DNN powers over 700,000 production web sites worldwide and, with over 2000 commercial
customers, was named to the Inc. 500 fasted growing companies in 2011. Depending
on your role within your organization, DNN provides a range of benefits to support
your Web initiatives.
In this review, I found that DotNetNuke is the single most complete Web Content Management
system available for organizations, with a huge opportunity for the developer
and a lot of resources and support. I'll focus on some of the newest features
such as the Social aspects that are now included in the 6.2 Release cover some
of the basics about the DotNetNuke WCMS, including my own experiences.
New Social Features
Today, everyone is talking about social. There is considerable evidence that social
collaboration has real business benefit. Social intranets drive employee productivity
and increased efficiency. Communities turn customers into advocates and help
grow business.
In DotNetNuke’s most recent release, 6.2, they delivered a host of exciting social
features, building on their already strong Web Content Management System (WCMS)
capabilities. The new 6.2 release enables businesses to quickly build internal
social networks to improve collaboration, communication and employee productivity.
It also enables the creation of external communities that turn customers into
advocates, which lowers support cost and increases revenue opportunities.
Click here to view the video on DotNetNuke's Social Features:
Here is a short list of some of the new social and related features of DotNetNuke:
Activity feed powers member interactions
The DNN 6.2 Journal is an activity feed which enables community members to interact
in a fashion that has been popularized by familiar social networks like Facebook,
Twitter, and Linkedin. The Journal module can be placed on any DotNetNuke page
and can be used to post and reply to status updates, tag users and share links,
files, photos and videos.
User relationships foster community
Registered users and subscribers can now form social relationships on any DNN 6.2
site. DNN 6.2 allows users to friend and follow other users or groups and to
receive notifications which allow them to approve or reject new friends and followers.
Social groups and forums increase team collaboration
DNN 6.2 fosters collaboration through the ability to create social interest groups.
Users can join groups and share content with group members. Discussion forums
can also be associated with social groups enabling members to ask and respond
to questions and gain feedback on new ideas.
Interactive user profile offers more personalization
DNN 6.2 empowers community members to create and manage a personal profile and dashboard.
The new profile can be easily customized to display desired member information.
It also offers flexible privacy controls, personal file storage and a user focused
activity feed.
Message center improves communication
In addition to activity feed based communication users can also send and reply to
private messages. DNN 6.2 includes an integrated messaging center that enables
users to interact with other users or groups through messages that are similar
to email.
Member directory provides foundation for collaboration
A member directory is vital to the success of any collaborative site that is based
on user-to-user interaction. It enables users to find and connect with other
users on the site. With DNN 6.2 users can search for members based on multiple
search criteria.
Social authentication increases community participation
Users and members can now more easily register and sign onto a DotNetNuke web site
using their credentials from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ 6.2 makes it easier
than ever before for customers and prospects to participate in an online community.
SharePoint integration improves enterprise document publishing
The DNN 6.2 Enterprise Edition improves internal document collaboration through integration
with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 as well as SharePoint 2007. DNN 6.2 now enables
organizations to publish one SharePoint view or directory to multiple DNN web
sites or publish multiple views to a single DNN site.
Cloud-based document storage reduces costs
The DotNetNuke Professional and Enterprise Editions include the Document Library
which allows organizations to store, share and mange documents online. The DNN
6.2 Document Library now supports the DNN folder provider which allows physical
documents to be stored in the DNN file system, database or on popular cloud services
like Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure
Fully localized platform enables customers to work in their preferred language
DotNetNuke Corporation now supports four additional core languages: Dutch, French,
German and Spanish. With DNN 6.2 organizations can now download and install fully
localized versions of the DNN Content Management Platform and work in their preferred
language. The complete platform including the installer, site template, administrative
menus and included modules are fully localized.
DNN 6.2 for developers
The DNN 6.2 Social API enables developers to write applications that access and control
the activity feed, user relationships, social groups, user profiles and notifications.
DNN 6.2 also provides support for modern, client-based development techniques.
It includes the jQuery, jQueryUI and Knockout.js development libraries and the
new DNN Service Framework. The DNN Service Framework enables developers to create
application services that any device that uses HTTP can call. A device can be
almost anything including a smart phone or web page. Some specific features I
worked with include:
Installation:
The first concern any developer / customer has is installation of the product.
I found that installing DotNetNuke is incredibly easy. Simply create a new Database
(DNN for example), unzip the distribution files into an application directory
in an IIS web site, configure the folder as an IIS Application, and bring up
the site in your browser. The application will automatically come up showing
the Install Wizard page. Simply follow the wizard, and you are done. It all takes
only about 2 minutes to create a fully-functional DNN site. Compared to other
CMS products I've tried, this one wins hands-down on ease of installation.
From this point you can log into your DNN Site with your "Host" (Admin)
account and begin to customize and add features, modules, skins and other customizations.
You will note a very intuitive layout makes it extra easy to get around all of the
Admin features and customize your DNN site.
Pricing:
The Community Edition of DotNetNuke is free. The DotNetNuke Professional and Enterprise
Editions include features which are not available in the free Community Edition,
and start at $2998 per year. The additional features ensure success for organizations
running critical web sites and web applications. Built on the same open source
core as the Community Edition, the Professional and Enterprise Editions provide
the features and services you expect from a proprietary solution including:
Advanced Content Approval Process – Administrators can create custom workflows with an unlimited number of states
and reviewers. Workflows can be for individual module content changes or for
changes to any modules on a page.
Granular User Permissions – Page, module and folder level extended permissions provide granular security rights
which allow you to precisely define which content contributors can edit which
modules on each page.
Document Management -- A full document management solution which allows your organization to store,
control and view documents online including video and media files
Microsoft SharePoint Connector (Enterprise Edition only) - Enables fast, secure publishing of documents stored in
SharePoint to public web sites, extranets or intranets.
Windows Azure and Amazon S3 Support - Compatible with Windows Azure Cloud Hosting and provides two folder provider options
for Amazon S3 and Azure File Storage.
eCommerce Engine - Empowers organizations with a small portfolio of digital goods and services to
quickly enable ecommerce on their web site.
User Interface Customization with Telerik RadControls – A license for Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX for an unlimited number of
developers to use within your Professional Edition instance
My Editable Pages -- Links to all of the pages and modules in the site which a user has permission
to Edit are displayed, allowing efficient page editing
Page and Module Caching – Multiple caching options speed the delivery of web pages and reduce the workload
on your web servers
Google Analytics for Marketing – Support for advanced Google Analytics functionality such as visitor type, landing
page, role, or referrer segmentation
Security Center – Continuously feeds relevant alerts to your administrators with links to download
any relevant security patches
File Integrity Checking – Checks files in the installation and reports any inconsistencies which may impact
web site reliability
Web Server Farm Support – New caching provider delivers more efficient resource usage in web farms
Health Monitoring – Pings the website periodically to identify failures and will notify the site owner.
Also insures the site stays in web server memory for faster user accessibility.
Customer Service and Support - Unlimited online and email product support from DNN architects and engineers.
The Store - DotNetNuke has an online marketplace called the DotNetNuke Store. There are 1000s
of modules, extensions, and designs in the store which make building a website
very fast and affordable for DotNetNuke customers.
Need Help with Your Web Project?
DotNetNuke can also help you with your specific project needs. They have 100 partners
trained and ready to help you with any size of project. Their partners are certified
on DotNetNuke and can drive all aspects of website design and delivery including:
- Site Design and Branding
- Form Design and Development Social Integration
- SEO
- Mobile Websites
- Marketing Automation Integration eCommerce
- Custom Module Design
In summary, my experience using DotNetNuke has been very positive. It is a complete
Web Content Management system, with ease of use, extensibility and support that
is unequaled in the market.
To learn more, there is an excellent Web Seminar on the social features of the 6.2 release that you can view, as well as an Intro to the Professional Edition of DotNetNuke.