By Lee Sykes

October 2005

This is the first DotNetNuke interview in a new series for How did they build …?
This is a 42 minute mp3 interview with Chris Chodnicki and Kevin Schreiner from Business Intelligence Force.

Chris and Kevin talk us through how they built and designed their DotNetNuke website: http://dnn.bi4ce.com

In particular focusing on:

• Research and Planning
• Skinning
• Modules
• Promotion
• Top Tips

 Please view below for a list of the questions.

Interview Extract

You can download the first 5 minutes of the interview here:
Bi4ce Website Design DotNetNuke MP3 Interview (6.6MB)
(Right click on the link and select ‘save target as’ to download it to your computer)

Here is an extract of the questions from the interview:

Overview

What was the brief for the site?

What research and planning did you have to do before you created the site?

Did you have to strike a balance between good looks and useability? and if you did which one did you favour in this case?

Why did you choose DotNetNuke to build your websites?

Skins

When you first design a skin, where do you start?

What research did you need to make before you began creating this skin and
what were the factors that affected how you designed the skin?

Could you give us an overview of the techniques you used to design the skin?
   
How did you create the menu tabs and how does it integrate with the paging functions of DNN?

Can you add more tabs as you need them as with the Solpart menu that comes as standard with DNN?
   
Could you talk us through the Home Page just to tell us where you have used a container and where the graphic is actually part of the skin and also could you tell us where the panels are for adding modules to the skin.

Are there any checks that you make to a skin before releasing it on an official website?

Modules

Which modules have you used within this website?

Did you make any changes to the standard version of DotNetNuke, such as the core code to fit in with your needs?

Do you have any plans in place for managing the future of the website in terms of
a) content management and
b) managing any DotNetNuke updates?

Promotion

Do you carry out any Search Engine promotion for your websites?

What techniques do you use for promotion?

What have you found to be most affective?

Have you made any changes to DotNetNuke to make sure that the site is SE friendly?

Do you use any techniques in the initial design stages of a website to ensure that it is SE friendly?

Are there any marketing techniques you have used previously to encourage the users of a website to re-visit on a regular basis?

Top Tips:

Do you have any quick tips that you could give the listeners in terms of a check list of things they should do when they create a DotNetNuke website?