Our client wants to take their print magazine online. They would like to add a nav element ("Magazine") that when clicked on would send the user to a the current issue landing page (so there would have to be secondary navigation, a different layout on the landing page from the articles within, and a sidebar with additional modules, like a "most read" module.

 (an example of what we would like is audobon.org. click on the magazine menu item then select any subitem. That's basically what we would want.)

Using DNN 8. What are the best modules for this? Is there any with a drop and drag page builder?

Have you mae any decisions yet? I'm currently in the process of building an online magazine which will also be something in the app store, and I'd be happy to help you work through some concepts and work flows. I've looked at that site and it's great.  There are some discrepancies in how some of the older content is displayed - I gues it's been organically grown, but I'm working with a couple of solutions - one open source, one paid for and Sebastian is right when it comes to drag and drop - there is a bit of thought needed for that, but you're welcome to contact me offline and we can take the conversation further. I think it's a fantastic magazine and when I saw the link and visited the site, I thought the layouts and features were something I could work on.

Now the interesting thing is that some of the modules are very nicely 'tokenised' so you can manipulate the information to be displayed differently on different pages, and I did read that there was also some xml import function available now on one version so there is a bit of trickery behind the scenes that could be applied to make things display, repurpose and utilise to get the end result.  I'm trying a few things now because I'm also embedding a podcast which makes up part of the magazine, but is also repurposed on another standalone site, but the content is shared across the different domains.

It's quite exciting. I think when I dig down into the DNN structure, this is what it could be really good for. 

Good luck - it's great to see online magazines coming to the fore because there is so much information sitting out of reach of many people that needs to be brought online.

Nina