Ginneblog

Indian Motorcycle site - created with DNN

A few days ago I met with Nik Kalyani and Shuan Walker, co-founders of the DotNetNuke Corporation, to learn more about where the company and product line are heading. DNN (DotNetNuke) is the most popular open source application framework for the Microsoft .NET platform. The DotNetNuke Corporation was formed in 2006, dedicated the ongoing stewardship and management of the DotNetNuke project. 

The company received Series A funding last Fall.  With the influx of cash, they are hard at work creating a development and support organization.  They have pledged quarterly releases of the Community and Professional Edition.  And now there’s a DotNetNuke Professional Edition version.

DNN (DotNetNuke) is the most popular open source application framework for the Microsoft .NET platform.  They boast about 7 million downloads to date, and 400,000 websites running on DNN so far.  DNN has a big following, and plenty of third party support.   The architecture supports modules and skins, and there are thousands of each available at sites such as www.marketplace.dotnetnuke.com, www.snowcovered.com, and www.codeplex.com.  You can also create your own custom modules and skins.

Among the many terrific sites created with DNN are TV Guide,  Indian Motorcycle, and Chicago 2016.  (Did you know Chicago is bidding for the summer Olympics in 2016?)  I have to say these are among the most visually stunning sites I’ve seen.  Talk about eye candy!

DNN was created in 2002 as an open source project called the IBuySpy portal.  It was used by Microsoft to showcase the capabilities of the newly released ASP.NET 1.0 platform.  Shaun Walker released an enhanced version of the portal later that year.  It drew a large developer following, and in 2003, the open source project was renamed DotNetNuke.

In February of this year, the company released DNN Professional Edition.  This edition has more formalized testing and release standards, and is intended for corporations building mission critical enterprise software.  They provide support, additional documentation, certification, and indemnification.  The pricing for the Professional Edition is $1,995 per year, per production IIS server the system is running on.  You can run multiple portals and hundreds of sites on each IIS server, at no additional charge.

The Community Edition is still free.  We will see differentiation in product features over time, with the Professional Edition gaining more standard modules.  The framework will be the same in both editions, as compatibility is critical to the third party development community.

We had a chance to talk about some of the new features coming in DNN Professional 5.1, due for release by June 1, 2009.  Nik writes about it in the DNN Blog, which I highly recommend. While the details are not yet public, I can tell you that I am impressed by what was shared with me.  These are exciting days for the DNN open source community.

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