DNN launched DNN9 & Evoq, where everything is built-in needed by online marketers. In the DNN Launch Webinar: Why Marketing and IT Will Love the New DNN, DNN showed extraordinary improvements, such as:

• The host/admin experience is enhanced with a modern Persona Bar user interface. Most modules were rewritten using React.js. The legacy Control Panel and its accompanying host/admin pages are removed during the upgrade;
• New modules can now be installed directly from the Persona Bar menu by a host/superuser;
• Persona Bar modules can be configured with individual permissions, thereby allowing the creation of custom personas;
• Advanced URL Management functionality, which used to be available in Evoq only, is released to the Platform;
• The About menu option (formerly License Management) now includes links to the new Documentation Center and to Sales;
• The Scheduler's task management and user interface elements were updated;
• The user interface of the Themes module was converted to a gallery-style theme browser;
• Powerful built-in site analytics, only available in Evoq.

We’ll discuss three items; Persona bar, structured content and site analytics. Or check the webinar.

DNN9 Persona bar

The persona bar is a direct replacement for the existing control panel concept. It turns the concept of the control panel on its head. It’s a super-fast UI whereby the need of shortcuts got minimized. All known functionalities are now hosted within the persona bar. This simplifies page management and provides a much better user experience.

The new Persona Bar is built on top of the existing DNN Core. A new layer named "Persona Bar Library" was created on top of DNN Core to provide persona bar related services. It allows webmasters to quickly access all key items they need to manage their site. Now they have access to all of their content, all of their pages, manage user roles but also to manage all of their websites. So, now they can manage all of their sites in just a few clicks and easily see key information about those sites.

For an entire overview, check out next blogposts:

• DNN9 understanding the Persona Bar
• DNN9 Persona Bar Architecture

Persona bar as iFrame

The persona bar is integrated in DNN9 as an iFrame. So, the same UI will be applied on each site, regardless the skin. This not only provides a consistent look and feel, but also removes any interference from front and color choices used in the skins.

DNN9 Structured Content

The way DNN used to be managed improved dramatically with the introduction of Structured Content. Structured Content is a so called microservice that manages content items. As a lot of cool functionalities this is only included in DNN Evoq. Structured Content has three types of components:

For a complete overview check out the brand new DNN Documentation Center.

DNN Evoq built-in site Analytics

With DNN Evoq Content Managers and other users get access to a brand new feature called Page Analytics. Instead of checking your Google Analytics property, DNN Evoq offers a built-in analytics dashboard built on the analytics.js library. The biggest improvement? The built-in page analytics offers much deeper insights, such as:

• Scroll-tracking;
• Personalized userdata;
• Engagement trend;
• Conversions;
• Page rank compared to other pages.

So, instead of developing custom GTM dataLayers, DNN Evoq offers all those functionalities built-in. This allows marketers to spend more time making the right analysis to create more value for future users.