I want to thank everyone who participates in building DotNetNuke including the commercial module and skin vendors that contribute to the viability of my little business. My gratitude has been shown by contributing financially to DotNetNuke and by following license agreements from vendors.
As a supporter, I was able to test the release candidates for DNN5 and I did find some issues. I regretfully did not participate in Gemini, however I did see others posting the same issues as me. I tested DNN5 to make sure my favourite modules were compatible and made comments to the module vendors when issues were found.
When DNN5 went live, I downloaded it and proceded to test it. I found immediately that the FCK editor threw an error when going to the image or link editor. I also discovered that I could not install legacy skins. The only way to get legacy skins to install is to unpack them and place them in the Portal/Skins and Portal/Containers folders. When you change a skin on a portal you have to press the Apply link twice. These are issues that are easy to discover by even the most casual user.
Resolutions to these problem were available. The FCK editor issue requires the moving of a dll. The skin issues were workable. We are now a month into waiting for 5.01 and I am happy to wait as I am confident there is a good reason for the delay and that the next realease will have many issues corrected.
I am not using DNN5 at all right now, but what concerns me is the image of the project in general. If I was new to DNN, the first thing I would do is download and install DNN5. After install, I would try to make a page or blog post and would be presented with an error when adding an image. At this point, I would consider quitting forever. I would know nothing about the issues that prevent it from being fully functional. I would not know to go to Gemini to look for solutions and if I did, Gemini is a developers tool and is confusing to use.
There is room to improve communications. Perhaps all that is needed is a blog post that lists the major issues and the current workarounds. Having this information in one place easily found upon download would go a long way to making DotNetNuke the world leader that it deserves to be.
Consider this an offer to help. I cannot code, I do not have that talent, but I am a hell of a good DotNetNuke user and I would be willing to spend some time in the communications department.