Places like Facebook are popular despite generating zero content of their own. You supply the content. From your status message all the way down to your page views, Facebook is logging it and showing it back to you. Your feed is pretty boring so you add some friends that are all doing the same thing and you got something special.

But who owns that content? If you wrote it right into Facebook and that's your only copy Facebook does. I'm just picking on Facebook because they are the best known example but this is true of any social networking site. Blogs, Forums and Listservs all work off of the same premise: we'll give you a forum it you give us some content to put ads around. The content is theirs, the prestige is yours.

This social media model was expanded and the term crowd-sourcing was born. The Huffington Post attracted big attention and big money for its innovative use of crowd sourcing but on pay day a lot of HuffPo writers were shocked to find out that Arianna didn't owe them anything. They gave her the content. It was all their in fine print.

If you're lucky, advertisers pay to be seen around your content and if a lot of people are reading your content you get paid all the more. But why should someone read your content over somebody else's? Your site is but one lonely url in sea of  web sites so your content has to be good and it has to be presented well or people will move on if they ever find it at all.

I'm not a writer. I don't do content but upon learning this it got me to thinking. I can't help anyone with the content but I bet I could do something with how it was presented and do it in such a way that rewarded people for finding it. I decided I was going to write a game.

Firstly, I want to thank nHydrate for building such a cool library.  In the end though, as much as I loved it, I never really got a handle on it.  Since then I've really got into the plinqo templates from the mighty Paul Welter at Codesmith.  (I even bought the fancy developer edition!!)  Like the nHydrate framework it is a fast ORM generator but unlike it doesn't have to do anything to your database.  I don't mind sprocs, per se, but until I know I have a bottle neck in my data I don’t want to write them.  I’d love to expand on that at another time if someone is interested in the topic but to tie it in to today’s post I've decided that the ease and simplicity of the plinqo approach made it the better solution.

You may have noticed that I spoke of these ORM's in the past tense and that's because for now, and for what I need to do, I'm finding that a better approach is to use DNN Portal's API to store as much data as I can.  Huh?

I'm really excited about this new ORM tool I've found on codeplex called nHydrate.  I read a lot about it last weekend but today I went through their youtube videos and my head nearly exploded.  I'm telling you it is awesome and I can’t wait to use it for something.

For those of you that don't know, an ORM (Object Relational Mapper) is a tool that will take a look at your database and generate a data access layer and an object data model to work with it.  An old coworker of mine clued me in to the Wilson OR/Mapper (WORM) and the Codesmith templates he wrote for it and it changed my life.  Unfortunately the time is passing my old OR/ Mapper by.  It's still being supported with a google code project but with linq here to stay I've been looking for something a little more modern.  Enter nHydrate.

What is nHydrate?  It's a code and database generator that is integrated smoothly into your .Net IDE that's as easy to use as Access 95.  Check out this video if you don't believe me.  What's more, it has awesome features like linq syntax and paging support.

I encourage you to go through the other videos too.  The inheritance one is really cool and the dependency walking is super cool too.  Honestly, I don't see anything about it I don't like but the proof will be in the pudding.

The GregoryWatch family tree needs to be re-written as a DNN module and nHydrate will be the perfect tool to handle the complex relationships in the family database.  I think the next rainy day we have I'll sit down and find out.

I totally called it last week. 

"But...  We haven't even coded anything yet!?!?"

That was Na's reaction near the end of last week's class and he was right.  No one could believe how much we had built with such little effort.  Then, when I showed them how to play with the skins their heads exploded.

It truly is amazing how dramatic a little design change can be.  Even just changing the backround picture of your portal can make a big difference to your site and in this week's Portals 101 we will be taking this concept even further and delving further into DNN Skins and Containers.

DotNetNuke is a great platform to start your family or small business website on for a lot of reasons but one of the greatest is how easily (and cheaply) it can be made to look professional.  Last week I mentioned the outstanding skin development company Jango Studios but ALL DNN Skins is another great place to see some of the things you can do with your DNN Site.  But before we run off and spend money on skins other people have made (which we will likely still end up doing) we will be learning how to configure the Minimal Extropy Skin that came with your DNN.

You asked for coding and this week you'll get as much of it as you think you can handle because we will be cracking open Visual Web Developer for the first time.  It isn't necessary and my guess is that 95% of DNN users use DNN without it.   Many people find it more cost effective to just purchase a professional skin and get on with their lives but you won't know if this is the part of DNN that you're best at until you try it.  So tomorrow you will try it. 

Buckle up, this could be a bumpy ride, but the way you've taken to things so far, I'm not worried about you adjusting to this development environment in the least.

Tonight at Portals 101 we will be discussing Portal Security, Roles, Modules and Skins.

Even though each of these topics are broad enough to have of a series of their own, by the end of the hour you will have a great enough understanding of them that you can now manage the portal you built in week one.     

As geeky and foreign as that sounds now, believe me:  At the end of class, you aren't going to believe it only took two hours to do all this.  And all bs aside, it probably took you less. 

For those of you unable to attend last week’s class, what you missed was:

Good stuff, huh?  Wait till you see what you'll get to do next week!!  But beware, there will be a homework assignment.

If you want to know more about this on your own, these guys have a great self guided learning packages available.  Videos like theirs are a great way to learn this stuff in your spare time.  DNN Creative looks like a good resource too but I wish they would redesign tier site.  I really don't want to know how to design that badly.  So to speak.

See you tonight.

I reached out to some DNN Companies today and one I was really impressed with was Trent Smith at Jango Studios.

If you want to see some powerful portal design check out their gallery.   Holy cow. 

Here's the deal:  if you see something in Trent's site give him a call directly or ask me to help you set it up.   He's the kind of guy that would be cool with either, I'm sure.

One of the reasons I know he's such a stand up guy is how postive he was about DNN Solution Providers like Engage Software out of St. Louis, Mo. and Ventrian Systems out of Albion Park Australia.  Both are really impressive but for different reasons.

As I learn more about both I will probably share what I learn but until then, check out Jango Studios to see what's possible with the right approach.

 GregoryWatch:  America's Favorite Family Website has decided to leave their old asp.net 1.0 framework and join the Nheritance Family Network.  "GregoryWatch is more family website than most families could handle"  Said Lloyd Gregory of GregoryWatch.com, "We were lucky that Nheritance Family Services was there and willing to help us expand."

You can follow the GregoryWatch Migration Project at www.nHeritance.com/gregorywatch.

The GregoryWatch Project is taking form with a new skin and a new forum.  I may have come across a quick fix to my "wait until the old one is rewritten" approach to moving all of my hosting to core desktop's cloud environment.  (I can't wait.)  But discountasp.net is doing a good job until then.