The magazine I'm web editor for is planning on rebuilding the web site. Main candidate has been Drupal, but yesterday DotNetNuke was suggested as an alternative. (DNN was said to have all/many of the features we were looking for right out of the box.)
I've been trying to find useful comparisons between DNN and Drupal, but so far only with modest success. (For example, opensourcecms.com doesn't have DNN, and cmsmatrix.org mainly lists a number of labels which are difficult to understand and not always relevant.)
Also, basically all articles I've found describing the process of choosing CMS does not include DotNetNuke, which makes it much more difficult to estimate its pros and cons.
The things I did find points towards that DNN is less open source-minded than Drupal, and that its community seems less active. (I concluded this after surfing dotnetnuke.com for while.)
So: Have any of you considered DotNetNuke for your sites? If so, what can you say about its pros and cons?
(I realize that this forum isn't a fair sample of random CMS users, even if expressed opinions are honest. Still, any comments from newspaper people would be appreciated.)
//Johan Falk, Sweden
Added later: The blog post Why not ASP.Net? by Jeff Eaton at Lullabot may be a good resource for anyone considering DotNetNuke. It is a reply to the blog post Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.net? by Sasha Sydoruk, which is also definately worth reading.
Comments
Well
Just the name Dot Net Nuke -- a combination of two unholy systems -- made me shudder when I first heard of it.
I mean, a port of PHPNuke to .Net? Are they insane?
I agree that it seems to be a closed system. It's ASP/.NET developers trying to get a slice of the Open CMS market.
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IT support
Why increase the cost (in labor, knowledge, time) to support both Windoze and Linux servers in a datacenter? Pick a path and stick to it, or increase your IT budget.
Hm... (DNN vs. Drupal)
Thanks for the comments.
What I am looking for is more of the type "What can I tell the management to convince them that Drupal is a better choice than DotNetNuke?".
For me personally, I'd much rather go with a nice and powerful open source Drupal than a semi-proprietarian DotNetNuke I don't know much about. But I'm not going to do the investment, I won't do any programming, and I might not even be at the magazine much longer.
(Concerning picking a path and sticking to it, it is of course wise. But so far we haven't picked anything - we're looking for a CMS for our new web site.)
Does DotNetNuke has the same security issues I've heard that PHPNuke has? Is there a risk of being locked-in, or that upgrades and module development may get very expensive?
In which way does Drupal outperform DotNetNuke (and vice versa)?
See the questions above as examples of answers I am looking for. If you have any of them, I'd be greatful to know.
Ektron?
If you're looking for a Windows based solution that doesn't require programming (and IMHO, is better than DNN), take a look at Ektron. I think Drupal can be configured to be as stable and easy to use as Ektron's CMS, but it requires someone who knows what they are doing. Because everything is open and anyone can contribute to Drupal, an uninformed user can pick buggy modules and end up without a 1-800 number to call for support.
If your manager wants to stick with a supported Windows/.Net solution and you don't want to program, haven't done much work Drupal, and are thinking of leaving the magazine, it's going to be hard to make the case for a community supported solution that isn't going to do as much "out of the box" as other solutions until you get some Drupal experience (or someone with that experience).
Honestly, it really doesn't sound like Drupal is the right solution for you unless the magazine is going to hire someone to configure it for you and even then, you are "locking into" upgrades that can be just as expensive. Open source software doesn't really have much of an advantage over a commercially supported platform if you aren't interested in the open access to the code.
yes
What Kevin said.
If your employers run IIS-MsSQL-ASP instead of LAMP, then Drupal is probably a no-go. If they want SLAs and 24-hour support, then Drupal is probably a no-go (unless they hire people to do that).
See http://ken.therickards.com/2006/02/26/drupal-and-the-enterprise/ (especially the last two points) for some thoughts that I wrote when I was where you are now.
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Thanks again for the
Thanks again for the comments!
I realized that what I wrote came out wrong: "I'm not going to do the investment..." should really be "I'm not the one who will do the investment..." (since the management will supply the money, and our host/web provider will provide the programming skills).
Our host will have to learn some ASP or PHP in any case. (The site we have right now runs some kind of lasso, but I don't really know what that is.)
Your comments have been helpful. Thanks a lot.
Aaaactually...
24 hour support is available through Bryght, from what I know. You can ask them, but I think they are doing something similar for some customers. I don't know about SLA support, but most SLAs suck anyways. ;-)
And we have Windows support for Drupal. We have it working well on IIS with MSSQL 7 right now, and one of the maintainers for MS SQL on Drupal is on our staff (souvient22 is his Drupal username). I'm giving him some p4 servers this week to continue testing and development of the Windows stack. Is there interest? We could put this up as a hosted service...
Don't mean to contradict you Ken - I don't think anyone knows about our activities... we've got the low profile award of the year I think. ;-)
Cheers dude,
Jonathan
No problem
You are correct. I had totally missed the IIS / MsSQL bit.
Jonathan's team is doing lots of cool things and it's tough to keep up. Note, however, that he's talking about hiring external developers / hosting. I was talking about in-house support.
The fact that Drupal vendors are offering SLAs, etc. is a sign of the platform's maturing nature.
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DNN versus Drupal
I'm just now looking into using Drupal so I have zero experience with this highly rated CMS. However I have been using DNN for many years. I routinely create new DNN portals on the average of one per week. IF you are a windows shop with Windows server 2003 and sql server databases then setting up new DNN portals takes approximately 10 minutes. In addition to the built in modules to handle everything from blogs to wikis to forums to video to document libraries there are hundreds of inexpensive ($10-$100) 3rd party modules located at www.snowcovered.com to handle virtually any functionality you might need. DNN actually comes with one of the best open source licenses, the standard BSD...so you can do pretty much whatever you like with it. For skinning there are hundreds of professional skins available at www.snowcovered.com for little cost ($25-$100). Our main website is a DNN portal at http://www.innovate.gatech.edu. Bottom line if you are a microsoft shop then DNN is a great choice. If you are a LAMP shop then you should use something else.
DNN for Social Networks, versus Drupal?
DNN may be OK for portals in an MS environment, but how does it stand up to Drupal when you want a Social Network with Forums and paid subscriptions for premium services to customers outside a company's internal structure?
I can see how a company's technical environment (if MS) may sway the decision for internal (Intranet) solutions, but not for a system that's independent of internal process.
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