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Subject: The answer to the shortcomings of DNN / News Articles is in another CMS?

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Danny Tam

Registered Users

Nuke Master
Posts:242

6/10/2008 10:57 PM
News Articles has always been, to me, by far, the greatest module out there that extended the function and use of DotNetNuke. To be honest, it striked me as odd that DotNetNuke never had something such as this in the core, a complex and truly dynamic publishing system with extensibility in feature, function, and templating. As I've been out of DotNetNuke for quite a while, I wanted to come back in here and let you all know of a far superior content management system to DNN to help others out with the holes that DNN and News Articles perhaps could not have filled. Many of the requests here are for features that I've been seeing across over and over again that, by stock, is already supported, and if not, most modules out there would do the job admirably. I'd highly recommend anyone to check out a CMS called Expression Engine. It is a commercial content management system, but the way it handles content and themes is so broad, it's really powerful and scaleable towards so many different usages. The way themes work in Expression Engine somewhat reminds me of how DotNetNuke handles it. In fact, I think it steps it up a notch. Furthermore, it also incorporates tagging, just like Scott's excellent modules do as well. Scott, if you're reading this, I'd ask you to take have an objective mindset and take a look at how it handles publishing as well. If it is not revolutionizing publishing, than it definitely is evolving it. Many of the great things I see in it, I hope News Articles can adapt or learn a thing from. As for why I decided to make this post at Ventrian.. Well, put simply, News Articles did an admirable job at publishing content and EE quite reminded me of it. If DotNetNuke and News Articles is not doing the job for you because you're looking for something more powerful, than this warrants a look into. Many of the requests that I used to have and that I've seen others have with News Articles has been managed admirably with Expression Engine almost out of the box. Oh, and of course, because this community simply rocks. I don't have much serious complains with DotNetNuke. It's a great open-source CMS, but has some shortcomings I wish never existed. It has served me for quite some time, but it's shortcomings led me to look elsewhere. I've since tried out Drupal, but Expression Engine really takes the cake out of things. This is nothing to knock on Scott's modules. To be honest, if Scott had never produced the modules that he did, I probably would never have even bothered with DotNetNuke longer than a month. I really love how Scott supports the community and seriously takes into consideration all the feature requests, etc. Beauty of Expression Engine is that many of these requests are already handled through Expression Engine. If some of you are curious about what I'm talking about, a glimpse at their upcoming 2.0 release is simply astonishing. It really is leagues above anything I've ever tried.. Although I do have to keep an open-mind with Drupal, but the complexity of it just outweighed everything else, being on time constraints. This post isn't meant to criticize Scott's modules, his service, or anything else. I'm simply publishing this so other Ventrian users and, for that matter, DotNetNuke, can see what else is out there. Expression Engine almost single handedly answered all my requests. That being said, I still have sites running on DNN, and plan on keeping them that way until I settle down with Expression Engine and have more time developing for it. Scott, I'd love to help you improve News Articles.. I love the way of how it was so expansive and how easy it was to tailor, filter content, etc. Most importantly, how you listened to requests from the community and was on top of bugs was the real asset of a membership here. Expression Engine really reminds me of the foundations of how NA functioned. Which to me, leads me to believe that you can evolve your platform to become even more powerful than before. If anyone has any questions, comments, or just something they'd like to share, feel free to post here. I really feel like I owe it to this community to help them with their online endevours, because it has helped me out so much. Whether it is through finding a new CMS, or providing Scott with some new inspiration, than I feel like I've done a job. So Scott, if you're reading this, feel free to drop me a PM or drop a reply here! As always, would love to hear from you. Trust me, what EE has done with publishing can really push your module to that higher echelon.

Scott McCulloch User is Offline

Administrators

Nuke Master
Posts:11396

6/10/2008 11:27 PM
Cool, I'll take a look at the expression engine, I'm sure there are ideas in publishing that I could use. Taking a quick look at it, it's very publish focused which is suitable for a blog, corporate site, etc. I'll be downloading the free core version and playing around with it. It does remind me a bit of mambo.

Scott McCulloch Site Administrator

Danny Tam

Registered Users

Nuke Master
Posts:242

6/10/2008 11:58 PM
Scott, The way Expression Engine handles content is very similar to News Articles, but really brings it up a notch. One thing I don't like about many modules, or even CMS in general, is how everything is spoon-fed. It's great for getting things up and ready in a jiffy, but most often than that, this means customization is often sacrificed. This is one reason why I loved News Articles so much. The fact that it allowed an administrator to "theme" exactly how things would be represented on the site is amazing. Essentially, News Articles handled information as exactly what it should be, while the theme function present in NA presented the content in the way an admin intended it too. Problem with some of the existing modules for DNN is that this philosophy was not adopted very well, or at all -- same can be said for a number of content management systems in general. Scott, I have the utmost confidence that you will like what you see from Expression Engine. When I began learning it, the only thing I could really think about was how it reminded me of your NA module. I have a live test up and running.. If you want to give a run at it, let me know and I'll drop you a login and briefly drop you a your of how simple it is to use and learn. I really think you'll have a blast with it.

jessla

Silver Membership

Nuke Newbie
Posts:2

6/12/2008 6:20 PM
Danny, Thank you so much for this info. It is really helpful to me, and I wanted to thank you. It quite possibly just saved me a few thousand dollars....maybe even more. (measuring $ in both cash terms + in terms of the opportunity cost of my time). I am working on a website and I am not a developer. I found out about DNN because its the only CMS that is compatitible with my current Windows hosting plan at Godaddy. Anyway, to make a long story short, I've spent at least 100 hrs over the last few weeks trying to learn about DNN and trying to find my way. I've spent countless hours looking at various forums, researching consultants, developers and commercial modules. I've purchased a few modules and skins, and I've subscribed to a few sites. Thing is that it seems like I'll need module customization by a developer no matter which additional modules I decide to purchase. I had resisted looking at other solutions besides DNN because I thought they'd be expensive, and because I thought it might take me back to sqaure one (and I'd have to spend another 100+ hrs learning about a new one). But then I saw your posting with the info on Expression Engine I love what I see so far. It seems like a solution that is well-suited to my needs and I can't thank you enough for pointing it out. Yes, it costs something, but it looks like it would be singificantly cheaper for me than patching together a group of (additional) DNN modules that might fit my needs and then hiring a developer to customize them. e.g. a few hundred bucks for Expression engine versus at least $500 for the various 3rd party DNN modules I'd need (to start with only) plus more for customization services...plus the personal frustration factor of me trying to use DNN and having to searching so many places to find how to do something (so at least I'd a vague idea of what was going on before I hire somebody to it...) The "frustration cost" of using DNN is turning out to be quite high for me personally (since I am not a developer and don't know much about site development). I've been trying to use it for about a month now and its kind of driving me nuts. I love the concept of DNN and have heard really great things about it, so I'm not knocking DNN in any way...it just seems really hard for somebody like myself to find a decent way to make it fit my needs. I still might end up going with DNN (we'll see)....but I am early enough in my project to cut my losses and switch over to a different CMS (like Expression Engine). The point of all of this is THANK YOU!!! I feel very fortunate that I saw your posting -- incredibly lucky timing for me as I'm just starting my site. All the best, Jessica

jessla

Silver Membership

Nuke Newbie
Posts:2

6/12/2008 7:13 PM
just quick note so I could add the 5 stars to your initial posting (I forgot to do it when I posted the thank you reply earlier).

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