Hi tgpsilla - you hit a raw nerve with one of those core team guys who's written part of that very code working with, and on this forum you must learn never to diss the core team coders, they will come down on you like a ton of bricks... these type of posts always get a response.... but not the one you may want. 
DNN is a great application, but I believe, from a non coders perspective,that it's much harder to work with than the 'early' days.
http://blogs.ninameiers.com/2007/01/29/DNN+Getting+Harder+For+The+Average+Person.aspx
I wrote about this earlier on this year. It's not the same as it used to be, but it doesn't mean it's bad. I can remember throwing weekends away trying to get the same results with other apps.
However, I have to also state that when people come in from different languages, or different expectations, they have a different perspective on how things are going to be deployed or used and a lack of understanding of DNN can mean that you don't know how the modules will behave, or perhaps modules you select thinking they do a certain job, fail to do so, or your interpretation in synch.
I feel the issue with DNN is that it hard to get going for many to start with, hard to get initially pick up the logic in how it works.
I think you'll also find the high numbers that appear on the site are due to the fact you have to register to download anything. Whereas you can go straight to sourceforge and download the code to test it out, without any registration, but for marketing and selling advertising the registration needs to be kept up as high as possible but the point is, there are thousands of sites using DNN, so enough people along the line have managed to get it working and running... whether the proportion of users is as high, we'll never know exactly.
But there is something else you need to need to consider here - classic ASP is old technology. What you can do with .NET and other emerging Microsoft technologies is simply astounding. I see some excellent sites that are developed in DNN but mostly by experienced developers. Learning dnn development is, what I've been told, difficult, but once you get it - it's fantastic. I test alot of modules for developers who want to know about how a non developers experiences it, how it would be used.
I also think that no matter what flavour of developing you choose - there are going to be 'fanatics' - which I feel is a more practical way to describe any person who follows that road. The morons... well, it's perhaps a harsh word when in reality you don't know how to do something, doesn't mean it's bad, but this website dotnetnuke.com is managed, run and promoted to developers only - there are plenty of other places to find answers and there are plenty of people with expertiese to give you specific answers to your problems too.
So in spite of the fact that DNN isn't as easy as it says on the front page, there are some outstanding sites and high end solutions being developed, but you'll never get any help or smilies with such an approach.
Perhaps a simple .net solution would be a better way to go than asp - who knows.
It sounds like you had a bad run - it also sounds like you have had to learn about dnn and that it's not an 'out of the box solution' - but when running, and with some tweaks here and there, it's been a great solution for many of my clients over the last 4 years.
Nina Meiers
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