Hello everyone!

I was a software developer. I worked in VB and HEAVILY in MS Access. I am VERY familiar with DB Design and development. I have not worked in the IT field for a while and am rusty. I have started building a website with Visual Studio. Nothing crazy. Basically an industry specific social networking site. Dvelopment has been very slow due to my jobs, kids, other responsilbilities and my lack of web knowledge.I know what I want it to do , I know what the site should be capable of, but I dont know how to get from here to there, so to speak.

I have successfully created a basic user interface, cookies, etc and even figured out how to get Windows Authentication working. But the going is SLOW. I am also extrenmely weak on anything graphics related, CSS, HTML, Skins, etc so the site I have looks like sh*t.

I am looking at DOT NET NUKE and first thing I notice is, it seems really cool and like it will do everything my little hear desires, but the details of these webinars seem a little fuzzy. Are there easily usable skins? Do they implement user permissions, and account creation / editing, etc for me, or am I still coding all fo that? Is there an addon module that will make building a social networking site a lot easier?

While the walkthroughs I have watched so far seem helpful, I am fearful the promos are glossing over the details and the heavy lifting that I will still have to do...

I guess my real question boils down to this: As a new user with limited time to learn a new tool,  do you other developers vote for me to learn this new tool or should I keep plugging along through the VB-esque knowledge I have?

Thanks for any and all opinions, and I do like being flamed, so please have at it, some people are really creative and I could use the laughs! (A set of 10-month old twins will do that to you)  :)

-JC

 Hi,

Bill has given an answer that should help you get started with some things... though I think I'll let you in on a few other things:µ

--> interested in skinning on your own without lots of CSS knowledge --> either go for the EasyMod + Flex2 package (Snowcovered, by DrNuke) or Artisteer (fat client for making skins, shareware)

--> because of the way IIS works & DNN as ASP.NET application on that, you'll notice the application will take a while to 'start up'; that's why you'll be looking for a "keepalive" - something ping the keepalive page of your site so it doesn't get unloaded from IIS (you'll find many blog post around this) - I mostly use a paying service that will both handle my keepalive whilst also monitoring & informing me if the site is not available

--> caching & compression: look for PageBlaster from Snapsis (via SnowCovered)

--> backup & restore: either use the normal way (native SQL backup & file backup) or you'll want some module like DNNBackup (works even on shared hosting but then will have to use scripting instead of native backups) - you'll have to look into this area at some point; it's well worth knowing how to restore locally or in a test environment to be able to test major changes before doing them on your live site

--> multilanguage: look at EALO (codeplex) or Apollo software's solutions (via SnowCovered), or consider (in some cases) Adequation software's Localization Extensions - the core framework will get some better handling of the localization in the upcoming release(s) as well

The security model should be able to cover your need, and ActiveSocial is the way to go if you want to set up a networking site. If you might want to have some way of importing / exporting users, look at Bulk User Manager from PhDobson (though I know some other modules are out there).

You'll also be looking for a multi media gallery. Search Snowcovered, there are lots of them. My favorite is ZLDNN's MultiMediaGallery PRO which actually can give site users their own private galleries, as well as moderate posted images etc. But which gallery module to choose depends on your needs really.

For email purposes, I can say I'm very content with InteractiveWebs Bulk Emailer. If you ever need to send more than a couple of hunderds of emails, you'll be wanting to have this module for sure.

Furthermore, you might be interested to know some of the datagrid / form solutions, OpenWebStudio, IndooGrid and XMOD / XMOD Pro. I think you'll find that using any of these will save you lots of development time.

Voilà, I think that will cover quite a lot of the needs to get started on a complete site - even handling some things you'll only need over a longer period of time...

Rgrdz,

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Hi JC,

One quick note.  Once you get DNN installed, check before you install a demo version of Active Social (If you are planning to)  I saw a note this morning where the newest 5.4 version of DNN was causing issues with a few third party modules including Active Social.

If you want to do interactive work with drop-downs and such, I would suggest looking at Xmod Pro.  I use it for this type of work all the time.  You might also be able to use the built in Form and List module but I was using Xmod before this was available so I have never looked at it.  You can also develop your own modules in VB or C# but that will take more commitment and training.

You can definitely access any of the data on your own.  I setup a shopping cart site a few years ago with Catalook (a DNN module) and I wrote my own external routines to populate and keep the inventory up to date.

99 percent of the install problems seem to tie to permission problems.  Make sure you review the setup instructions in detail.  A good site for this type of help is Mitch Seller's site at http://www.mitchelsellers.com/.  Look through his blog, he has a number of install blogs as well as a wealth of other good information.  I purchased his book on developing applications for DNN and it was very useful.  His performance tips are also very worthwhile.

Bill