Posted: 4/3/2008 9:10:33 AM EDT
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Supposebly we're gonna be moving our campus web management blahblahblah over to DotNetNuke and I don't have a fricking clue what that is. I've been shown the interface and blahblahblah and how to create and manage web content on it, by it, through it.... and it all looks like a bunch of voodoo to me. Now I'm not a total noob when it comes to creating uberneeto web stuff for my courses that I teach, I have a number of them that are very well-traveled. But this DotNetNuke just pure  to me. I even got the "DotNetNuke For Dummies" book and apparently I'm not even smart enough to understand THAT.  Is it a webpage editor? Is it a web host? Is it a community that I'm simply adding stuff to? Can anyone give me a real basic "this is what DNN is" rundown? |
Ok, let me see if I can provide some direction  (you'd probably be better off if Subnet was here) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DotNetNuke DotNetNuke has a basic core which can be extended using pluggable modules and providers that enable additional functionality; the look and feel of individual sites can be customized using skins. My interpretation - it's like a PHP Portal. About a dozen basic modules are included with the core DotNetNuke distribution, and further modules can be downloaded from the DotNetNuke website, including e-commerce systems, photo galleries, blogs, forums, wiki and mailing list options. Additional third party modules are provided by both the open source community and proprietary commercial developers. My interpretation - you install this to the server, create database(s), and it provides a simplistic system for users. The forum aspect for example, would be something like what we have here, while the front page, or 'portal', might be similar as well... as far as content, articles, and the like. Blogs, email, all these things are somewhat typical of PHP packages these days. This is probably what it looks like: www.dotnetnuke.com/ I would say they are just adapting to the times. If you are stuck administrating/coding shit for this, kinda sucks for you, but you'll get the hang of it I'm sure. |
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a st. louis company that used to use part of our office building wrote a majority of DNN. it is generally a content management system, the web designer can design the site layout, while individuals without much web expertise can edit the individual pages. it sounds like you need a student helper to take care of that, if you have the "for dummies" book and you aren't making any inroads |
The documentation that comes with these packages is usually pretty good. I'd wager you won't have much trouble, until it comes to adding, or hacking, poorly supported modules. Every update to the core package will have the potential of breaking modules, especially anything tweaked, so keep that in mind. Just dive into it, and hit up their support (forum) communities too, most of the dumb questions get asked pretty regularly. |
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Do any of the current responses help? Here's a DNN site I built and manage... www.plano-vfw.org I'll make a post later with some more feedback. |
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DNN is basically a configurable set of modules. This is an (incomplete) list of modules that come with DNN... o Account Login -- Allows users to login to the portal. 01.00.00 o Announcements -- This module renders a list of announcements. Each announcement includes title, text and a "read more" link. 04.00.01 o Banners -- Banner advertising is managed through the Vendors module in the Admin tab. You can select the number of banners to display as well as the banner type. 01.00.00 o Blog -- Blog Module for DNN 3.X and 4.x 03.04.00 o Contacts -- This module renders contact information for a group of people, for example a project team. Contacts includes an edit page, which allows authorized users to edit the Contacts data stored in the database. 03.01.00 o Discussions -- This module renders a group of message threads on a specific topic. Discussion includes a Read/Reply Message page, which allows authorized users to reply to exising messages or add a new message thread. The data for Discussion is stored in the SQL database. 03.01.00 o Documents -- This module renders a list of documents, including links to browse or download the document. Documents includes an edit page, which allows authorized users to edit the information about the Documents (for example, a friendly title) stored in the SQL database. 03.01.06 o Events -- This module renders single and recurring events and includes Master and Sub Calendars with Event Rollup, TimeZone Adjustment, Event Enrollment, and Event Notification. 03.03.08 o FAQs -- FAQs allow you to manage a list of Frequently Asked Questions and their corresponding Answers. 04.04.00 o Feed -- Explorer Allows users to browse RSS feeds using a tabbed user interface 01.00.00 o Feedback -- Feedback allows visitors to send messages to the Administrator of the portal. 04.04.03 o Forum -- The core forum module for DotNetNuke. 04.04.03 o Google Adsense -- Allows you to create Google Adsense ads on your site 01.00.01 o IdeacaPhotoAlbum -- Displays thumbnail images, with the ability to click on the image and view the full sized image and a description 01.02.00 o IFrame -- The HTML iframe creates an inline frame that contains another document, which can be located on your or any other site. 04.03.00 o Image -- This module renders an image using an HTML IMG tag. The module simply sets the IMG tags src attribute to a relative or absolute URL, so the image file does not need to reside within the portal. The module also exposes height and width attributes, which permits you to scale the image. Image includes an edit page, which persists these settings to the portals configuration file. 03.01.00 o Links -- This module renders a list of hyperlinks. Links includes an edit page, which allows authorized users to edit the Links data stored in the SQL database. 03.03.07 o News Feeds (RSS) -- News Feed allows you to consume syndicated news feeds in Rich Site Summary (RSS) format. 03.01.01 o Search Results -- The Search Reasults module provides the ability to display search results. o Text/HTML -- This module renders a block of HTML or Text content. The Html/Text module allows Authorized Users to edit the content either inline or in a seperate administration page. The content is stored in the database. 04.05.00 o User Account -- Allows users to register and manage their account. 01.00.00 o UsersOnline -- Users Online allows you to see who is online in your portal, and see membership counts 03.01.00 o Whats New? -- This module allows users to view a list of the most recently added or updated content. Administrators can control the maximum (and minimum) number of items to display as well as the date range to search. 03.03.00 Some of these modules work fine some are a complete piece of crap. It's all free though. There are a multitude of vendors that provide their own shareware/commercial modules for DNN. On the home page of the link I provided you I have the following... In the left pane, I have a "Links" module and a "Users Online" module. In the middle pane, I have a "Text/HTML" module and a "Google AdSense" module. In the right pane, I have a "What's New" module and an "Annoucements" module. I also use the "Events", "Documents", "Blog" and "Forums" modules throughout the site. (Some stuff is restricted access) DNN has pretty good support and information via their website at www.dotnetnuke.com The primary thing to remember is that DNN runs on ASP.NET (currently v2.0, although some modules are still v1.1). Understanding that technology is important to having a smooth running website. Some of the issues you may encounter with DNN are actually due to how the underlying ASP.NET technology functions. Feel free to IM me if you want, although a public Q&A may benefit other people reading. I am not an expert with this stuff by any means, but I have been using it for several years and through several versions and revisions. |
