You are right on it. The damn website for dotnetnuke.com is painfully slow, awkward and the “development” environment is bewildering.

So much of the .NET stuff in general is pretty lousy.

Hi,

I work for a webhosting company and we install dotnetnuke for our clients. I absolutely despise the thing and decided to do a google search for “dotnetnuke sucks”. I came across the entry. But yeah, dotnetnuke totally blows. rock on.

-Matt

Only moron’s like DotNetNuke!!!

I landed here by googling “DotNetNuke Painfully Slow”. I agree it’s painfully slow and has many sucky aspects. But at the same time, I can’t dismiss it, although I’d love to find something better.

For professional projects DNN has other open-source projects beat hands down. I have tried several other platforms including few of the PHPNuke forks. So many of the OS projects just are too inconsistent, incomplete, confusing, and generally unprofessional to deliver to my clients.

As far as development environments, I’ve developed in JSP using opensource IDEs, hand-coded PHP, and created DNN modules in VS2003/2005. I’ve got to say that the M$ dev environment is much quicker, more productive, and more thought out.

So my conclusion is that DNN ain’t perfect, but it’s the best thing I’ve found so far. If there’s a better open-source (or low cost) portal system, I’d like to hear about it! But remember, the dev environment counts too!

-Robert

Robert… you look like a M$ seller… dotnetnuke sucks, and its NOT the best we have… Try OsCommerce and many other products, Google for CMS open source…

Robert one word JOOMLA!

DNN is a little to mature for Java developers, MySQL Bozo’s, and OpenSores morons. The problem with people like you is your lazy code. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to clean up behind opensores develpopers. Christ, leave the real world problems to us professionals.

Technology often appears to suck to people that don’t understand it. As for the speed of DNN, I suggest you look into a concept called “precompiling”. Programs often run better when they are compiled. You see, humans code in languages and those languages can often be interpretted on the fly. That is OK for newbies but when newbies start compairing oranges to apples, they may being to think an interpretted system sucks when, in fact, it should be compiled for the platform. Poor newbies, they just don’t know any better.

DDN isn’t for morons. Moron’s don’t know how to deploy systems. DNN also isn’t for hacks that don’t understand fundamentals.

Oh, I should have mentioned. A sure sign of a newbie is describing technical issues in unquantified terms like “sucks, slow, bewildering”. They often follow that up with name-dropping other “preferred” products w/o a real benefit analysis. It’s all just too emotional for me.

Dead giveaway everytime.

I am working with DNN from its 3.x version. It is amazing the amount of errors I have encountered developing apps to DNN. I built a middle.sized project on top the DNN framework, and I painfully maintained along the time. In the meantime, I had to upgrade DNN, I think a dozen of times, changing from version to version, changing from Visual Studio 2003 , to 2005 now 2008, Changing from .Net 1.1 to 2.0, and every time, EVERY TIME new errors were emerging from DNN framework. I ending dealing how to solve the DNN errors instead how to build my app.

I think that DNN SUPER sucks. My biggest surprise was when I begun to program to Linux/Mono/PHP/MySql, etc. I tried a few programs… I just couldn’t believe that I installed those software and I had NO errors (every DNN installation is a pain in the ass).

Last thought: I think that DNN is a very over-sized architecture, too much variables to consider when you install, and a pain in the ass to extend and mantain.

And yeah if somebody needs some documentation about trouble, I have plenty of them and many ‘workarounds’.
This post is the result of the problem i had installing DNN 4.8.4 who has a nice bug. We’re talking August 2008 . How many version of DNN do you need to do the things right?

I have just installed DNN 4.8.4 All appeared to go well, apart from most of the module have been left out of this version. Anyway, as ever the page response time is terrible.

I am setting up this site, so i thought i’d look at the cache settings.. trying to drill down in to the site settings page was troublesome. As i attempted to open the little [+] sent to a setting dialog, the dialog opened and then immediately closed again, meaning i could not access the settings.

I know this is a minor GUI error, however i can not belive that every time i install the latest version, there are loads of new errors in the system …

I am not too pleased with DNN anymore, and i am searching for alternatives.

In our work, there was an attempt to use DNN for all web application development. I did some extensive research about it, and figured out that it is not good for our environment, due to the following reasons: 1. Continuous and improvement requests and with DNN not practical for customization, 2. Looks every application must be deployed under a new DNN Installation, 3. You need to learn DNN Techniques, not .NET Techniques, which is I think a waste of time, 4. If you face a DNN problem then you will spend more time trying to solve the problem and wasting the time you saved by using DNN, which defeats the purpose. Please confirm if my understanding is correct. Any other info will be useful
IT Specialist.

Forgot to ask this question. The main reason for using DNN is to use a quick and standard way to develop standard and nice web GUI Interlace. No need for a portal framework like DNN, and alternative for a quick and easy method to develop a good looking presentation layer (GUI) will be fine.

Tarek.

I don’t know about you, but DNN has made my life so much easier. Before, my work flow for updating sites included:
Open -> Edit -> Save -> Upload -> Test

Now, thanks to DNN all I have to do is:
Navigate -> Log In -> Navigate -> Switch Modes (code) -> Copy -> Switch Apps -> Paste -> Edit -> Copy -> Switch Apps -> Paste -> Switch Modes -> Save -> Navigate -> Test

Life is so much easier now. My favorite part is closing the “Save As” dialog every time I hit Control -> S in the DNN control panel. It’s hard to shake the habits I developed with my old work flow. Thanks DNN!

DNN is a great fetid pile of stinking code, an outdated framework still trying to hold to its user base in some attempt at being profitably marketable. It’s absolutely wretched.

As an ASP.NET developer, I thought I was going to be confortable with DNN. Unfortunately I have to agree that it sucks. I particularly hate the slow speed of the whole application and the fact that it is VB.NET only. We need a C# CMS. I found some alternatives that I still have to test, like http://www.mojoportal.com and some others listed here: http://csharp-source.net/open-source/content-managment-systems

I refuse to work on any DNN website. I once told a guy offering me work on such a project that I would sooner work at Starbucks than ever be suckered in to using DNN again.

My DNN experience is probably similar to many. I took a job at a web development company as an asp.net developer.

I started using DNN with a no open mind. You have to in this business. But the more I learned, the more I realized what an amateurish piece of garbage DNN is. It’s really unjustifiable just how terrible this program is.

An accidental web.config error would cause my application to automatically and permanantly corrupt itself on page load. This would force me to go through the painfull and buggy instillation process once more.

The kicker, of course was that the VP of technology who didn’t have to use this pile of garbage would say that DNN was fine…

Well, I quite my DNN job, and found another one. It’s kind of a no-brainer decision if you think about it.

As for alternatives, my well financed projects use SiteCore. It’s expensive, and a pain in it’s own way. But at least it works and lets me do my job.

I’m here to code. Not to dick around with DNN, the world’s worst CMS.

100% agree. DNN sucks. We use it at work and my boss absolutely loves it and thinks DNN can do no wrong. Problem is, he hardly ever has to use it, so he doesn’t understand what a piece of garbage it is.

Down with DNN!

Most of the people I know who use DNN as “professionals” do not know how to write code at all, they know how to install the module and they know their way around a program. Much like many people before used M$ Frontpage to say they were web developers and that was great code as well.

Just look at the output code of a DNN site it is horrible, off dnn home page there are 96 validation errors! That is ridiculous. It claims to be xhtml compliant, but the default files have so many caps errors its not even funny.

@ Fingercurse, you have no idea what you are talking about. Pre-compiling is supposed to make the page faster, but if you have to use it to make your page load at regular speed, well that means your code “sucks.” (or is at least bloated, as you said – which I would say makes it suck)

For the reference to people who don’t know how to code don’t use open source, perhaps you are saying you know more than IBM, which recommends using drupal, which is an open source cms. (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource1/)

DNN is not flexible, has horrible code at its base and is not nearly as user-friendly as other cms clients – thus it sucks.

Well, I unfortunately agree with all of the folks who don’t like this framework. First of all VB.NET is awful for a Java / C# developer to have to look at. The menuProvider that comes with even the latest version of DotNetNuke has issues and is not scalable. Skinning this thing is easy as hell if you know any CSS, which is not a language for those out there who think it is. As far as the CMS portion of the framework is concerned, it is great for individuals who don’t know whow to design a database and don’t understand how classes and interfaces work.

I just started getting my feet wet with DNN this week. I was surprised to see that widespread use & support for DNN totally dropped off after 2006. DNN is dead, and it appears nobody is using it because the available skins make your site look fake like a Nigerian bank.

On my second DNN site and I’m weary. Inching along one bug at a time.

Think it would be okay if you just want to give clients a way to edit text/’html and clients are sophisticated and patient enough to deal with the many bugs in FckEditor. For anything beyond that, I think developing from scratch would have to be a lot easier.

Haha. I’ve had a blast reading this. In a dreamy moment I suddenly recalled my DNN days at a weboffice I used to work for. I just had a look back at their website and the company’s site looks even worse then 5 years ago. Oh yeah, baby! They still use DNN, even after my painfully hard effort to convince them stop developing with that piece of crap. I quit the company for the sole reason of DNN. There are so many CMS systems out there and DNN still rules as the worst of the worse. I remember back in the time, I spent weeks!!! to even get the damn thing installed. When I installed Wordpress or Drupal as a newby it took me max 1 hour. I was doomed. I just had a look at the dnn.com site and wow…why on earth do people still use this????

I remember being forced using DNN like 7 years ago. It still makes we shiver in disgust. Very brittle system, any simple change could make it stop working for any reason.

I’ve been developing in DNN for 5 years and have at least 100 websites running off of DNN. I’ve yet to encoutner a major problem. Modules can be developed using the .Net language of choice. Debugging is easy because of DNN’s error logging .

The problem I find is most developers don’t have knowledge of the DNN framework and how to properly utilize it. DNN’s architecture is one of the best out there. It’s ntier and makes heavy use of classes, objects and .net controls. The database is normalized and well developed.

Performance was an issue in the 2.x days running on a cheap hosting account ($9 / month). But DNN Corp resolved many of those issues when they went into Micorosoft’s labs for performance testing.

It’s not without some issues but they’re minor.

We have just developed our new site using DNN 4.9.2 – have to admit it was painful to get to grips with at first and the documentation is pure * – however once i got over the initial learming curve its not so bad – its easy to add new fuctionality / modules which are either free or pocket money prices – its quite a large site with about 6 editors and its prety solid – performance is pretty good too < 1 sec so overall Im quite happy with it – then again if i came from a non tech background i probably would have canned it.

yes. dotnetnuke is f’ing horrible. Developing for dnn is 1000 times more time consuming than just writing code. Debugging is horrible. The overhead is horrible. Installing it is horrible. Making minor changes is horrible. I also couldn’t convince my company that this thing was a piece of shite. Once I finish this project, I’ll be finding a new job even though I’m really happy with everything else. Working with dnn has been the worst experience of my 10+ years working in web development.

hah. I didn’t even mention the “support” or “documentation” that they (don’t) have! Or the fact that their own site runs slow as hell.

Just a few more months… of course, if it wasn’t dnn, I would already be finished!

@Bacus: when you say “DNN’s architecture is one of the best out there”…Why is it that the whole site can be fucked up, not loading anymore, when you have an error in just an addon module?

I remember I even had to write a 10 pages long manual for clients using the backend. Now that’s seriously screwed. I’ll tell you, a good backend doesn’t need a manual, at least not for your end-users! Look at Wordpress. It almost speaks for itself. I often use wordpress now as a base to develop sites from and my clients are happy with it. Even so happy I hardly hear them because they can do all page edits easily themselves. Look at any decent designed CMS…you don’t need a manual!

The DNN guys clearly never heard of interface design & logic. I’m very curious to see what quality your 100 websites present.

Yes, DNN sucks, and is a gaswork, I created three websites with exactly the same content, the first in WordPress php, the second with DNN r.4.9 VB/ASP , the third with My Web Pages Starter Kit (C#/ASP). Load times are 4 seconds for WordPress, 12 seconds for DNN and 3 seconds for third. DNN does not even have a ready gallery module. Come One, use the basic “My Web Pages Starter Kit” + The Wrox Box .Net 3.5 books and program if it’s your job otherwise joomla, wordpress, or phpBB.

What more can I add? I know when you decide to go with DNN, you are usually constrained to work within the confines of said framework. Oh, but you can extend it they say. Yes, as long as you extend it this way. Most business processes are unique and putting it into some platform or framework like this will only cause you constantly having to come up with work-arounds or clunky implementations. Stay away from it. If I was forced to pick an open cms say or ecommerce, I think I would go with http://www.mojoportal.com seems to be well thought with more “best” practices implemented. But I’m not saying it’s a answer for everything either.

Hahaha… LOL… this page really makes me laugh. When I see comments like: “I spend weeks for installing”, “You need to learn DNN Techniques, not .NET”, “VB.NET only”, “Developing for dnn is 1000 times more time consuming than just writing code” , “page is slow” and other nonsense in almost half of posts… well, this make me laugh. This indicates massages wrote people who don’t know DNN and .NET technology at all.

Some responses on comments above:
- Slow? Go to http://www.dotnetnuke.com, and click on some pages – they are shown instantly (except first page needs second or two, but this is same for all pages with lot of graphic elements not just DNN, or you just change skin with few clicks and also initial page can load like google).
- You need to know dnn techniques for interaction with framework only otherwise you can use pure asp.net code – I have lot totally independent components used that way,
- Developing is the fastest because whole framework is designed in Visual Studio which still the best IDE (sorry php folks)
- I can install fully functional three dnn sites on three completely different ways in 10 minutes,
- You can use C# or Java and even more syntax for programming modules,
etc, etc…

Of course DotNetNuke has some week points but this is obviously not described here. It seems these posts are mostly from people who don’t know they are talking about.

DNN IS THE BEST

@DNN ROOLES: Your such a troll.

Primoz,

All CMSs have their problems, but DNN is an unadulterated piece of garbage. The only reason I can’t be more specific is because I have done my best to suppress the 9 months of pure hell that was my experience with DNN.

For the record, I produced a site with DNN that was relatively easy to administer and looked perfect from the frontend. When I left the company (out of disgust with DNN), they tried to recreate a similar site but were only able to confirm how horrible DNN is.

I developed modules, wrote custom code, got it working right and everything.

When I say that DNN is the single worst piece of software I have ever used, I know what I am talking about.

Here is a parting memory of one of my last experiences with the worst CMS available.

Me – “Hey, that email campaign manager you demanded I use totally hoses DNN. It took down my test site. If we try to install it on the staging server it will permanantly take down the website. The only solution is to reinstall and re-enter all the content and add modules.”

Boss – “DNN is great. Not realizing this just shows how little you know. Yada yada yada.”

Me – “I don’t really want to give you the password to staging because I know when you install that module it will wipe out a week’s worth of work.”

Boss – “I’m your boss”

30 minutes later….

“Well, I better start reinstalling DNN…”

Just thought of an example of insane architecture in DNN. This is from a couple years ago and may have been fixed… you would hope so.

When you install DNN, the database TABLE names are based on your website name. The database name can change without much trouble, but in DNN the database table names also change.

Imagine the absurd workarounds required to write SQL scripts for such an environment.

DNN is just another example of how not to write software.

Oh this sooo funny
1. dnn is slow – there are hundreds of ways to make it fast. just google it
2. spent weeks installing it…. you probably didn’t have any idea what you was doing.
3. DotNetNuke techniques…… Page_load and event handling???????
4. Debugging is horrible….. LOL. it’s just your lazyness
5. this module killed my site….. if your boss is an idiot – this doesn’t apply to to DNN.

PS: DNN 4.5 (from 2 years ago)/10 web servers/2db servers – 75.000 (and growing) CONCURRENT connections during peak hours with constantly updating news content and live feeds.

pile of crap…. yeah, right

I have been using DNN since 2004, and I am acutely aware of it’s limitations, not least of which is advanced documentation for the different set-up environments you may encounter. One of which was Active Directory. I have spent countless hours trying to get DNN working with AD providers that are riddled with bugs! As a fairly green C# developer, I have discovered other .NET based CMS’s that are 1000’s of times better than DNN.
Do I still use DNN? Hell yeah, I have gotten good at setting it up in 5 minutes flat (in DNP), and my clients love what it gives out of the box. Will I still be using it in 5 years? Hell yeah, there’s so much more that this project will give the community, and I am looking forward to DNN metamorphosising into a full Web Browser OS.

I had a few DNN sites running for friends of mine – the whole thing decided to STOP on an error and it was gonna take me days to figure out what was wrong… I had been through this so many times before – it’s unstable – so this time I just said NO!

I’m just not gonna waste my time with it anymore.

Now – I just use HTML, keeping it simple – it’s SUPER FAST and what can go wrong? Nothing!

DNN totally sucks and is a tool for retards only!!!

I’ve been using DNN since 3.1.1 and although a couple versions have had some issues it was never anything I couldn’t overcome. I run an enterprise site on top of 4.9.4 right now and everything is working fine. Don’t know what y’all are doing wrong…

Go and try to run a search on their support forums…. it times out!

I need help, but those forums are useless when you can’t search. Absurd.

DNN is totally garbage. Don’t ever try to do development based on it. Doing programming without CMS would be much faster than what you are trying to do.

I’m not doing anything wrong, Ken.

I just finished redoing a website for a major electronics company. It was a DNN website, but presumably because DNN is such a pain to maintain and modify it looked about 10 years old, and had extremely limited features.

The new website that my company produced for them is a million times more maintainable and feature rich. It uses a real CMS, not the amateurish pile of garbage that is DNN.

In conclusion, Ken, I no longer have to worry about the problems with DNN that you don’t seem to notice. This is because I refuse to work with DNN and haven’t been bothered by its problems and limitations in years.

I’m just doing my bit to spread the word that DNN is terrible in hopes that a few more developers can be liberated from this terrible CMS.

I had the misfortune of having to work with a DNN fundamentalist at work. He thought it was the perfect system for developing web portals. So I decided to set it up on my laptop running Windows XP in order to test it – “it can’t be done” I was told. So I did some web-searching and worked out how to install DNN on Windows XP (without using IIS).

Having experimented with the DNN system (and having seen a DNN portal in action), I have to say I have never encountered such a crap, clunky, confusing, software package (a hello of a lot of coding effort is required to obtain extremely sub-standard results – so it fails even the most basic cost/benefit analysis). It produces extremely amateurish results and has some fundamental design flaws in its underlying architecture (e.g. tabular design formats). Every plugin/module has to be comprehensively modified in order to try and incorporate it into a DNN theme.

I would be embarrassed to present a DNN site to any of my clients as a finished product – the whole system (e.g. the tortuous user interface) is simply not fit for purpose. What do I use instead? WordPress. It’s clean, extendable, intuitively designed, easy to customise (unlike the nightmare of DNN – where are all the free templates/skins and plugins/modules if it’s open source?) and has an excellent user interface (so it’s easy to train people how to use it). Not only that – it’s XHTML compliant. Something that can’t be said about most DNN sites (a recurrent problem that has been recognised by the core DNN developers themselves).

The bottom line? If you have to spend hour upon hour customising a DNN site to try and make it look like (and work like) a WordPress site… why bother? Do you think anyone would want to replicate the look of a DNN site??? Apart from the owner of a fake Nigerian bank…

After having spent the better half of a week trying to make some very simple changes to a DNN site. I can safely say that I will never touch this steaming pile of a turd system ever again.

Wow, you guys should try joomla or drupal. You want a hot, steamy pile of unusable garbage, give one of those a try. DNN is a godsend compared to those buggy slow apps.

DNN…”quick”…”easy”…oh lard….
I implemented a blank slate of an intranet for one of my clients and it has been a nightmare. The documentation is awful not to mention impossible to find. We have been trying to us AD authentication for over a week now and just this morning got blind-sided by a site that no longer functions. By no longer functions I mean the Login link does nothing! Although….I THINK we are getting logged in, but the only tab available is HOME and the “Your are here” says HOST/EXTENSIONS – but we are clearly not on that tab. The site is dead and I am now moving them to Sharepoint. Arrrrghhhhhh!!!!

My rage for DNN can’t even be articulated. The amount of times it has screwed me for something as simple as linking to a file on the server… lets not even talk about adding an image, god forbid. Not to mention the least logical administration panel I have ever seen on any kind of software, and I have extensive experience with phpBB3. Then the documentation… I don’t understand how it can be so incredibly outdated.

It tries to be a real CMS, but instead it just throws in a thousand useless features that are convoluted and forgets about anything that users actually need.

I’ve been following this post for a few years now. I used to use DNN a lot but not really by choice. Every once in a while I encounter a customer who has DNN and needs X, Y, or Z accomplished. Figuring out how to make their needed functionality actually work correctly in DNN is just a pain in the butt. I always find myself needing to search their forum only to have it time out on me if I select a date range larger than 6 months or so. Having a site default to only search the last month of forum posts is a very good indicator of much bigger issues!

Anyway, I figured I would share that I have found a very nice OpenSource C# .NET CMS that is easy to skin, easy to learn (for the developer and the end-user) and is not painstakingly slow. I speak of mojoPortal (http://mojoportal.com). This thing has a rapid development cycle and feature requests are actually considered! The forums are also very friendly and questions get answered. I have been using it for ~1 year. I have moved several customers from DNN to mojoPortal. It always takes less time to build a customer a new site in mojoPortal, design a skin (usually to look like the DNN skin I designed for them in the past), and migrate all of their data they have accumulated in the last 2+ years than it took to build and design the original DNN site!

Well, give mojoPortal (http://www.mojoportal.com) a shot. I promise you will be impressed.

DNN sucks. Its installation or upgrade makes me soooo sick. Imagine, you want upgrade it from 4.0 to 5.0 version – it’s recomended BY DEVELOPERS to upgrade it several times from version 4.x to 4.x+n. Is it good?
Interesting fact is google search find over 1000 DEAD sites by query “dnn domain not exist in database”, check it out. All these dnn users are lamers or it’s dnn upgrade/install problem?
Official website (www.dotnetnuke.com) uses google search, it shows that dnn doesn’t have such opportunities at all.
Is it free? Answer is NO. There are free dnn modules. For example, gallery module – http://www.dnnphotogallery.com/SampleGalleries/tabid/152/Default.aspx . Check it out, OMG – is it dinosaur era gallery? I understand that it’s free and people doesn’t get money for developing, but is anyone from you want such ****** in your site. The answer is obvious.

DNN is a web developers worst nightmare….words simply cant express how much frustration this rubbish produces……..I’ve been developing websites for 10 years now, programming longer and every day with dnn is basically a pita…

First off, Joe’s post above is pretty shameless marketing of a ‘new’ .net portal by saying he ‘found a very nice CMS’. Joe, be honest and simply promote your new product. Best of luck to you.
On the DNN side, I’ve been an avid user and reseller of DNN solutions for several years. For the power and the ability to develop custom business apps with little programming knowledge, it is hard to beat but I would have to say I’ve become quite disolutioned with the whole product after several years of upgrades. It has gotten slower and slower and there is very little availability of high quality modules. The majority of aftermarket modules on SnowCovered are simply junk and even the ‘good’ ones look and feel like first year ‘Hello World’ apps; plain jane, clunky and cumbersome to use or customize. I still think DNN has its place and I hope that they consider a ground-up re-write for version 6 (if it makes it that far) to enhance the performance and give it more CMS capabilities like the other top open source ‘portals’ have. DNN is still OK for those of us who know it, but I certainly won’t provision any more for clients who intend to maintain their sites themselves. For them, I’m putting Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal…

Just want to say, that after a long time of frustration with DNN we concluded that MOJOPORTAL is AN AMAZING .NET C# CMS… TRY IT!

Yeah, this blows. I love programming in .NET, and I’d love to have a CMS based upon it, but I just can’t recommend anything .NET-based to my employer as the framework for their public-facing web site.

Even our current, antiquated, Lotus Domino based web site is more responsive than a BLANK DNN site, even with HTTP compression and quite a few IIS optimizations I’ve tried.

I’ve been testing WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla for the past few days (since they appear to be the top picks of the day) and have come to the conclusion that Drupal will probably be my choice. I really don’t want to ramp up my knowledge base and learn PHP. I would prefer to utilize my many years of .NET/C# knowledge, but I think that’s best left for my Intranet applications after seeing how amazingly responsive PHP is for dynamic content generation. I mean, I click a link and the page instantly loads! In DNN, I click a link and it has to think about it for a second or two — simply unacceptable by today’s instant gratification use base.

Can anyone recommend a good PHP beginners resource?

Derek,

Your absolutely right, DNN is the worst CMS I’ve seen, however there are some decent alternatives, for instance take a look at umbraco, (the lastest beta 4.1 Beta 2), this is an awesome CMS once you get over the initial learning curve.