The biggest problem I have right now with DotNetNuke is that it seems very hard to do any kind of integration with another web app. I consider myself an avid .net developer but struggled even to make a module in dotnetnuke in 3.0 . I guess it's gotten easier in 4??

What I really need to do is to be able to have a seperate web application that can use the the dotnetnuke template. So if you add a menu item in dotnetnuke it is viewable in a seperate .net app. I am purchasing either ablecommerce, or aspdotnetstorefront (which I know will soon be available for DotNetNuke, but not yet). Anyone found a way to have the look of dotnetnuke used in another .net web app? 

Thanks for the help!

DNN is not really a template. Its a portal framework. You wouldn't want to use it if you have no use for its portal features. There would be no advantage gained for you. You could always pull any data out of the DNN db, but why would you store it there if you were going to use something else besides DNN to pull it out?

I'm working on a CMS system that uses DNN for its portal and user management features. I populate data into databases outisde of DNN and we have a large group of TV websites that pull the data for thier front ends. DNN gave us a huge head start since we didn't have to worry about writing an entire framework.

Here is an idea for what you can do.

1. Setup DNN Site.
2. Setup ablecommerce / aspdotnetstorefront.
3. Create all your content in DNN.
4. Create access to ablecommerce / aspdotnetstorefront by using Iframe module.

This allows you to run the 2 storefront application within your DNN based web site, thus taking advanages of all the DNN featrues (Security, logging, content management, etc).