So I'm finally getting around to really trying to work with the Forums module in DNN...and I'm sorry to say it's not been the most pleasant experience in the world. Some of these issues may be DNN-related, others directly related to the forums module. I give you, the dreaded BULLETED LIST!
- In the "Admin>Templates" area, there's this beautiful list of editable features...and all but one of them (e-mail templates) are disabled.
- This almost certainly falls under "DNN problems" - I use Mozilla as my primary browser. Unfortunately, I seem to have to do everything - adding/deleted pages, adding/deleting modules, etc. - 2 or 3 times before it takes...if it takes at all. Things get real entertaining when I switch to IE...at that point, the FCKEditor refuses to work; it won't load any of the buttons or allow any input in the window unless switched back to 'Basic Text Box' mode. The IE error messages are, as usual, worse than useless. Again, I understand this is NOT an error particular to the forums module, but I thought I'd throw it in on the off-chance someone reading will have a solution. I-D-10-T errors are always a possibility....
- There seems to be no centralized point of information for this module. There's this forum. There's dnnforums.com. There may be others that I haven't found yet. The current release version might be 4.4.3, or it might be 4.4.4, or it might be 4.5.2...and of course, there seem to be no download links for anything but 4.4.3, which is what I"m using (without much success, obviously). There's a really pretty 'feature comparison chart' at dnnforums.com...but then you can't find or download the most-hyped, most-recent version, or even a beta thereof. I realize that hyper-geek 'daily releases' aren't the DNN way, and that's fine...but why have a 'feature comparison chart' for a product that doesn't seem to be available to anyone?
- All the noise about forum themes...and yet there seems to be no readily-accessible information about how to create themes, or where one might download third-party themes, or anything else.
I'm really not trying to be a snot here, and I fully appreciate that DNN and it's associated 'official' modules are, by and large, free-as-in-beer and therefore not the highest priority of the skilled developers behind them who also have to make a living at some point. But, I've moved my entire business model over to DNN because I was sick of having to hand code and constantly tweak, troubleshoot, modify, test, break, fix, and re-break my sites. I'm a one-man gang, I simply don't have the time to deliver the level of quality my clients demand, and still spend 60 hours a week elbows-deep in raw code. In many ways I've found DNN to be a most excellent solution...but in trying to configure this forum app, the shortfalls are becoming greatly magnified.
This seems like a great app, with great potential...but I'm really having some problems getting it up to any kind of reasonable performance standard, and I'm really frustrated at the inconsistencies, lack of communication from the dev team, and crossing, sometimes contradictory information about this module. If the real problem here is the desperate need of a cluebat upside my head, please feel free to apply it liberally. Otherwise...can someone point me to a DNN-based forum system that doesn't cost an arm and a leg or require me to spend hours hacking my web.config files just to MAYBE try it out and test it?
I'll do my best to not be clue-resistant here, and I apologize in advance if I seem unappreciative or ignorant...but this is pretty frustrating.