First, I'd like to say that I have been a great supporter of DnnCreative and often refer it to others when questions arise.  I think that is a great service to the community and well worth the subscription price.  Your series on OWS was one of the most useful of the entire series.  I think you have been doing a great job explaining the details of basic DNN management and installation.
 
I have noticed that the tutorials of recent issues have been predominantly for commercially available modules that I do not believe most of us own.  While I do like seeing what a module does, Sitting through a detailed tutorial on module configuration and operation of a module that I do not own is a complete waste of my time.  I would much rather see two things. 

a.) For tutorials,  concentrate on modules that are intrinsic to the core DNN or that are open source, like those in codeplex. QWS is a great example of tutorials done well.  This has been your strength and you have done a great job.  There are certainly enough un-filled requests in this forum for modules and capabilities that have not yet been covered.   Detailed instructions on using a commercial module should be the responsibility of the module developer, and THEY should pay you for production, rights, royalties or whatever.   If their documentation is so bad that you need to create a tutorial on DNNCreative, maybe people would do better not to purchase that app.

b) A comparison between different modules that have similar functions.  The Smith Shopping cart tutorial did show me a lot of features of that cart most of which I figured out by randomly skipping through the tutorial, bypassing ,as much as possible, the installation  and configuration details. What would have been considerably  more useful would be a look at several shopping carts, highlighting the similarities and differences.  I'd like to know how Smith compares to the other carts available, including the one in Codeplex.   The same holds true for the mapping, backup  and menu modules that you have recently featured.

thanks
James Brown
Empulse(tm) Consulting
Serving the technology needs of businesses and individuals since 1981

Hi James,
Thank you very much for posting your feedback. As you can imagine, running a magazine is DNN Creative is extremely challenging because I need to have as much content as possible that appeals to as many people as possible.

As of late, I have been receiving quite a bit of different feedback which I plan to take into consideration. Many subscribers appreciate the third-party module tutorials but many subscribers also want the "core only" tutorials. I think that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

You'll notice that in Issue 64, everything that I spoke on was regarding the core product, but you are correct, there were a string of videos that were all related to third party modules. My goal is to release content that all users want which means that I will be having a mix of core components as well as third party ones.

Do you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see? If so, please use the "Request a Tutorial" link at the top of the page. I would love your input as I am going to be using this feedback to help guide future issues of DNN Creative.

I am a big fan of DNN Creative and have been a subsciber for some years now.

I must also say I am a bit dissapointed, but for a different reason than James. I am dissapointed that the videos for the 6.0 First Look Series are not published all at once. They seem to be recorded in the same session but then deliberately released on different occations. There is no reason for it (from my point of view). I would like to see them all at once. Doing it this way could make them obsolete before they are published.

Posted By James Brown on 2011-01-09 10:42 AM
 
I have noticed that the tutorials of recent issues have been predominantly for commercially available modules that I do not believe most of us own.  While I do like seeing what a module does, Sitting through a detailed tutorial on module configuration and operation of a module that I do not own is a complete waste of my time.  I would much rather see two things. 

I have to admit that I do not agree here. I think it is very valuable to have this information. As an example, I wish Lee had a video on the installation and configuration of the DMX Documents module. It is a very powerful module and I would want the video in a second. I dont own the module but I have a couple project out there that may go with it. It would definately save me time to have that information.

I guess they need to blend it to make everyone happy. I would like to actually see at least 1 commercial module covered per issue. The rest of the videos can be open/core.

I just viewed the latest video. It ends with something like - take a look at video 4. I am just curious as to why I have to wait a week before video 4 is available to download, since it's obviously already recorded.

Posted By pontus66 on 2011-06-30 10:34 AM
I just viewed the latest video. It ends with something like - take a look at video 4. I am just curious as to why I have to wait a week before video 4 is available to download, since it's obviously already recorded.

I do agree with you here. I assume they are doling out the videos because they are light on content so they figured they can strech this a bit. A month for 4 videos which would normally be released as 1/3 of one issue is a bit weak.

I too have been disappointed with the dribble release of videos. An now starting with the tutorial on building modules you can no longer download the videos. I often watched the videos on my notebook computers when away from the Internet, but now only streaming is available. I have been disappointed in the magazine since Lee left, unfortunately I just renewed my subscription the month before his departure. I do not believe I will renew next year. I understand why Lee left, but I believe the magazine is suffering under the new management. The new operator/owner has now answered my emails at all unlike Lee who always got back to me. But I guess that is the way of life, someone builds something great, sell it, then it is torn down by a new owner.

Charles,

I am sorry that you are disappointed.

My own personal opinion is that the quality of the tutorials has not suffered under Andy's stewardship. I think that the series on skinning was an absolute gem. I'm looking for more of the same from the module development series.

Now ... you CAN download the tutorials an watch them at your leisure. Check the download links in the righthand column.

As for email, I do know that Andy's email was broken for several days and that coincided with the recent site outage. I don't know if they are related.

But ... if you can use the forum, you may get quicker replies, and you might even get help from other subscribers, too.

Joe-

My bad. I was so used to the old download page, I didn't look around and see the Download button. Tunnel vision I guess.

Also noticed that I could not right click and "save as" under Internet Explorer 9 ("Save As" was not an option shown), but I could download them under Foxfire. I really need to get off I.E.!

So I have change my opinion, Andy is doing a good job. And I do agree that the Skinning videos were excellent.

Thanks for your help,

Charles