Hi everyone,

I'm brand new to DNN but am a programmer and technical person.  A few years back I started a website to advertise local events in my home town.  I built the site by modfying a base phpBB installation with custom work on my own and 3rd-party mods.  In general it was a success, but I am looking to start the project from scratch, avoiding some of the pitfalls I encountered before, and take the concept nationally and eventually internationally. 

My questions to the DNN community are whether or not DNN would be a good choice.  I realize that the answers will likely be biased in favor of DNN, but I'd like to hear why you think DNN would be a good choice over other options I might choose (say, Joomla, for example).

The site will be relatively simple.   The most important functionality would be an events calendar.  I want users to be able to view the current week's upcoming events, next week's events, as well as all of the events in the current or next month, etc.  Different views would be nice, I'd want to be able to filter the events in a calendar by event type, and I'd like to have summarized titles in the calendar with a nice javascript popup, displaying all the details.  I'd also like for users to be able to register and receive customizable email notifications of new events in certain categories.

Other important functionality would be a basic forum, nothing too fancy, just something stable and scalable.  User roles with different priveleges would also be needed.  Some other stuff that would be cool would be a basic chat room, image and/or video gallery, and ad support.

From what I've read, DNN seems to have a lot of this functionality right out-of-the-box, as it were.  What I'm curious about is how good this functionality is, and what problems you might think I'd run into -- in other words, in your opinion, what are the limitations?  And if the core modules and functionality are not sufficient, which 3rd party (pay or free) modules would you recommend?

I'm definitely more well versed in .NET development than PHP, so that's a huge plus right there.  However, as I experienced in working with phpBB and customizing mods myself, version upgrades quickly become a nightmare when you've modified the code on your own.  What are people's experience in modfying the code base or some of the core modules and dealing with version upgrades?

Next, how well will the site scale?  I am planning to take the site international, with separate event listings for many major cities world wide.  Has anyone ever taken a DNN site to such a large scale?  I know this aspect will depend in large part on my host and my hosting plan, but aside from that, how do you think DNN will hold up?

What does DNN have that other similar products don't, or what does it do better?

How is the community here?  When you've encountered a problem, was the community relatively quick and able to help you correct the problem?

Finally, on an architectural note:  I want to set up the website with subdomains or maybe just sub-directories with a separate one for each city.  E.g.  domain.com/Calgary, domain.com/NewYork, etc.  How do you recommend I achieve that with a DNN installation?

Any opinions, suggestions, advice and info is most welcome. 

Thanks in advance!

>> I'd like to hear why you think DNN would be a good choice over other options I might choose (say, Joomla, for example).

Joomla. my favorite too.

>> The most important functionality would be an events calendar. 

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Products/Development/Forge/ModuleEvents/tabid/833/Default.aspx
DNN Event module. This looks like what you need. I used it before. Good module.

>>basic chat room, image and/or video gallery, and ad support.

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/tabid/824/default.aspx DNN official modules. chat module, gallery module, and ad module are included.

>> From what I've read, DNN seems to have a lot of this functionality right out-of-the-box, as it were.  What I'm curious about is how good this functionality is, and what problems you might think I'd run into -- in other words, in your opinion, what are the limitations?  And if the core modules and functionality are not sufficient, which 3rd party (pay or free) modules would you recommend?

www.snowcovered.com great module shopping site. There are many good A++ 3rd party module out there. If you are afraid of buying un-known modules, just post here and somebody gives you a good direction.

>>What are people's experience in modfying the code base or some of the core modules and dealing with version upgrades?

Basic principle is "DO-NOT-TOUCH-CORE-CODE". You do not have to touch the core mostly. It's just a hassle that you would have to remember where you changed when you upgrade the DNN.

>> What does DNN have that other similar products don't, or what does it do better?

It's hard to answer. similar to .Net made CMS vs PHP made CMS. Sushi vs Strawbery cake.  it's personal preferance.  DNN framework has been satistfying my needs with variety of modules and superior support in this forum.

>> How is the community here?  When you've encountered a problem, was the community relatively quick and able to help you correct the problem?

Moderators answer to your question before you post questions. They live here. just kidding.

Just try install DNN on your machine and play with it. That's the shortest way.

http://adefwebserver.com/DotNetNukeHELP/DNN4_DevelopmentEnvironment_noIIS/

You need to download Visual Web Developer Express 2008, SQL Express (it might be included in VWD2008. not sure), and DNN itself. They are all free.

Hi,

I think you have to see what you want to do with your CMS. Do you have specific wishes not present in any cms? Is so then DNN could suite your needs since it is reliable, stable and secure. Security issues are handled in a proper manner and Microsoft is backing you up with forums, tooling etc. On the contrary this is also a bit of a problem with this open source project DNN. Most developers - like me - also earn money by vending services etc. This is sometimes a bit conflicting with a pure open source community. I think other CMS look nicer, richer and are cheaper to maintain. In particular for an ecommerce shop. for 50 euro you can buy a full suited php shop like zencart or xcart. Hosting DNN is far more expensive than a php site. Performance of asp.net is much slower than php or java. Standard dynamic multilanguage, xhmtl conformance, good SEO, url rewrite, workflow and social network functionality are not present (yet) as standard. For professionals and/or European users this is a significant weakness.

I think you have 2 type of users: professional with asp.net developers experience and user not having any technical experience, just looking for a cms. If you are the last: look for somebody who takes care of all the technical stuff and dnn is a good cms to go with. Create a 'trial' at the dotnetnuke site with which you can play before you decide to use it. I have a football club using dnn and I do all the technical stuff. At the moment upgrading to dnn5; a hell of a job: > 2 days busy right now. But the football club users don't bother. They pay an annual fee and are very happy with the functionality and want more and more..like a media gallery, a chat box, a member site...all can be done..but as with all in the world has a price...the media gallery and chat box are standard dnn features...the member site...is coming..within some unpredictable time..but if they can pay for it, you can always find somebody to do the job and create a nice module for you. But as with open and not-open source..custom requests cost money..and although open source, such efforts are not free. Professional developers do not mind to pay thousand of dollars for tooling and custom modules, but home users looking for 'open free source' do.

The forums are good and the conferences on dnn are also nice to join. Plenty of people that help you, even if you do not contribute at all to forums or whatsoever. I normally do a google search for a problem and put dnn in front, in that way you get a better answer to a problem than to the issues addressed in the forum. The forum is indead hard to find something you need. But like with MS: dnn problems are most often also MS problems and there are plenty developers outside encountering the same problem. I do not have php or java experience, so I do not know if their forums etc. are better. But at least, if you want to be sure of quality you can always contract a certified ms developer and get the job done.

J.