Should we build our next generation web application on the DotNetNuke platform?

Question

We are currently considering using DotNetNuke as a base for our future portal-based and client-customizable web application that is going to be hosted centrally. The idea is to make the dynamic parts as DNN modules that in turn talk to backend WCF-services which takes care of the business processing and data storage.

What are your good/bad experiences with such a model?

Anything you would warn against or recommend?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks...

Answer 1

DotNetNuke can be a powerful platform. Most people who bash it haven't actually used it for anything, but just know that it was created a long time ago.

I can give you a couple pros and cons to look at. The major advantage of using it over other CMS platforms is that it's a very mature platform with a pretty big community around it (Snowcovered for example). For most tasks, it's either already built in or there's already somebody out there that has built a module to do it. Its architecture is already built to support caching and a farm configuration for high-availability applications, which would eliminate a major headache if you're looking at a high volume of requests.

The place where DotNetNuke could disappoint, though, is when you need to do multi-step processes in your modules. This is probably true for any CMS, but you'll feel like you're jumping through hoops to try to get multiple, separate modules to give a "tight" user experience. I don't really have a concrete example for this - it's just the feeling you get from the experience where everything is in its own "container". The other thing is that out of the box, it just doesn't have a Web 2.0 look to it. You can customize skins and stylesheets to do just about whatever you want, but for some reason this just hasn't been a big priority for the DNN camp as a whole, as much as it has for Drupal and others.

So I guess if I had to make a summary, I'd say if you are looking for a quick way to get a customizable CMS up, and you're comfortable with the limitations of CMS platforms in general, then go for it. However, if your UI is the most important thing to you and you're willing to spend a LOT of effort to make it exactly what you want, then create your own application using ASP.NET master pages and the like.

Answer 2

eee, DNN? Really?

I'm opening myself for flames here but it's a product which was built for a different, less-civilised age (VB.NET, poor I18N support, no msterpages). Better frameworks exist even natively in ASP.NET now, and better CMSs in things like Drupal. I think it was pretty good at getting us through the pain of ASP.NET 1.1, but I think the answer to your title question is "No" these days.