As I mentioned, its been a few months between posts. Second day was the DNN Admin Training session run by Aderson Oliviera from Deskpal and DNN Hero. This was a hands on DNN Training session for experienced DNN Administrators. Aderson provided a rundown of all the DNN 9 features along with training on how to use them effectively.

I need to mention that the difference in administrator features between DNN 8 and DNN 9 are very minimal. DNN has never had a problem with features. It has the features you would expect from an enterprise level CMS and they are all very useful and this I've always seen as the advantage of DNN over some other CMS products out there. The big improvement in DNN 9 is definitely the persona bar and the rearrangement of common admin features. There's now an ease with which you can navigate throughout the admin menu and perform those common admin tasks. Even the Persona Bar's location on the left-hand-side and lessobstrusively is a well thought out change.

Some lessons learnt and useful info worth sharing from the training session:

• Persona Bar - Things have been moved around. This cheat sheet provided by DNN Corp is useful
• Performance - Definitely look at minifying your CSS and JS files, adjustyour scheduled events, check what events DNN is logging. These are simple improvements you can make to improve performance. the cheat sheet has links to the minify CSS and JS settings.
• 2sxc module - I know I may be late to the 2sxc party but since I found out about it, at ITworx we've found this to be a VERY intriguing module. It seems to occupy a definite sweet spot. Giving a customer the DNN HTML module can often times lead to more bad than good. All of those little buttons adding of that inline code can cause design problems and anxiety for customers. They want more structure and 2sxc seems to balance this well. 
• Database size - There's nothing wrong with truncating it periodically. This was discussed in the training as being relatively simple. I think its best to get your hosting company to do this if they're DNN experts (e.g. Managed.com) or ask your DNN developer.
• DNN Upgrades - Aderson's training session kind of confirmed that upgrades are just TRICKY and we will have to go through trial and error for larger sites (with many modules) and older sites. Make sure the basics don't stump you though such as folder and database permissions. There's nothing more annoying than an unsuccessful upgrade due to something fairly obvious like that.

In summary the training day for DNN Administration at the DNN Summit was an excellent event even for more experienced DNNers. The platform is big and there's still many areas I've avoided throughout the years so it was good to get Aderson's perspective on some of these features.