At Tjep's digital agency, we're constantly contributing to the DNN community—through forum participation, speaking at conferences, and delivering new functionality. This Christmas, we're going all out!

We're kicking off a brand-new module: DNN Tokens. It will be open-source, released under the MIT license, and developed in collaboration with our friends at 40 Fingers and EasyDNNSolutions.

For the Content Manager

Tokens for Integrity

One of the most important aspects of online communication is reliability. Content must be accurate. This can get quite complex when managing thousands of pages. For example, where is that one fee or VAT rate mentioned, which needs updating?

Sure, you could use your search engine or tools like Siteimprove to scan your site for content. But wouldn’t it be more convenient to manage your content in one central location? That’s where the new DNN Tokens extension comes in. With this tool, you can create tokens like [taxhigh] with a value of "21%". If the rate changes to "20%", every instance of [taxhigh] across your site updates automatically.

More Than Plain Text

DNN Tokens supports more than just plain text. You can also use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, allowing you to enhance your content with explanatory tooltips or other interactive elements.

Organized and Clear

Managing terms and values becomes incredibly powerful with this tool. To maintain clarity, we’ve introduced categories (namespaces). For example, tokens related to taxes could be for the high tax rate or for the filing deadline. If you prefer shorter tokens, something like [taxhigh] works just as well.

For Developers or Tech-Savvy Content Managers

If you want more than HTML/CSS/JavaScript

SQL & Razor

With SQL and Razor, the possibilities are virtually endless—as long as you know your database structure.

For instance, you could retrieve all your products using SQL and display them in beautifully designed cards using Razor. Similarly, you could showcase all employees in your communications department. A query string could direct users to a detailed page, which could also be built with tokens.

Playing Nicely

There are already several providers in the DNN ecosystem that use tokens, and we want to work alongside them, not disrupt their efforts. That’s why our extension consists of two key components:

1. An interface to create custom tokens.
2. A WrapperTokenProvider mechanism to ensure other tokens continue to function as expected.

ETA

The beta version will be ready in January 2025. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to launch the final product by Valentine’s Day?

Sponsoring

Current sponsors / contributors:

• Stefan Kamphuis, 40 Fingers: technical concept
• Damir Kapustic, EasyDNNsolutions.com: creating the extension & money
• Tycho de Waard, Tjep's digital agency: functional concept & money

If you think it is a great idea and want to sponsor as well, just send an email to [email protected]. We're not looking for big numbers but anything that supports Damir and his team would be awesome.

What's next

After the first release, you probably have more wishes. I know I do :-) 

• The extension will be MIT licensed on Github. Feel free to fork, create issues, make pull requests etc.
• If you are not making pull requests, consider sponsoring new features. The vast majority of the work is taken care of :-) 

Hope y'all enjoy.

On behalf of Stefan, Damir and myself: Have a great holiday and we'll kick off 2025 with something great!