.  Make sure you guess

Answers to some questions about Active Social

It was great getting to talk with so many people at OpenForce last week.  Below are some of the common questions we received along with answers.Q: How much will Active Social cost?A: Active Social will be available in 3 versions:     Active Social ($499) - This is a standalone version that is pre-packaged with a custom DotNetNuke installation.     Active Social For DotNetNuke ($399) - This is the Active Social Module package for those that already have DotNetNuke installed.     Active Social Liv

Active Social - Profile Overview

One of the common requests we received with Active Profile was, "How could every user have a default profile?".  Active Social uses the built-in profile information from DotNetNuke.  This has several advantages:1) Every user will now have a profile.2) The profile can be maintained in one location.3) Custom profile fields in DotNetNuke are immediately available in Active Social.While relying on the DotNetNuke profile mechanism provides the best form of integration, we did face some challenges.1)

Social CRM with Active Social and DotNetNuke

I have never been able to keep a secret.   I just spent the past hour writing a blog post describing how you could use Active Social for your CRM.  Screen captures showing custom profiles, integration with Active CRM, Active Purchase and an external database, using social groups to organize customers by product interest, etc.   I can't help but get excited talking about our products and new features.  I know I said earlier I was going to post details about this topic before the end of the week. 

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