How to make "permanent" customizations on text resources

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:46:00 GMT

What do I mean by "permanent"? Each time a new language pack is installed in DotNetNuke, all the *.resx default file set for that localization is overwritten. This means that any change made to any of those files will be lost.

Besides the standard default resource files edition possibility, DotNetNuke provides two ways to perform modifications on its text resources so that they will not get overwritten upon a new language pack installation. The first works for all portals of a given DNN installation and the second is only related with a specific portal. The first is called "Host level" and the second "Admin level".

Let's see how to perform the three modifications and the differences that each one has.

1. Standard System level messages modification

It consists in modifying the standard file system, the one installed with each language pack. This modification gets lost upon a new language pack installation.

The steps are the following:

Login as Host user
Go to the Language page, following the menu option Host - Languages
Click on "Language Editor" located down to the left of the page
Inside the Language Editor page:
1. On the left, from the files tree, select the system file to edit
2. From the dropdown menu Available Locales, select the language to edit
Below Available Locales you will find two options (System and Host) following the title Mode. Be sure to select "System"
Select the text to modify and...
Click on Update at the bottom of the page

All modifications made this way affect the system files, called [filename].[locale].resx, for example:
GlobalResources.en-AU.resx, where the locale corresponds to Australia. The default system files, for US English (en-US) do not have a [locale] field, so the file would be called GlobalResources.resx.
This particular file is located inside the App_GlobalResources folder of the DNN installation.

2. Host level messages modification

With this procedure, the modifications to the text messages will be saved in a different file, not the system standard defaults. This helps ensure that the installation of a new language pack (or a DotNetNuke upgrade on the Website, for the case of the en-US resource texts) will not overwrite the custom modifications.

The steps to follow are the same than the previous case and the only difference is in the 5) step. The new step is the following:

5) Below Available languages there is a two options (System and Host) configuration called Mode. Be sure to select "Host"

Any modification made this way will create a new file called [filename].[locale].Host.resx (for example, 'GlobalResources.en-AU.Host.resx'). This file contains only the text resources that were modified.

3. Admin level messages modification (for each particular portal)

With this procedure, the modifications to the text messages will be saved in a different file, thus protecting them from being lost upon new language packs installation or DotNetNuke upgrades made on the Website.

Let's review the steps for editing:

It does not matter if you login as Host o Admin user
Go to the Language page, following the menu option Admin - Languages
Click on "Language Editor" located down to the left of the page
Inside the Language Editor page:
1. On the left, from the files tree, select the system file to edit
2. From the dropdown menu Available Locales, select the language to edit
Note that on this page there is no possibility to choose the Edition Mode, between System and Host.
Select the text to modify and...
Click on Update at the bottom of the page

This time the steps that changed were 1), 2) and... nothing else!

Any modification made this way will create a new file called [filename].[locale].Portal-[number].resx (for example, 'GlobalResources.en-AU.Portal-0.resx'). This file contains only the text resources that were modified.

4. Access priorities to the text resources

The access priority (fallback) to a specific text resource is:

Portal specific file
Host file
Standard System file

It is a good suggestion to play around with the text resource called 'MESSAGE_REGISTRATION_INSTRUCTIONS.Text' which is located inside the GlobalResources.en-AU.resx file (or the one corresponding to each localization). It is the first message shown under "Preferred User Information" on the registration page.

How to localize the Portal's Date

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:11:00 GMT

DotNetNuke displays the current date using a standard LongDateString formatting. It often happens that the user would have preferred another way to display the current date, but the standard customization provided by .NET sometimes is just not the best solution.

After investigating a little the CURRENTDATE skin object, I have found that it is not really difficult to display the current date in any format.

In order to format the date the way you want, you only need to edit the file "CurrentDate.ascx.vb", which is stored inside the "~/Admin/Skins" directory.

Inside that file, look at the following code (and modify it to suit your needs):

Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load ' public attributes If CssClass <> "" Then lblDate.CssClass = CssClass End If Dim objUserTime As New UserTime ' ---{ I have added the following 2 lines }--- Dim sMonth() As String = {"Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", _ "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", _ "Sep", "Oct","Nov", "Dec"} lblDate.Text = objUserTime.CurrentUserTime.Day.ToString() _ + ", " + sMonth(objUserTime.CurrentUserTime.Month - 1) _ + ", " + objUserTime.CurrentUserTime.Year.ToString() ' ---{ I have commented the following 5 lines }--- 'If DateFormat <> "" Then ' lblDate.Text = Format(objUserTime.CurrentUserTime, DateFormat) 'Else ' lblDate.Text = objUserTime.CurrentUserTime.ToLongDateString 'End If End Sub

And that's it. Any comments/suggestions will be very welcome.

Alejandro Quiroga Alsina

How to make "permanent" customizations on text resources

How to localize the Portal's Date