DotNetNuke Skins – Skin Objects
June 19th, 2008 | 
Author: There are a number of DotNetNuke controls, which they call objects, that are available to the skin designer. This adds functionality to the page such as a link to login/logout, date/time, username, and others. Today’s post will list each of the objects that are available and what they do. Many are simple to implement, others require quite a bit more detail than we can go into today.
In the following table the <%@ Register code goes at the top of the ASCX file and the <dnn: code goes where you want the items to display.
| Minimal ASP.NET Code | Description |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Banner" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Banner.ascx" %> <dnn:Banner runat="server" id="dnnBanner" /> |
Displays a banner ad from the affiliate’s database. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Breadcrumb" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Breadcrumb.ascx" %> <dnn:Breadcrumb runat="server" id="dnnBreadcrumb" /> |
This displays the breadcrumb, the hierarchy of how to navigate to the current page. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Copyright" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Copyright.ascx" %> <dnn:Copyright runat="server" id="dnnCopyright" /> |
Displays the copyright notice for the portal. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="CurrentDate" Src="~/Admin/Skins/CurrentDate.ascx" %> <dnn:CurrentDate runat="server" id="dnnCurrentDate" /> |
Displays the current date. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="DotNetNuke" Src="~/Admin/Skins/DotNetNuke.ascx" %> <dnn:DotNetNuke runat="server" id="dnnDotnetNuke" /> |
Displays the DNN Copyright. You don’t have to put this one in, and I wouldn’t. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Help" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Help.ascx" %> <dnn:Help runat="server" id="dnnHelp" /> |
Displays a help link that will launch the user’s browser and send an email to the portal administrator. Frankly, I’ve never seen this one used anywhere, but I guess someone had a need for it. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="HostName" Src="~/Admin/Skins/HostName.ascx" %> <dnn:HostName runat="server" id="dnnHostName" /> |
Displays the host name linked to the host URL. This would be useful for multi-portal situations where you want the other portals to advertise for the main portal, who is the host. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Language" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Language.ascx" %> <dnn:Language runat="server" id="dnnLanguage" /> |
Displays a language drop-down. This is useful for changing languages on a multi-lingual site. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Links" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Links.ascx" %> <dnn:Links runat="server" id="dnnLinks" /> |
Displays a flat list of links, normally located on the footer and referred to as “footer links” to enable the search engines to find the other related pages. Use this if SEO is important to you and/or you want people who don’t have javascript enabled to be able to navigate your site. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Login" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Login.ascx" %> <dnn:LOGIN runat="server" id="dnnLOGIN" /> |
Displays the login/logout link. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Logo" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Logo.ascx" %> <dnn:Logo runat="server" id="dnnLogo" /> |
Displays the logo specified in the site settings. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Privacy" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Privacy.ascx" %> <dnn:Privacy runat="server" id="dnnPrivacy" /> |
Displays a link to the standard DotNetNuke privacy policy. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Search" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Search.ascx" %> <dnn:Search runat="server" id="dnnSearch" /> |
Displays the search box. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="SolPartMenu" Src="~/Admin/Skins/SolPartMenu.ascx" %> <dnn:SolPartMenu runat="server" id="dnnSolPartMenu" /> |
Displays the menu on the page. This control has a lot of attributes that control appearance, direction of the control, and even what menu the control starts displaying at. We will examine this in depth in a future post. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="Terms" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Terms.ascx" %> <dnn:Terms runat="server" id="dnnTerms" /> |
Displays the link to the standard DotNetNuke terms and conditions page. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="TreeViewMenu" Src="~/Admin/Skins/TreeViewMenu.ascx" %> <dnn:TreeViewMenu runat="server" id="dnnTreeViewMenu" /> |
Displays the menu as a tree view. |
<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="User" Src="~/Admin/Skins/User.ascx" %> <dnn:User runat="server" id="dnnUser" /> |
Displays a link to the registration page if the user has not logged in and the user’s name if they are logged in which links to their profile information. Keep in mind that the site administrator can turn off registration, in which case this control will not display the registration link. |
We will examine some of the more complex controls in a future post, but if you are in a hurry, you can go to the DotNetNuke site and download the documentation ZIP file and look at the DotNetNuke Skinning PDF file on page 40 (of version 1.12) to see the attributes that you can use for each of the controls listed above.
Other post in DotNetNuke - Skinning
- DotNetNuke - Skinning - June 5th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skinning - Getting Set Up - June 10th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skins - Handling CSS Files - June 12th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skins - Hello, World - June 17th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skins - Skin Objects - June 19th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skinning - Containers - June 24th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skinning - Standard CSS Classes - June 26th, 2008
- DotNetNuke - Avoiding Container Collision - July 1st, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skinning - Dealing with Images - July 3rd, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skinning - SolPartMenu - July 8th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skinning - Collapsible Containers - July 10th, 2008
- DotNetNuke Skins - ASCX vs HTML mode - August 27th, 2008
- Infinite DotNetNuke Skin Sets For One Low Price - August 19th, 2009
- Blue Stack Form Enhancer Review - September 30th, 2009
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Tags: 2 Responses to “DotNetNuke Skins – Skin Objects”
Hi, what if you’re using DSLOCALISATOR for multilingual sites, how would the control look like for that in a ASCX file?
I’m not familiar with this object, which I believe is a third party object. You should talk to the company this object came from.