As someone who has to be considered a "newbie" on DNN I would like to give my opinion on "the state of affairs".
Actually I have a background.
Back in early 2003 I was reading on Microsoft Website about a fictitious portal called ISpyPortal. I was fascinated with how easy it seems to be to set up a portal utilizing Microsoft framework techniques such as membership and user profiling, creating a store and all you need for a modern top-of-the art site back in 2003.
I printed the “How-to-get-started”, had a hot chicken vindaloo for lunch, but was maybe sweating even more out of the excitement when planning in my head all those fantastic websites I would build. And… after that lunch the paper went into my drawer and has forever stayed there…until a year ago or so.
I installed DNN and was again blown away of how easy it was to have it up and running. I helped some friends and relatives to set up easy un-complicated sites and showed them how they can add content to it.
The reason I choose DNN is that I have grown up with Microsoft techniques like Visual Basic, IIS, MS SQL and later C#.
Once, a million years ago, I made a web-site using Active Server Pages and oh boy what a mess of spaghetti-code that was! After that experience I stayed well away from any solutions using PHP, which at least then I considered a messy scripting language, and that allergic feeling extended to any L-A-M-P solutions.
Now I finally have a chance to set up a sort of semi-professional site within my company, an European company with some 15 000 employees in several countries. But, hey, still a free community-driven site, even though in my company the managers are very suspicious of anything that doesn’t carry a million dollar bill tag, isn’t part of IBM or SAP or doesn’t have sales guys with posh PowerPoint and fancy suites :-)
So our CMS commercial solutions are based on Episerver and IBM Social.
I myself think that I can do a better site with DNN than with those commercial alternatives, but let’s see.
I am getting doubts though, if I have made the right choice.
Something that did really rock my beliefs was when one of the persons I really respect in the industry, Paul Thurrot, changed his CMS system from DNN to Drupal!
I mean, come on, the guy behind www.winsupersite.com , the bastion for all things Microsoft saying:
“About one month ago, we upgraded the SuperSite to a completely new infrastructure based on Drupal, replacing the Dot Net Nuke (DNN) content management system we had used for the previous two years.
Drupal just makes it easier. This system is wonderful, and while you’ll never see the backend stuff, suffice to say it makes my life a lot easier. I’m amazed by how much better it is. Night and day.
Drupal just makes it easier. This system is wonderful, and while you’ll never see the backend stuff, suffice to say it makes my life a lot easier. I’m amazed by how much better it is. Night and day.”
http://winsupersite.com/windows-phone/mailbag-december-9-2012
What worries me as a new user and part of the DNN community is whether the “rats are abandoning the ship and I am instead climbing aboard”.
Worrying signs that I see:
- Books written about DNN are all quite many years old. The latest commercial release I could find was from 2008, that is almost 6 years ago! Books are released this month about Drupal and Wordpress latest releases, something indicating that the interest is high for these products.
- The Community Showcase part of the DNN website does not seem to be very active with new contributions of new sites. That worries me, as a contrast when I read about Mariette Knap’s great site in http://www.dnnsoftware.com/forums/for... ,that was a huge vitamin injection to me and inspiration as to what one can still do with DNN community edition. I want more inspiration like that!
- There are not many new modules and skins coming into the DNN Forge. There are of course true gems there, like the DNN Blog, which is a jaw-dropper as well as the Yet Another Forum (YAF) to name a few, but I do believe that for the community to thrive it needs a very active base of contributors that have no commercial interest in the product, just a fanatic interest and dedication.
- The DNN site itself. I feel alienated since the big make-over to emphasize EVOQ. I understand that the company DNN Corp. wants to make money. And I think it was a wise decision to have a commercial offering with a different name than DNN Community edition. But why hide the community deep down in the menus of the site? Trust me, this is a serious mistake! The fan-base of dedicated DNN community followers is the guarantee of success for any commercial adventure. And if you can’t make a first-time user aware of that DNN is a totally free alternative in 5 seconds when entering the site, better than any Drupal, Wordpress or Joomla alternative out there, then that person will move ahead to exactly those alternatives I just mentioned.
DNN community edition is still an unique offering. At least an old Bill Gate-follower like me believes that. Or is there any other free CMS system offered that is based on dot-net, C#, IIS and SQL server?
I think that the release I am running, 7.1.2, is mature and stable, any bugs found or mis-configuration made by me are usually sorted out by the outstanding people on this forum (if you can find it hidden deep away in the menu system of DNN website…), it really deserves a much bigger audience than it has today – it should be bigger than Drupal and Wordpress if you ask me.
So, how to conclude? Maybe to quote a guy that I as an atheist don’t normally pay attention to, called Jesus:
John, chapter 6:
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?
Yeah, cheesy, isn’t it? As a DNN enthusiast I have read this whole thread, and agree with all the criticism, but let’s face it: Where else should we go? I guess that to continue this symbolism, then Paul Thurrot that I mention before is the Judas Iscariot who sold his soul to the Drupal-demon, can I really go that way, and face the PHP-devil, sitting on his throne of Linux, being torched by the flaming fire of MySQL in the realms of Apache-hell?
No way, I will upgrade my site to DNN 7.2.0 tonight and feel confident that I am using the best solution on the planet (but still make a backup of both file system and database first…)