After DNN being down with 503 errors for a few hours today I realized, if they can't get their own site to work, maybe I need to find a better solution.

I used to love and advocate DNN, and have been with it since ~2.5 but I now am seriously considering Joomla, or WordPress or even hand coding as an upgrade. I am saddened by the lack of reliable documentation, and the cascading errors from version to version. Here is the shortlist from today upgrading, and then throwing in the towel and starting fresh. Before this 6 hour upgrade process my 4.9.x install ran just fine but it was not really as stable or good as 3.x, DNN just gets worse as time goes by. This was made worse when looking for documentation or support, the site was down.

5.0.1 u/g hell:

1. I add pages, but they don't appear until I restart the application.
2. I add modules on new pages but they end up on the home page not on the page I add them to. 
3. Upgrading is not a easy as going from 4.5 to 4.9, and nobody can tell me why I it would not work and I got errors along the way. So I had to go 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, and finally to 4.9.
4. Friendly urls are not and probably won't be since nobody has reliably documented for ALL users not just eggheads. infinity and inventuas do not work anymore on 5.0.1 so all my SEO work was destroyed the second I upgraded.
5. HORRIBLE module install process. I remember the days when you could install multiples at once, now it is a click fest and then pitifully slow to get back to add another. I buy scads of modules, close to 5 grand since my first install.
6. Spaces in names of pages makes them vanish from the menu system.
7. Speaking of which, what the heck happened to the friendly page permissions check boxes?
8. No uniform conventions for module administration. Every developer has their own random way of admin'ing modules.
9. Certain developers when offered real money flake, including a very big DNN developer that I had a large amount of money in hand to continue dev on a package they sell and they vanished after two emails leading me to believe they are not who they represent themselves to be.
10. When it runs it runs beautiful and people are happy to hear it, but when it fails, nobody can hear you scream as they all leave the room to drink the koolaid.

DNN came very close to being used for some major traffic sites including a major hospital in LA, a 75+ year old very famous entertainment publication, and a large multi-national beverage conglomerate along with their theme park properties. I have a vote of no confidence anymore, I give it a week before I start looking for something that won't abandon me or the other users.

I know I'm fanning the flames but I tend to agree with Tim here. There has never been any type of comprehensive documentation for DNN. Sure we've made a ton of progress here in the past few years in regards to updating documenation but most of it is seriously outdated. Slapping a new date and revision on the documentation with new DNN releases just doesn't cut it. As a matter of fact, I find several items in the documentation for DNN5 that never have applied to version 5.

Now I've been using DotNetNuke for close to five years now hosting client's websites. I'm not a developer, nor designer but have made a pretty good living at converting static HTML or proprietary websites to DNN so that the client's themselves can update the content (the whole purpose of a CMS). I've chosen to use DNN simply because: 1) I am a very small business and cannot afford any commercial CMS, 2) I am most comfortable with Windows and IIS.  Having said that I seriously believe that DNN is behind the curve, compared to other open source CMS systems. We need better

I understand that the developers and designers are volunteering their time, and certainly appreciate everything they've done here, but good documenation, training, and end-user support is the foundation for any succesful software project. We simply need better documentation.

As far as the website being down yesterday; yes I know DotNetNuke easts their own dogfood, but I was attempting to show a client the Guided Tour yesterday. Needless to say, they weren't impressed.