Jeff Cochran wrote
I really don't see why they would propose PHPNuke, it's much older technology than Joomla or Drupal and has fallen out of favor with even the PHP enthusiasts. There are always valid reasons to choose something over DNN, but none of the reasons you list fall into the valid category. Except maybe the free part, which can be a valid reason for the choice, but who want's a client where FREE is the driving force? Just shows they place no value on your work or their own site.
Jeff
While I'm generally a fan of DNN over PHPNuke, I'll go so far as to say that the topics presented in statements #1 through #8 can probably be argued in favor-of or against either platform depending on what particulars you choose to focus on. I have to, however, fully side with Jeff's last statement (quoted above). If you take any sort of long-term view (say, a target of at least three years between major website code/function overhauls) you have to pay attention to what platforms are gaining support and which ones are losing it.
"Maturity" versus "Heading-for-Life-Support"
What I often find to be a great helper gauge for very broad topics is Google Trends. If you're not familiar, Google Trends measures the overall popularity of a topic based on worldwide user searches and even breaks results down to countries, cities and languages. The popularity is tracked over time revealing a "trend". A high "trend" value does not always equal a good product/topic -- it simply means there is a lot of interest and "buzz" (good or bad) regarding that product/topic. (Example: "Brittany Spears")
For web platforms, though, Trends is helpful in that it generally reflects the results of users/developers/admins searching for platform-related documentation, modules, source code, how-to articles, forums, skins, etc. In that respect, it's a useful and generally accurate indicator of what platforms are being embraced and what are on their way out. If the trend is "up" you can generally expect more support from hosting providers, more developers, more add-ons and increasing attention from the web community at large. If the trend is on the way "down", well...
PHPNuke is one of the granddaddy platforms of open-source web frameworks. PHPNuke is absolutely still a useful platform but all indicators is that it is heading for oblivion. Check this comparison (will open in a new window) of PHPNuke versus several other PHP-based platforms:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=phpnuke%2C+joomla%2C+mambo%2C+drupal%2C+cakephp&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
You can see the trend since 2004 is that PHPNuke is going away -- at this point, it has even less interest than CakePHP (how many people do you know that have tried or even heard of CakePHP?). Currently Joomla is all the rage...but we already knew that. Joomla was spawned from Mambo -- it's interesting to track Joomla's rise against Mambo's fall on Trends, but that's another topic...
PHPNuke versus DNN
So where does DNN fall? Compare PHPNuke to DNN over the past 5 years:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=dotnetnuke%2C+dnn%2C+phpnuke&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1
DNN could be described as "slow and steady" with a lot of new "buzz" in 2008 (note: you need to add together the values for "DNN" and for "DotNetNuke" to get an accurate measure). PHPNuke, on the other hand, appears to be suffering a steady decline.
To get a better idea of the recent trend, let's look at the past 12 months:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=dotnetnuke%2C+dnn%2C+phpnuke&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=1
The results? DNN has nearly FOUR TIMES more "buzz" than PHPNuke over the past 12 months. (Remember -- we're adding together values for "DNN" and "DotNetNuke").
Not Convinced by Trends?
Ok, maybe "Trends" is too "gimmicky" for you. Let's go by another measure: book releases. First, let's check Amazon for all 2007-and-newer books with keyword "phpnuke":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=%22phpnuke%22&field-author=&field-title=&field-isbn=&field-publisher=&node=&url=&field-feature_browse-bin=&field-binding_browse-bin=&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=After&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=2007&sort=relevancerank&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=0&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=0
Total "PHPNuke" books since 2007: 13 results. Note, however, that NONE of the books actually has "PHPNuke" in the title.
Now do the same 2007-and-newer book keyword search for "DotNetNuke":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=%22dotnetnuke%22&field-author=&field-title=&field-isbn=&field-publisher=&node=&url=&field-feature_browse-bin=&field-binding_browse-bin=&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=After&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=2007&sort=relevancerank&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=0&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=0
Total "DotNetNuke" books since 2007: 23 results. The first seven books also actually have "DotNetNuke" in the title.
This isn't the 4-to-1 result we saw in Google Trends (unless you're counting having the platform name IN the book title) but it's still another strong relative indicator of where attention is being focused. A search for "Joomla" turns up 97 books, by the way, supporting the apparent attention level we saw from Trends.
So what does this tell us? Well, we can only make generalizations, but the indicators are that DNN is gaining more attention from the web platform community at large compared to PHPNuke (which is currently below DNN and is going further down). We expect that attention translates into more hosting support, more DNN-related vendors, more developers, more blogs, more forums, etc, so, all else being roughly equal, DNN should be the better long-term choice over PHPNuke.
-mamlin