Hello guys,

my client is wanting me to restructure their dotnetnuke production site so that it is in a totally different format.  Another words they want me to change the skin to reflect the new way they want to do things on the site which boils down to scrapping or getting rid of the top three panes of the site (i.e. log, weather, top ad) and turning it into one long row that is not divided into three coloumns any more.

Here is the issue.  I know how how to do this via going to the skin file and restructuring the tables, backgrounds etc... that's no problem.  The problem is that when I apply this new structure by default dotnetnuke dumps all modules that use to be housed in seperate panes into the main ContentPane.

I read in the dotnetnuke 4 book that this was done simply because where would the modules have to go if they had no pane to reside in so they get dumped into this ContentPane required for this purpose.

This solution however becomes problamatic when a customer or client is not interested in using those panes or the modules in those panes any longer but rather wants I whole new look. 

So I find myself having the following question: Is there anyway that you can instruct dotnetnuke that when I new skin is applied with a different structure than the one it used to have to purge all modules within those panes to the recycle bin so that it would automate what one would do if they were deleting modules from those panes manually rather than just dumpting them into the main contentPane arena.

Or is there a way of telling dotnetnuke to permanently delete any module that has lost its "home" if you will on its section of the page?
Or perhaps there is some sql statement that could be used to purge all modules in a given pane without purging them in any other area.

How do dotnetnuke developers restructure a running site to reflect a new look not just asthetically but structually.

Thanks,

Bo

Bo,

First, completely redoing a site *is* going to be a lot of work.

You'll want to do this on a developmental site.

I think that deleting all of the modules that you don't need is the way to go, painful as it might be. You have your choice of doing the deleting before or after changing the skin.

Hello,

I had to do this with DNN Creative, here is an example SQL statement I use below, it should give you an idea of what is possible, basically you need to analyse what modules you need to move where and how the data is stored in the tables, from there you can write SQL to automate the process - this saved me days of work when I created the new CSS skin for DNN C:

*********
Full procedure for tab id changes, run this for each tab to assign skin, containers, move modules etc.
**********

DECLARE @TabIDEdit int
-- Change the Tab id here --
SET @TabIDEdit = 199
DECLARE @newSkin nvarchar(200)
DECLARE @newContainerSrc nvarchar(200)
DECLARE @newPageHeadText nvarchar(500)

-- Change the Page Settings --
UPDATE Tabs
    SET @newSkin = SkinSrc, SkinSrc = '[G]Skins/07/dnncreative_tutorials.ascx'
    WHERE TabID = @TabIDEdit

UPDATE Tabs
    SET @newContainerSrc = ContainerSrc, ContainerSrc = '[G]Containers/07/transparent_h1_title.ascx'
    WHERE TabID = @TabIDEdit

UPDATE Tabs
    SET @newPageHeadText = PageHeadText, PageHeadText = ''
    WHERE TabID = @TabIDEdit

SELECT * FROM Tabs
WHERE TabID = @TabIDEdit

-- Delete Modules that are no longer needed from the tab --
DELETE FROM TabModules
WHERE TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 574 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 666 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 392 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 484 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 451 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 637 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 425 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 507 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 657 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 407 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 418 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 1072 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 637 OR
        TabID = @TabIDEdit and ModuleID = 430


-- Move modules to the content pane that are not assigned to the left or right panes --

DECLARE @newPaneName2 nvarchar(50)

UPDATE TabModules
    SET @newPaneName2 = PaneName, PaneName = 'ContentPane'
    WHERE TabID = @TabIDEdit and PaneName <> 'LeftPane' and PaneName <> 'RightPane'

SELECT * FROM TabModules
WHERE TabID = @TabIDEdit and PaneName <> 'LeftPane' and PaneName <> 'RightPane'


-- Insert copy of Banner module from advertisers page into current tab --

Insert INTO TabModules
(TabID, ModuleID, PaneName, ModuleOrder, CacheTime, Alignment, Visibility, ContainerSrc, DisplayTitle, DisplayPrint, DisplaySyndicate)
VALUES
(@TabIDEdit, 1103, 'rightpane', 1, 0, 'center', 0, '[G]Containers/07/transparent_h3_title.ascx', 'True', 'False', 'False')