With regards to "Support for Section 508 Compatible Themes and Visuals" and "Support for w3c XHTML strict valid and CSS compliance" we have found that Drupal is the best choice due to the simple fact the DNN does not meet these standards.

The Drupal community is very active in making sure that the framework meets these standards on all upgrades which I'm afraid cannot be said for DNN.
We have built a number of government websites which required strict compliance with European rules on web accessibility and thus we had no option but to use Drupal.

Skinning is also easier with Drupal with most third party skins using CSS without tables. DNN is unfortunately very much dependant on tables throughout the application and most third party skins are overly reliant on tables also.

Having said that, if like us you are inclined towards .net then DNN is more agile when it comes to integrating third party applications.

That’s our observations on some key differences between DNN and Drupal.

Hope it helps.

Well I can't actually believe I'm pondering this question.  I am much more comfortable in a .NET environment than I am a PHP environment.  I have been around DNN since version 1 and have started several development companies on DNN through my consulting.

With that being said I still wonder if Joomla and Drupal aren't better.  Their community extensions are certainly good, for example I need a CRM and can't find any attractive options for DNN, however with Joomla and PHP there is CivicCRM, jContact and multiple SugarCRM integrations.

Then there is the speed of mySQL and the fact that PHP programmers seem to be a dime a dozen.

I wish DNN project people wouldn't post knee-jerk reactions to questions posted here as I've seen happen over the past three or four years.

My first choice is always DNN, but right now I'm spending time on Joomla and Drupal trying to decide what's best for my clients site requirements.

I don't know if that's the case now, but I would be interested to know just how much easier it is - I might do some investigation, but I'm seeing some amazing things with DNN that I know other users have moved from other CMS style products to extend the client's requirements.

In reference to the original post about the two - here's a site that might give you information about the two based on competition that was run in the latter half of last year. - http://www.packtpub.com/award  Drupal was the winner in this case, and it was really quite an achievement to see DotNetNuke be awarded in a category as well as I know there have been struggles and challenges to getting anything that's not PHP seriously accepted as a viable open source option, and the success of DNN has made signficant steps forward in paving the way for .NET to be utilised in an open source fashion.

I have read some of the comments here - naturally posting a question like this on DNN forum is going to get a biased answer - we're using it - why would we suggest anything else, but I know alot of people around have come from different products and found that DNN suits their requirements well.

Unfortunately though, I do have to agree with some of Chad's comments and on that side, which disappoints me a bit.

There's one thing I thing that DNN has that very very few open source projects have, and that is the licensing model that allows you to commercially close the code to use for your own business uses.. EG you are actually allowed to repackage, further develop and brand as your own. (copyright within the dnn code must remain) but you can hide it quite a bit from being a DNN visible solution.  Not that it means much to me, but I did hear of a couple of large projects being tipped over to DNN for that very reason alone.  I could be wrong but I believe I'm right in this instance, unless someone wants to correct or expand more clearly as I'm not a solicitor.

Personally, I know developers who write both php, .net vb & c# and they love DNN - I like hearing that because they have experience at different levels, and don't sit on the .. linux / microsoft fence, but are able to look at a project, see what the resources are for each, and make intelligent choices, based on experience.  We win some, we lose some.

My son's a php guy, so we have lively discussions, but I think although I'll test run a few php solutions, I'll remain a DNN person for some time yet.

Decisions decisions.. you know what ever you choose there is going to be something good and you're going to have some hurdles to overcome. I dont' think I've ever read or heard anywhere, anything that didn't have a problem somewhere along the line.

So here's some more thinking for you :-D - It would be great to hear what you eventually decide on and why - as regardless of choosing DNN or Drupal, it's important to know what others are thinking too.

Thanks to those who have posted their experiences and thoughts too - I really appreciate posts like this.

Nina Meiers
http://www.xd.com.au