DNN 9 and the Future of the DNN Platform

Sounds great. Please contact me.

Sadly, this article underscores the reason why many have stopped developing modules for this platform. It is more of a playground for engineers than a reliable tool for business.

It only takes a few bad upgrade experiences to force paying business customers to switch to an alternative platform and ultimately the developers follow the money.

Good work. What do you have in mind for DNN 10? The posted roadmap is outdated and doesn't show anything for 2017.

I saw your presentation of the new DNN 9 UI. I still prefer doing my edits in one monitor and viewing the preview in another monitor. Personally I feel he flyover edit model adds extra mouse clicks because you have to hide and show it to edit and preview. It good for one-off edits . Certainly good for mobile devices. I assume all these screen are using responsive design. Just want to make sure that doing edits and previews can still be done in other browser tabs or windows without the flyover opening every time I refresh because it's open in one of the other tabs/windows. Not a big concern.

That's the way to go :) Awesome! We're back on track.

I'm not so sure about React vs. Angular 2, but I believe any decision is better than none, and a clear focus is better than a "everything should work" strategy. Love it :)

Then, If I understood correctly, DNN9 will support Web Form modules, so, it won't be running on ASP.Net Core. Am I right? Then, one more question, any Idea how long DNN will support Web Form modules?

@Jason I am not sure why you think the platform is only a playground for Engineers and not a serious business tool. Every business understands that technology is constantly evolving and that failure to evolve your platform to keep up with technology guarantees obsolescence. Having said that, I want to be clear, that our decision to move to a lighter weight development style for the admin experience, has no impact on how developers create modules for the platform. You are still free to develop using Web Forms, MVC or SPA frameworks regardless of what we do with the admin tools.

@Javier - That is correct. We are not converting to ASP.Net Core at this point in time. We may choose to do so in the future, but that is a ways off at this point.

DNN is built on Web Forms and we will continue to support Web Forms for those developers who want to use it. DNN 9 is just minimizing our use of Web Forms as we think we can provide a better Admin Experience without using Web Forms. But if you love developing with Web Forms, then feel free to continue using it.

To the developers thinking about using MVC in DNN 8+, from my personal experience the DNN MVC support is crippled. I couldn't use it when I tried to create a prototype using the third party MVC extensions I wanted to use. DNN simply doesn't support the full spectrum of partial views which is an integral part of ASP.NET MVC. It was a road block. You can either use the standard WebForms which Microsoft continuous to support and will support for years ahead. They are just a ton of WebForms web apps around. MS will not abandon the technology any time soon.

However if you are starting fresh and want to use something newer, skip MVC and use Javascript and any of the JS frameworks and any JS based UI controls. Telerik, DevExpress, Infragistics and ComponentOne offer both ASP.NET WebForms and JS/HTML based UI components. Or any JS UI component since they are not dependent on the backend technology used. They only need to talk to an API like teh SPA framework in DNN.

The advantage of using a JS/HTML front end is usually they also work very well for a mobile device if they are using responsive design principles.
The drawback is that you might be writing a lot of javascript code. To alleviate some coding pain, I suggest using Typescript which supports strong types and object oriented principles like class and inheritance. You can have Typescript output classic ES5 Javascript which is compatible with all the browsers. Angular 2 is out and it strongly uses Typescript therefore you probably can't escape learning Typescript. All the ng2 examples I have seen use Typescript.

Personally I suggest dnnsoftware concentrates its efforts into the SPA framework. The MVC support is more like a hack and if it doesn't support the full ASP.NET MVC functionality then why bother. You will get very frustrated if in the middle of your development project you wanted to use a critical ASP.NET MVC functionality and find out it doesn't work in DNN. It will be a big waste of time. Just do the development in WebForms or the newer SPA. Stay away from DNN's MVC. I wasted about 3 months trying to get it to work for my needs. Granted I was working on the RC versions. I got excited for nothing. It was a frustrating experience. The worst part is when you seek help in the forum and no one answers for the simple reason that very few developers are using MVC in DNN module development and understand what's going on. You're on your own. There is ZERO advantage of using MVC in DNN. I hope this message gets across to would be developers.

I keep hearing the message from dnnsoftware that they support ASP.NET MVC when the true story that the support is full of potholes. I also feel sorry for the forum posters who are seeking help in the forums for MVC. If you can an error you can't explain, it's probably because of DNN's wonky MVC support.

To be honest I wish they remove MVC support from DNN 9 so people don't fall in that trap. Two options only => WebForms and SPA.
Later when DNN is truly built on MVC using ASP.NET Core, if they every go there, then it can say it supports ASP.NET MVC.

I will post this as a blog comment and put it in the forum. I want this message to spread.

Love it! Sounds like just what we are looking for, though if I may make a request? Joe, you probably are aware of all of the feedback I gave you and David on twitter, along with many other community members. The DNNConnect crew is aware as well of the accessibility pitfalls in DNN in its current form. Could you perhaps base the development of the new admin panel less on mouse-overs? That would be extremely helpful for blind users if customizations weren't required to be made for us to manage it. And also, anything that is expressed via an icon must have alt-text on it in order to comply with WCAG. Thanks for listening!

I think Dnn is losing the needle of the compass, I agree with Jason and Tony. Before, after the announcement of the stop of webform support, many old developers choose to stop the support and develop modules after many years of work and investments on Dnn. Now, DNN is loosing the most daring and newest developers after that DNN declares that an upgrade will not be carried out with full support to new versions of the framework.
Every developer that DNN community lost is a innestimabile loss because develop for DNN is very complex and requires very advanced knowledge hard to find, unlike many other more simple frameworks where for each developer loss ten are find, on DNN one lost is one lost.
For example, my company has based its business on Ventrian PA modules and their loss has forced us to seek other alternatives difficult to find on DNN, at today not replaced with any other modules.
The business is created on the basis of safe and lasting choices ... everything it is starting to miss on DNN!
I think that DNN before you say something should think well its choices because can not afford to make mistakes again!

@Scippy - I honestly don't understand your comment since we have not stopped web form support and don't have any current plans to do so. We have made a decision to add support for other types of web development and to move as much of the core platform away from web forms as possible for a variety of reasons. That however does not limit or remove the ability of module developers to continue using web forms.

The loss of DNN developers that you mention had nothing to do with our addition of MVC and SPA support. Many of those developers left long before we started work on DNN 8. In fact if anything, we have lost more developers because we waited too long to support alternative frameworks.

@Joe Why don't you talk about the MVC support and its direction. Are you planning to improve it or what we have now is DNN's technical limit of incorporating MVC in a WebForms app?

Speaking of moving more of the core away from web forms - one thing which I would love to see is all the controls to do with login, register, profile editing, recovering passwords - basically anything to do with end user interaction of core DNN be moved away from web forms.

Mainly so the UI can be decoupled from the logic and the UI can be easily customised.

I have just recently implemented a lot of this in DNN 7.4.2 project using razor and WebApi Services to make for better end user experiences that fit well with the implemented website and work properly across multiple devices.

I think something like this in the core so these controls can be skinned / themed would be brilliant.

Will Telerik finally be going away in "New" DNN9 installs?
Unfortunately, it seems DotNetNuke.Web.Deprecated, Telerik and the RadEditor are currently still listed in the nightlies for DNN9 install package.

Hi,
will DNN Platform (aka community edition) be getting a 9.0 upgrade "by the end of 2016" too? Or just Evoq? it took a long time for Platform to get the 8.0 upgrade.
Thanks
Tim

Honestly I do not like Wordpress. I like the direct editness of DNN. I like the edit page button. I do not want DNN to become another type of wordpress.
DNN sites rank better than wordpress is more secure and is not PHP. There does need to be a stabilization of the platform. I have used this platform since efficiently DNN3x as i started experimenting in DNN2x. The way it is setup now in DNN8x is pretty nice yet this overhaul looks like it wants to be WORDPRESS-Arue.
I highly suggest that you do not go the wordpress route. There is no need for DNN to try to accommodate the Wordpress crowd. Those who have chosen switch from wordpress to DNN should learn DNN philosophy and not change DNN to "Wordpress Without The Issues."

@Jacques - We definitely want to move as much of the UI as possible away from web forms. Our experience is that we can provide a much nicer user experience if we get rid of postbacks as much as possible. Unfortunately, it was not possible to do everything in one go, so we'll be working on removing the last remaining web forms UI bits over the next couple of releases following DNN 9.

@Brad - No. Telerik won't be going away completely in DNN 9. We hope to have that project finished for 9.1 or 9.2. Redoing the Admin Experience has been a big job and we were not able to completely redo the remaining modules that still use Telerik.

@NetPotential - Everything I talk about is DNN. One thing to keep in mind is that DNN and Evoq are related in the same way that Windows and Office are related. Windows and Office occasionally share a version number, but they are independently developed and thus had diverging versions. We try to follow semantic versioning for DNN so that users know whether a version is big or small. Evoq moved to v8 early because the changes they were making warranted it. DNN moved to v8 once we had a large enough change to warrant it. DNN 9 and Evoq 9 both have huge changes and thus it makes sense to increment them both to v9 together.

@UpClose - I agree with you on the in-context editing experience of DNN. We have no intention of moving away from that model. There are times where we may introduce new features into the platform or into Evoq that do not follow that model, but it is generally a temporary thing as we work on how best to handle in-context editing. The changes in DNN 9 don't impact the in-context editing of DNN. Modules are still placed on the page visually, and edited in place.

@UpClose WordPress supports inline editing plus more. You can be more specific about how you don't like DNN to borrow from WP. There's a reason WP runs a much much bigger part of the web than DNN. Any widely used software is more susceptible to security attacks and the discoverability of issues. These software just get better over time because of that. Just like Windows. Use the latest versions of software.

@Tony Henrich

Wordpress is Stupid to try an edit. I have tried more than 10x and ended up hiring someone to complete the work. I do not want to have to go to a separate page to look for what i am editing and then make the edit update and return to see if its right. In DNN if i am looking at a paragraph in edit mode I can click the pencil and edit that paragraph right then. I do not have to try and figure out where it is to edit. Thats what wordpress is. Its a constant chase of where do i edit what, AND thats not an intuitive environment. I spent more time looking for where to edit something than anything else. D

DNN's in-context editing is the best thing since sliced bread and jolly ranchers.

""There's a reason WP runs a much much bigger part of the web than DNN.""
The reason is because wordpress was nearly all blogs at onetime. They then added more features and all of the bloggers started pushing it as the way to go for a website. It had more free marketing than DNN.

Meanwhile.....
• DNN sites were ranking higher by accident than Wordpress ranked on purpose.
• The SEO on a DNN site is WAY WAY better.
• It silos pages so you may have 3-4 pages rank on the 1st page of Google from the same site, even at DNN3x.
• You can keyword and tag in more ways than most other platforms.
• Search engine spiders love DNN.
• Its more scalable/extendable than wordpress (since DNN2x) and doesn't need much to go from handling 2000 visitors to handling 20 million. (Not that ever had 20million visitors)
• DNN is more secure than wordpress and always has been.

NOTE: I don't think there was a wordpress for building websites in 2004.

I was ranked #1 for Comcast TV Commercials Atlanta, Atlanta Commercials and Atlanta Video Production for nearly 6 years and was in the top 5 up until Google started counting Mobile readiness. I had to decide between WP and DNN for my upgrade this year and as much as everyone was telling me to go to wordpress, I could not take a chance on my SEO not being as good as with my DNN site, so i purchased a nice mobile-ready skin and i am migrating over all of my SEO stuff and content. This should get some of my ranking back up to the top 5.

I do wish that they had more shin developers and module writers like they use to, but DNN is my favorite Pony and i am going to ride it till the end.

I think the thing that made wp more widespread is not tied to the choices of editing or other management options that may be considered better or worse than DNN according to their own preferences or habits.
Moreover, as written by Tony "NOTE: I do not think there was a wordpress for building websites in 2004." should give birth to a question: why wp then it is enormously more used than DNN notwithstanding whether a newer cms?
The answer is simply, the infinite choice of plugins that are available ... more than 50,000 in fast-growing and constantly updated, that make WP leading choice.
At this point another question arises: why then on DNN there is not such a wide availability of plugins considering that it exist to more time and certainly is a better CMS than WP?
The answer lies in the complexity in the development of modules and the poor availability of documentation for developers. Only senior class developers are able to develop modules for DNN and for those who approach are able only to build simple modules "Hello World"
The documentation and examples are in fact available only to introduce the development and there are no documentations to date and complete, for example on the development of MVC modules on DNN, the few good contributions come from the community but little or nothing exists by DNN corp. However nothing of detailed, thorough and comprehensive exists in this regard.
I think that, to give a new impetus to DNN by capitalizing on the new revolutionary technologies available to developers is to give more effort in making available documentation, examples, material help for the development of new modules!
This is the only one way to recover the road against WP and many other CMS that in less time have achieved a greater spread.

To compensate for the lack of some documentation, I look at the code of some open source modules. Check GitHub, The Forge and CodePlex.

I download a whole bunch of them and unzip the source into subfolders of a root folder and use a search tool to search all the .cs/.cshtml files in the root folder and I get a list of files which use something I am looking for and then open each project in VS. Works for me.

@Scippy One

I agree with your thought. My partner switched to WP because of all the free modules that came with it. It lowered his acquisition cost to develop sites for our clients. While we try to recommend DNN for SEO reasons at times the module cost end up being more than 30-50% of what we charge the client. Meanwhile WP cost are nearly the same $135. for parts we intended (65. for the theme and maybe there are a few plugs we would pay for).

Shortcake has made DNN better but I do think Scippy One is dead on with his analysis. There should be DNN/Evoq branded module to take care of some common needs. There should also be a more detailed documentation process for 3rd party developers of modules. DNNGo seems to be the only reasonable offering in the store. The DataSprings collection & X-Mod are a little over priced.

Where did the "Host" section go and along with it, all of the granular performance settings? Please tell me it's not gone...

@Don - The host features did not go away at all. They have been incorporated and collapsed into the other administrative pages. see https://1drv.ms/i/s!AmCAjuMs3hO9j7Y6I_LdrZ5EVDMnzA These settings only show up for host users.

interesting discussions here :)
i have worked with DNN since the original three software packages where put together to work as one.
It is by far the best CMS i have worked with. so far it is the ONLY cms that is capable of bieng used by non IT people, like my wife. Just one time explain how to use and and she can use it. no need for me to keep telling explaining.
So DNN has always been my first choice. I had servers running in my house to host windows, asp.net and mssql.
The only reason have a gap in my usage history is a financial one. There where during the time almost no providers that delivered a good working platform for windows / asp.net and running the servers in the house became to cumbersome.

I have tried to create (as non developer) sites with joomla, drupal, typo etc. and they all where dramatic. and all solutions came with "just a little programmign here and there, you know" -no i don't. i do not program-
Concrete 5 was a exception and delivered a reasonable stable tool. I just found out that packages / modules became increasingly expensive. and although the platform was easy and stable , it was too complex for my friends to use.

Using windows on a daily base as professional i checked back to see the prices of windows systems dropping.
The majority of users had adopted wordpressy -sites and most of them where looking the same, not showing anything of interest. i think the main reason behind the wordpress popularity is simply because it is cheap.
running a windows platform is still more expensive.

today its easy and cheap to rent a vps capable of running a dnnportal with multiple sites. (as i have now) so i am back in business with DNN 7 (as it supports most of my older mods) and DNN 8 with bootstrap 3 skin.
Bootstrap is powerfull, but also a pain in the butt. Its back to coding and stuff. Initially i felt it is not something i can give to my wife, gamers community or friends.
So i use dnn 7 (as 90% of my skins just run fine with that version) and i need to buy new skins for DNN 8 or up. costing me a lot. (personally i hope that DNN 8 skins/modules will work on DNN 9. )

@Paul - Yes. DNN 8 skins and modules will still work on DNN 9. We've moved admin tools around and cleaned up the admin tools, but otherwise it is the same great platform you have always loved.

@joe brinkman
just updated my DNN 8 to the new DNN 9. Looks fresh and crispy :) already enjoying the new admin interface!

@Joe Brinkman
I appreciate your responses in this thread.
Could you address the MVC concerns brought up by @Tony Henrich?
Perhaps you have some links to resources concerning the decision between SPA and MVC?
I will be spending the next two work weeks deciding which of the two frameworks to utilize.
Any guidance would be much appreciated.

@Mathew - There is not really much to address regarding MVC. While we could make some small improvements to MVC support, it will never offer full MVC functionality. Fundamentally, there are aspects of MVC which are just incompatible with WebForms. But you know what - we don't offer full WebForms support either. There are many aspects of WebForms which we have never supported and never will support. The real question is, do we support enough of the MVC framework that you can build feature rich modules using the framework? I differ from Tony in my assessment here and have seen some awesome modules built using the MVC framework.

The MVC framework was built for those customers that want to use DNN but that also want to use MVC. For them we have MVC module support. It is not perfect but it has some very unique capabilities that allows a developer to mix MVC and WebForms modules on a single page. No other CMS can make that claim and that is very powerful, because it means you can build modules using MVC but still leverage the thousands of existing webforms modules that already exist. If we wanted 100% support for MVC, it would have meant that each page would only be able to host MVC modules. This would have severely limited the usefulness of MVC for DNN customers.

If you are not already committed to the MVC framework, then I would suggest focusing on SPA based modules. SPA based modules are much more portable and provide a much richer interaction model for most users.

As a developer, I am always looking for ways to develop a broad based skill set. Leaning ASP.Net MVC is useful for MVC projects, but pretty much limits you to working on .Net. The skills you learn building SPA modules can be used for .Net, Ruby, Java and Node web projects and can even help in building mobile apps and Electron based desktop apps.

this might be the wrong place to ask this, but is the SPA-based approach a good way to incorporate the accessibility features of the .NET framework? I don't think any modules I currently use have them builtin. Trying out new modules is often more of a trying experience than it needs to be, if you ask me.

@Joe, I am in the process of moving some of my modules to MVC, however do you have a solution to using a RichText Editor in Razor yet? Its the only thing stopping me at the moment as most of my modules use the RichText Editor for image selection and so on.

In dnn 7 you could see how many people visited a page an which pages were most popular along with which days of the week had the most visitors
I can not find this is DNN 9.1
can some one tell me where to find this information