Any opinions on using DotNetNuke (DNN) for a site build?

January 7, 2016 10:23 AM

A client is considering moving their marketing website (which I manage day-to-day) from WordPress to DotNetNuke on the advice of a tech consultant. If you have experience with DNN, pros and cons would be appreciated.

I didn't build the current WP site but I and an internal client team easily manage the blog and update most pages without having to go back to the designer/developer. I fear this is a big mistake but have no direct DNN experience to make my case. I come from a marketing/content perspective more than a web dev one so any input pro or con would be appreciated.

posted by madamjujujive to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I managed a 250+ portal DNN instance some 5 years ago as part of my job at an advertising agency. If you're using it for a single site, I don't see a massive drawback from migrating to DNN, but I'm also not seeing much of a benefit.

More information would probably be helpful here. What sort of custom content are you having to interact with the designer or developer on? How much time // cost is being accrued from each instance of that, and will that be offset by the migration costs (and yes, there will be migration costs) to moving your site from WP to DNN?
posted by isauteikisa at 10:50 AM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you WCityMike.

isauteikisa, the client has an estimate for migration, but they haven't factored in costs for any ongoing support. The content is pretty much a marketing site, there isn't a ton of functionality: a few forms, a few simple databases. The site is maybe 60-75 pages plus a blog of maybe 400-500 entries; We use blog category feeds to populate several pages in the site. The types of things we go back to the designer/developer are for design or structural changes, consultation for special client requests, an occasional tech fix if something goes wonky, hosting, and maintaining updates of WP and plugins. The client thinking is that on DNN, we can self manage everything with no need for a developer once built. That seems unrealistic to me. WP is pretty easy and I can find a lot of answers/ideas/plugins online - but we still need some level of support at a higher skill level.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:04 PM on January 7, 2016

Well, this seems pretty easy to settle. It seems like the question is, if you switch to DNN, will you and your team be able to handle more of the client's feature requests without resorting to the time/money cost of working with the developers? And the way to test that out is, have the client give you some upcoming requests and you figure out how you'd do them in WordPress and in DNN, and see which one requires more external time. Alternately, pick out some recent feature requests you've completed and work out how to do them in DNN.

If you're not able to work out how to do the feature requests in DNN, then the client will have to figure out how you'll be able to do things once the site is switched for real. Alternately, they could have the consultant work out how to do the entire feature and you can examine their description of how to do it and decide which parts your team can handle and which'd have to be sent out.
posted by inkyz at 1:28 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It sounds like they had a consultant that was more familiar with DNN than WP, and as such recommended DNN. It sounds like pretty much any CMS will do what they need to do. If I were a business, I would note that there are like a million Wordpress devs out there and an infinite number of stackoverflow questions answered. The only reason I could see to go for something like DNN is if they were otherwise a purely Windows shop and moving to DNN would allow them to take advantage of in house .net development expertise, or allow for integration with enterprise applications.
posted by rockindata at 3:52 PM on January 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

When I did a site in DNN, it felt like the community was smaller and the plugins to do tasks weren't as varied or as refined as I could find for WP. However, realize that I am more of a graphic designer and don't do any of my own development, so, I rely on smarter people to figure it out and make it available for download. My impression was that there are more varied security levels available and I think it can play nicely with the user accounts and user groups the organization already had setup. They were strictly a Windows-based organization with a LOT of people of different skill levels and permissions levels making changes to the website.
posted by Foam Pants at 6:16 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

First of all, there is no such thing as a set-it-and-forget-it website unless you have someone else managing the CMS software for you (thinking things like SquareSpace or the paid Wordpress.com service). So that claim immediately sounds like snake-oil, no matter what CMS they are pushing.

Some other questions you might ask:

• How will updates and patches work with DNN?
• Does DNN actually support the same set of features that the current WP + plugins install has? If not, who will write the missing functionality? How much will that cost?
• What is their plan if they have a request for a feature that isn't in DNN or whatever plugins are available for it? Needs change, technology changes, and the idea that they'll be satisfied with a given set of features from now into some far future seems unlikely to me.
• What is the plan for migrating content? Who will do it? How much will that cost to do? It's entirely possible that the migration itself would eat up a significant portion of potential future cost savings depending on how complex the task is. They are not typically easy things to do.
• How much do they anticipate they will save post migration? What services do they think they would no longer need? How do they know they won't need them?

It's possible DNN would serve their needs well (I have no experience with it to say one way or another), but you'd want to make sure they aren't chasing after this without having thought it through.
posted by Aleyn at 11:17 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

DNN has a smaller community, requires the use of (expensive) Microsoft products, and does everything that WordPress does already. Over 20% of the sites on the internet run on WordPress and PHP developers are less expensive than .Net developers, so you'd need a really compelling reason to switch. I think rockindata has the best answer.
posted by furtive at 10:55 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you all for your comments, I so much appreciate the input! You've given me a lot to think about and many issues to raise - I've found every comment useful.

I think you are right on target, rockindata - and I am sure that the .NET case is bolstered by the IT folks.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:34 PM on January 8, 2016