Understanding DotNetNuke as a CMS Platform

DotNetNuke has become one of the most popular ASP.NET content management systems available. It is very flexible and customizable by utilizing a variety of skins, modules, templates, and data providers. While Microsoft .NET technology has not dominated the CMS platform playing field, DotNetNuke has been able to stand out from the crowd and lock in more than 1 million users. However, many people still do not understand what DotNetNuke really has to offer.

Licenses

DotNetNuke has several different licensing options available. For the general public, the community license is completely free and you can easily upgrade to another license if you choose to after using the free version to get a feel for it. The other three editions have all of the features available with the community version, however have added specific business-critical applications. They include the Professional Edition, Elite Edition, and Elite Premier Edition.

The largest jump is from the free community license to the paid Professional Edition. If you upgrade from the Professional Edition to either the Elite or Elite Premier edition, the differences lie in the amount of support available and not in the actual functions that are available, source code access, and contract terms.

Features

1. Installation

Installation of DotNetNuke is extremely simple. Once you download the software, installation will take only a couple of minutes. There are also several hosting companies that offer DotNetNuke specific packages that provide additional tools and support to make setup and support simple.

2. Flexibility

The core of DotNetNuke was created with a series of open API's that allow you to integrate it with existing applications. It also has a large variety of additional modules that can be added and modified to create the exact website that you want. There is also a great selection of skins that can make your website look and feel like a professional website. There are also a large number of features that you can choose from.

3. Standard Modules

DotNetNuke comes with 25 free modules. Every module is a complete stand-alone piece of coding that provides a specific and unique feature for your website. Some of the standard modules that can really make your website more manageable include: banners, discussion, FAQ, blogs, XML/XSL, and searchers. Every module can be individually modified so that they will do exactly what you want, including both the look and feel of them.

There are many additional, third party modules available for DotNetNuke, sold through DotNetNuke Store marketplace.

4. Administration

DotNetNuke was designed to be very user friendly. As an administrator, you can easily compose and distribute bulk HTML emails/newsletters to your user groups. The most important administrative feature that helps DotNetNuke stand out from other CMS options is that an administrator can actually support multiple websites from a single account once it has been installed on a web-server This makes managing multiple websites much easier since you can manage all of them simultaneously.

5. Security

There are several critical security features that makes DotNetNuke a great choice. Just like many other CMS platforms, you can assign certain editing rights and access to your website to different user types. What makes this feature great is that you can restrict these rights to a single page, the entire site, or even a single module within a single page. You can also create separate password protected areas throughout the site. There are also a number of additional security modules that can be added to create additional flexibility as well.

6. Support

If you are using the free community edition, then there is no “official” support, however there is a large DotNetNuke community that can provide support via forums. However, as you upgrade your editions, more support is made available including phone support, online support, live support, and even group training sessions.

DotNetNuke has continued to become more and more popular within the ASP.NET community and has stood out as a great CMS platform. With more than 1 million users, there is a strong supportive community that helps making DotNetNuke a consistently reliable option. Because it was designed with both security and flexibility in mind, DotNetNuke can create any website you want with a variety of unique functions that will make administration a simple task.

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