Hello to all!

I’m doing my final thesis about web content management and the case study is about the DotNetNuke. I was wondering if people here could help me with it, I know only few people who had actually used Nuke, except myself, so they can’t give me much help in this. You don’t have to be professional, but hope you have own opinions about it. You can also add your own ideas into your post, if something comes across to your mind.

I’d really appreciate your help, to spend few minutes to answer easy basic questions related to web content management systems overall and to Nuke. You can post your answers here in the forum under my topic. Also I see a possibility in this to help the whole community to make Nuke better, if there is something to make better …

The basic idea of the research is, that does the DotNetNuke correspond to the basic idea and the elements needed in web content management, plus to find out the easy-of-use of it. (Choose your answer, which figures your opinions, some of the answer options given below the question.)

REPOSITORY INTERFACE

enables the collection, publishing, workflow and administrative system to access and work with the repository.

1. How the DotNetNukes repository interface provides functions for input?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

2. How the DotNetNukes repository interface provides functions for access to the database?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

3. How the DotNetNukes repository interface provides functions for output?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT

4. Does the workflow management in DotNetNuke answer to your expectations of workflow management overall?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

5. Are the workflow functions easy to use and manage?

1) Yes, 2) No, and why not?

CONNECTION TO OTHER SYSTEMS

in CMS it’s important that it enables you to send and receive information from the repository.

6. How does the connection to the other systems work in DotNetNuke?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

7. Does the connection in DotNetNuke also help you to work easily with other programs?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

ADMINISTRATION TOOLS

are for administrators to configure and manage sites and portals and the whole CMS. In DotNetNuke administrative options are divided between host level and individual portal level. CMSs purpose is also to make easy to handle large amount of documents and information.

8. Do the given administrational tools in DotNetNuke give you a possibility to manage your system as a one complex?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

9. Are the given tools easy to use in DotNetNuke?

1) Yes, 2) No, and why not?

10. Is it easy to manage large amount of information with DotNetNukes administration tools?

1) Yes, 2) No, and why not?

MODULES AND EXPANDABILITY

DotNetNukes basic idea is to work through the modules. It comes with its basic modules, but it’s extendible with modules provided by third-party suppliers.

11. Do the basic modules of DotNetNuke given; give you possibility to manage your web content as a one complex?

1) Fair, 2) Moderate, 3) Good, 4) Best

12. Is it easy to extend your system with the third-party private assembly tools?

1) Yes, 2) No, and why not?

13. Is it possible to extend the DotNetNuke with the third-party private assembly tools offered, so that it corresponds better to the content management challenge, or are they just for extending the easy-of-use?

1) yes, they are for making the correspond better,

2) no, they are for the easy-of-use

 3) no, they are for both

Last but not least:

14. What school grade (up 1 to 5) would you give to DotNetNuke as its equivalence to content management challenge?

15. What school grade (up 1 to 5) would you give to DotNetNuke about its easy-to-use and usability?

I’ll be very thankful to you all who have interest to participate in this, and spend your time to answer the questions. And to ease my work to interpret the answers, please answer with the given options given below the questions. Hope this will be useful for the whole community too.

Probably a bit late after you haver selected DotNetNuke as your case study of web content management systems. Dotnetnuke is not actually a CMS - it can be used as a simple CMS however there are several other much better CMS's out there. Dotnetnuke is used for a number of things some completely outside the thinking of the orginal designers thoughts. And that is what makes the Dotnetnuke framework so good - it can be extended well outside of the orginal design parameters. About the only built in concept that matchesa CMS is the fact that it uses a central storage point for its data ( be it program data or site content).

If you actually have a look at the several thousand DNN sites out there then the majority of them simply use the framework as a type of CMS in that they can edit online in real time but apart from that there are many other factors that have to be built into a real CMS that DNN lacks by design.  Dotnetnuke was designed as a frame work from which others could extend it for different uses. There has been some modules designed with some CMS extensions but again not to the degree of turning DNN into a true CMS.

There is really no true WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT built into the frame work - true there is allowance in a number of modules for time stamping content updating and recording the creator of those changes but apart from that there is no actual reporting on the actual content as there should be in a true CMS. A true CMS should give back information on the content - auditing proceedures etc DNN does not really do this.

as to CONNECTION TO OTHER SYSTEMS  the framework is designed to 'talk' to modules and to accept 'talk' back from modules but to connect to non dnn systems can be a work of art - as you will find out if you browse the forums. It is true that one can cut and paste from say Microsoft Word directly into DNN modules but for Word to directly talk to DNN is not part of the framework. That is not to say that it can't be done.

DNN has the ability to highly restrict viewers of the content but only has two levels of administrators - there is a module that will extend the restrictions on users to become administrators and allow you to manipulate the control panel by restricting different functions to different roles but again this is not part of the frame work. - on the viewer side it does appear to be a CMS but on the admistrator side it does not.

Where DNN has been customised to become nearer to a true CMS is most probably where it is useds as an Intranet - in these cases the framework may have been extended to fit to the users requirements and would be closer to a CMS.

This is of course not downgrading DNN - it was never designed to be a true CMS - it was an exersize in building a frame work and orginally a teaching tool for asp.net.

DotNetNuke is actually a web management systems (WMS). That is it has all the functions of the CMS except the audit and archiving of data.

DotNetNuke as aWMS lacks the prime fuctions of the CMS such as

the main problem I think is with the user and roles - you can use these to restrict viewing quite well, also you now have some form of dating of content and restriction based on date ranges so the basics is there however to extend the administration side of it is a bit more complex - the code is quite modular and functions such as isadmin can be changed to extend it to a wider application of the types of content admins that one needs in a true CMS but then there are code changes to be done in the frame work where ever one displays the admin functions. This can be done without a lot of hard work - the workflow requirements such as approvals again can be done using the inbuit modular functions such as the send mail etc however the biggest change must be to the data tables - these have to be extended to alow for the extra audit and workflow data. Again this can be done

However once you make these changes then you lose the abilty to automatically update the dnn versions and your DNN framework becomes a fully customised package.  You could build the extensions in via DNN modules and retain the framework but I think this would not be the best approach - you have to consider the addon modules and apply workflow to these - in the days of version 2 most modules came with source nowadays that does not hold as true so the cost of buying source for all the addon modules would make it cheaper to go out and buy a true CMS.

Would the core team consider adding true CMS functions to the frame work - they are adding features with every version but I doubt that they would take a path of making DNN a true CMS - there is really no need to as DNN was never put forward as a CMS. Those that are adding CMS ability to DNN would be the Intranet Users who mostly customise the framework any way. The average web user of DNN does not need a true CMS only company and government users really need it.

I have been customising DNN since I first started with it and most of my clients do have 2 or 3 different content managers that requrie restrictions on content input etc - so I have a simply work flow with what I call content admins, admins and host admin - I am the host admin to all my clients they do not get into host functions - the admin has all the current admin functions while the content admins have limited editing and content creating abilities I also have a tutor role that allows dummy content admin ie they can practice but nothing is actually updated. Just to have these means that the code within the framework of my dnn is different to the DNN off the shelf. To be able to maintain this and still get the benefits of the newer features in the newer vrsions I move code that I want back from the new versions into my base framework rather then doing a total update. So you can make DNN into a CMS but it is really no longer DNN.

For a programmer to make changes etc to the framework is not or should not be hard - the code is excellent the core is well modularised but one should remember that the core has used all the capabilities of VB.NET and thus it is not a thing that a new programmer will grasp quickly - as a Project leader of long ago I would love to see a lot more comments within the code and I think that this would make it easiler for the less experienced programmers but then lack of comments is a common occurence in any project nowadays.

But the most important point is that in customising DNN to make it into a true CMS means that it is no longer DNN.

John