Professional DotNetNuke® Module Programming

Chapter 18. DotNetNuke Development Best Practices

So far in this book, you have learned about various DotNetNuke integration techniques. Sprinkled throughout the various discussions in the book have been bits of best-practice information, as well as recommendations for proper development techniques when it comes to working with DotNetNuke.

This chapter provides a summary of best practices, and provides a few general overall recommendations when it comes to developing with DotNetNuke. The material is divided into two sections: things to do and things to avoid.

Things to Do

The following recommendations are items that, in general, are true best practices for development in the DotNetNuke ecosystem. These recommendations are geared toward developers working with provider modules, skin objects, and authentication providers with the intent of distributing the final application to the widespread DotNetNuke community. If you are working on one-time-use or custom solutions, not all of these recommendations will apply to your situation. For a broad distribution, however, these guidelines have all proven to deliver better quality modules that meet the needs of users.

Pick a Minimum Supported Version and Enforce It

When developers use the WAP development model, they must use a specific DotNetNuke version to build the module's DLL file. In the case of the examples of this book, these modules were all built against DotNetNuke 5.0.0. Therefore, these modules will work with DotNetNuke 5.0.0 and later ...