Johnny Spangle said
I'd say the other reviewers are harsh bordering on unfair. I found the book very useful in picking up the fundamentals of DNN module development. It provided a good number of topics on which to search for more information; topics I would not have known existed (with any ease) without first reading this book.
I am no newbie to .NET development (10 years in the trade) but like many others out there, new to DNN. I needed something more than the documentation provided by DNN, which is patchy at best and useless at worst, and this book provided it.
I believe DNN is growing as an application and the literature support it will no doubt improve. Criticisms I would make of this book are as follows. At around 300 pages, there is scope to add more detail ... come on Mitchell, it's clear you know more, put it down on paper. Second, there a few careless errata (my favorite are VB files given a .cs extension) but on the other hand, this is by no means uncommon in Wrox books; I've read a few, I know.
So if you're interested in knowing more than the sdk documentation can tell you (and not just interested in showing off what you know already, other reviewers!) then this is pretty much your only option in book form. Buy it, search the forums and blogs, and you will be doing ok.
Alexander said
This is a shallow book. It lacks the depth one is looking for when doing serious module programming. The book spends too much time on basic issues - including how to install DotNetNuke and a comparison of versions 3/4/5.
But when more interesting topics arise, the author much too often simply writes 'XXX is beyond the scope of this book'.
The structure already shows the shortcomings: The author introduces module programming by example, e.g. by creating a simple, basic module (chapters 4-9). This is the kind of information you easily find browsing the web.
The book is short on fundamentals. As an example, take the definition of a module in the chapter on 'Under the DotNetNuke Hood' on page 31:
"Modules are the key pieces of functionality that exist inside DotNetNuke installations. Tabs create the page structures needed to house the functionality; and, in the end, modules actually implement the desired result. DotNetNuke has many core modules available... (list of some modules follows)"
Sorry, but this is supposed to be a book about module programming, the reader deserves much more precision and thoughtfulness (this section (and the whole book) really contains no more in-depth discussion of what a module is and what the guiding principles behind DotNetNuke's module architecture are).
Headings often sound better than their content. An example: Chapter 9 (Packaging, installing, debugging) contains a section titled: 'Distribution and Testing Considerations'. This could certainly be an important issue. But the author devotes 12 lines to it and mainly reiterates a single idea: Testing should occur on multiple DotNetNuke installations with varied settings.
Keith E. Rowley said
Professional DotNetNuke Module programming falls in-between targeting beginners who need to know how to do things in the simplest way possible, and targeting professionals, who need a comprehensive overview of the API and best practices for using it.
The author stresses using the Web Application Project model rather that the Web Site Project model, and while this may be best practice for professional module developers wanting to distribute pre-compiled code, it is much more difficult to debug and is an overall slower development process.
At only 306 pages including the index it doesn't feel like as good a value as other wrox books in the same price range. For instance, Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) which I would highly reccomend has 1673 pages including the index and costs about the same amount.
Overall, being new to DotNetNuke programming, I found this book to be usefull to get an overview of the way the framework works and reccomended practices for integrating new modules into the existing framework. However, this book fell short in providing the level of quality and detail I have come to expect from Wrox books. 3 stars.
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