Chris,

Yep - I have performed upgrades recently.

I, along with others, was left with a database broken by one of those upgrades. (http://www.dnnsoftware.com/forums/forumid/42/postid/485618/scope/posts)

I raised an issue in Gemini. It had a few comments and then was summarily closed last January by Will Morgenweck. No comment, no discussion, no fix, just closed.

The current DNNTracker issue (https://dnntracker.atlassian.net/browse/DNN-20377) lost ALL those comments and history. I asked why, no-one cared to reply.

The upgrade process may be smooth when it works with your database. When it breaks your database DNN Corp, fully, thoroughly, and carefully, ABANDONS you.

My point remains valid. They found a way to get out from that cruft. After they break our databases, they refuse to even allow us to help ourselves.

---

Best wishes,
- Richard
Agile Development Consultant, Practitioner, and Trainer
www.dynamisys.co.uk

Oh, I can fully understand why DNN rebuilt their server from scratch. Over time, things just build up and it gets very difficult to keep things running good, files are left behind by old software, etc... Whenever I upgrade a server now, I never do an upgrade of the OS, I do a clean install for this very reason. Several years ago, I did the same with our DNN install here, it was just too messed up to keep running good, and I did a complete rebuild to get a clean install running.

Back then though, I had only a handful of portals, so it wasn't too much of a problem. Now, however, I have nearly 200 portals on this system, and I am dreading the day when I have to take the nuke and pave approach to clean up all of the little issues that have crept up with years of updates. When it gets to the point where I don't have a choice, will I then take that opportunity to switch to a different platform? I don't know right now... It all depends on what path DNN Corp takes. Right now it is running pretty good, if ignore the little things like the broken image placeholders for avatars and such, so I got another year maybe to go before I have to make that decision.

A community release of the platform requires community participation. The forums are pretty much dead now, hardly anyone can discuss things because there are few people left to discuss them with. If there are no questions answered, a feeling of being unsupported occurs.

Let's face it... This website is poorly designed. It looks pretty, but the menus are hard to use and the links don't even look like are clickable. People are passing by the lower-level menus because they cannot find them, they just look like text on the page. And with all of the marketing stuff that fills up most of the pages, they don't take the time to read the fine print (where the menus are).

Until you can get the "community" back into participation (not the one-way communication method of the Q&A module), the community aspect will continue to fade away. Sure, there will be a few people left in the forums, the hard-core users, but they cannot answer all questions... Heck, I have one question (one that I REALLY want answer to) that has gone unanswered for almost a year now!