You're right Mitch.  There have been lots of improvements, but nothing major.  Getting AJAX was really a good plus for DotNetNuke, but it wasn't newsworthy.  When it was finally delivered, it was pretty darn buggy too (remember all those ScriptManager errors?).  Provider-ized authentication is nice, but who uses different authentication?  Not very many people.  In DotNetNuke 5.0 they now have a "widget" framework.  When I went to OpenForce Connect and got to see the official DotNetNuke 5.0 demo, I was very un-impressed.  It would have been really nice if the Corp had invested time in concrete features like Versioning instead of abstract concepts like "widgets".

Does anybody remember when DotNetNuke 3.0 first came out?  I still remember when I first got my hands on 3.0.  My heart was pounding, my hands were shaking, and all I could say was "Holy Crap!  This is is awesome!".  It was soooo much nicer than 1.0 and 2.0.  That didn't happen when 4.0 came out.  That won't happen when 5.0 finally comes out.

Tony - Let's get this straight... two and a half months ago, at OpenForce Connect in Florida, you saw the DotNetNuke 5.0 demo and were "very un-impressed."

Today, you're continuing to suggest that no one's hearts will be pounding or hands will be shaking after they get a copy of the final version of DotNetNuke 5.0 after it comes out of Beta testing.

All very interesting, considering the fact the title bar on your website's title bar has been blaring "DotNetNuke® DNN Hosting > Home [DotNetNuke 5.0.0 Cambrian Cluster on Windows 2008]" for months now.  Considering that DNN 5.0 isn't in production yet, and you're declaring it a bust already, it's a pretty interesting marketing tactic you've got going on there...

I was wondering how long it would take before the first flame showed up in this semi-controversial subject.

I'm pretty impressed - we made it through 35+ posts before the first flame!!!

I'm just glad we are having this discussion - even if it is all in one thread!

I think most people would agree with Jeff - the blue skin is very stale - and, sorry guys, the new one doesn't look a whole lot better.  I'm guessing this has less to do with abilities and desire than it has to do with resources and time.  And once again I think the problem is the same as with most all the other issues with DNN - a small group of people trying to do everything themselves. With regards to the skins - why not have a skin contest - with the top five being included in the release??  Why should the core team spend time on this when there are huge numbers of skin developers, both commercial and individual, who could do this and would love to contribute?? (either for monetary gain - commercial developers or bragging rights - individual developers)

And back to the original post - the website. While it's visual design was cool and got a lot of kudos when it was built it could use a refreshening. Especially with regards to content.  Click on the DNN careers link to see what I mean.  With regards to the home page you only have a few seconds to grab someone's attention and interest to make them want to dig deeper.  Since the main question most every potential new user has is "What can it do?" and/or "Will it do what I want to do?" (how many forum posts have we seen along these lines?) I could envision the left panel being screen shots of what can be accomplished with DNN. i.e. First picture could be a full blown relational web app built with DNN and ListX (or better yet get Kevin to build one in OWS showing it's ability to integrate with Google Gears!), next picture might be a shot of one of the two main document management modules for DNN, and so on with a link at the bottom to a whole page of screen shots!  That's just one idea and I won't go into the others but the two points of this post is things need refreshening and the cummunity needs to be allowed and asked to contribute.

With regards to the new features of DNN 5.0 - it seems to be a constant battle between new features and bugs.  A year to year and a half ago the main bitch was bugs. Then the core came out with the project release system and now it seems to take forever for a project to make it through the system - of course they are close to bug free when they come out.  There were also lots of complaints with the core project in this regard - in the 4.3 to 4.6 range a new release would come out and you would wait at least a week for 3 patches before you tried it. I'm guessing the powers-that-be are using the same approach on 5.0 as they are on the projects which should mean that it will be pretty clean when it comes out but it is 3/4's of a year behind schedule with less new features than orignially planned. So the question is if you can't have everything which is the lesser evil??