We’re looking to (re)build a User Community that currently exists in Drupal.  I’ve been trying to determine what can be done with ‘out of the box‘ Platform functionality vs. with purchased modules vs. custom development if we go this route. I’m not coming from a development background, so I may have missed some queues along the way the information that’s out there right now.  We will likely have some requirements down the road to build custom integrations with DNN, so I don’t believe that the Evoq option is right for us (even though it sounds like they build something to need community needs).

If we move forward we would likely be looking for someone from the DNN community to work with us on building the foundation for this community.  I’ve reached out to a couple people in the DNN world however I have yet to receive a response from any of them.

Here is what we’re looking for:

• Site will house a volume searchable ‘knowledge content’
•  Content is created from a template page (i.e. knowledge article vs. video vs. events)
•  Views (similar to Drupal) of content based on tag filtering  
• Robust search page (filter down results with clickable tags)
• Feedback forms at the bottom of content to collect feedback

Some feedback and clarification would be greatly appreciated.  Without a clearer understanding of how we could work with DNN, we will likely proceed with our rebuild using ‘the devil we know’ (Drupal).

Thanks

Jay

PS.  Is the text editor used to post here a fair example of how DNN works normally?  Bullets don't appear to work correctly, font's seem to change as you go...  I wrote this in an email and then pasted it in, I tried both Paste as Text and pasting directly in the body; they were both problematic. 

Hi Sebastian, 

Thanks for the response. Essentially what we're looking to do is create a searchable knowledge base which will contain a few different types of content.  Adding this content will be accomplished by starting with a template for that type of entry (Drupal simply calls they Content Type templates).  These templates should afford us a high level of control in the creation of the content & default permissions, as the people creating the content are not going to be skilled at web page creation.  Other types of pages would be listings for webinar dates that would link out to WebEx for registration.  I'm not sure if this answers your question or not...

With respect to your comment "Please be aware that DNN uses a different Approach towards Content with pros and cons", I've read this notion a few times now however I need to better understand explicitly what those differences are.  We are very keen on moving to an all MS stack and away from PHP however, we can't do it at the expense of functionality and ease of use (for both customers & our team). 

Thanks

Jay

 

Regarding DNN and Content:
Many CMS use an object of type Content, all specific Content types inherit from, i.e. (simplified) a "Content" instance has title and description, while "Document" adds a fileID and "Link" a URL and target etc.This allows easy enumeration of all content of a site despite the content derivate being used.
DNN however provides a framework, where every module implements its own types (document, link, forum, thread, post) and storage location, which might be dedicated tables, files or web services.
There are additional interfaces a module needs to implement for core function support, especially iPortable, which allows content to be exported and imported into another page/site and iSearchable, which allows content to be indexed.

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Cheers from Germany,
Sebastian Leupold

   

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