Shadow Modules in DotNetNuke using SQL

DNN Creative Magazine is still in the land of SQL!

As I mentioned earlier in the blog, we have been responding to enquires from readers on how they can update DotNetNuke websites more efficiently.

So another tip we would like to share with you, that will save you lots of time, is how to use Shadow or copied modules.

Shadow or Copied modules can be used to update the same content on several pages from one central area. In issue 32 we demonstrate how to setup a shadow page which contains modules that are displayed on several pages across our Dot Net Nuke portal. From this one central shadow page we can administer the content of several modules at once.

We also show you how to use SQL queries to easily maintain these copied modules, including re-ordering the modules in a content pane across all pages in a DotNetNuke portal, updating the container of a module copied across several pages and how to update the container of a module based on the name of the current container the module is using.

If you were to try and manually update copied modules across a large DNN portal, it would more than likely take weeks of work. With the powerful SQL techniques shown in this tutorial you can apply the updates in seconds.

Here is a short list of what the tutorial covers:

Video 1 - Introduction, Shadow Modules, Add Existing Module
Video 2 - Copy Module to All Pages and Reordering Modules
Video 3 - SQL Queries to Update the Module Order in Content Panes
Video 4 - How to Update the Container for All Shadow / Copied Modules in a Portal Using SQL
Video 5 - Using SQL to Update a Module Container to a New Container Based on the Name of the Old Container