Making Content Management Simple
Software Version
7.2.1
Modules Used
- Form & List Module
- Many Custom Built-Modules
Overall Satisfaction
We host, setup, design and configure DotNetNuke web sites for various customers. If customers come to us wanting a CMS, we recommend DNN. We have had very positive from most of our clients. Clients have been able to manage their own website content without being bound to software such as Dreamweaver or Contribute.
- DotNetNuke makes it easy to edit content on a website. Clients can log in to the site, click on the "Edit Page" button in a convenient menu at the top of the page and then edit specific sections (or modules) on a page. They have the ability to upload images and other documents (PDF, Word, etc) and also can add links. The HTML editor provides options to paste from word and also the ability to edit the HTML directly for the more tech-savvy users.
- DotNetNuke makes it very easy to allow users to sign up as members on a website and also makes managing those users via site Administrators easy. It is also very easy to set up other ways for users to log in (via Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc).
- DotNetNuke is extremely extensible. There is an app store where you can find many free or low-cost modules that can be installed to utilize applications such as event calendars, news, blogs, and many other web application types. It is also quite easy to build your own custom modules if you have a little development experience.
- DotNetNuke is extremely easy to get started. There is a simple install screen that comes up the first time you visit your site that will allow a site up and running in seconds.
- Overall DNN is a great platform, but there is room for improvement. They could provide more tutorials and help for developers and designers to integrate with DNN. It is very easy to build basic skins and modules but if you need to do more advanced things, there really is no help for this at all. You pretty much have to just learn by trial and error.
- Some of the design standards built in to DNN are inconsistent and difficult to work with. Some core DNN modules use 1 way of styling the module while other modules use different styles. HTML tables are not properly used and overall there are times you have to jump through hoops to make some DNN components look the way you want.
- While there are a lot of apps on the DNN store, there is virtually no developer support. DNN developers seem to keep their secrets, well, secret. There are a large amount of WordPress tutorials out there, but not a lot (of free) DNN tutorials.
- DNN have given us the ability to have basic sites for clients up and running in a very short time. This makes the client happy.
- DNN has taken the trivial, simple tasks of changing text on a page or an image on a page and put it into the hands of the client. They do not have to pay us to do it and that also frees up more time for us to spend on development.
I have not used any other official .Net based CMS solutions other than DNN. I have used WordPress, which is a very good blogging application. But while they are making strides to be more of a CMS, I believe DNN is a better overall solution because of the ability to build custom applications on top of them.