I started working with DotNetNuke almost 5 years ago when it was pretty new. I had used php-nuke, so was excited to use a cms written for the .net platform. I skinned a few apps and played with it a bit. But ultimately, I didnât use.
So, I started using DNN for a job recently. Itâs on version 5 now (version 6 is very soon to be released), and I have to sayâit shows its age. Iâm not a fan. When the web is trying to go very mvc, ajaxy, and rest-y, DotNetNuke is stuck in 2006. Itâs as if web 2.0 left it behind.
There are a lot of great things going on the web development arena, even for Microsoft developers. The MVC framework is elegant and fantastic. Silverlight is very cool. HTML5 and jquery make cross-browser more fun than ever. It makes you want to forget all that messy webform code with its code-behind and postbacks. So, DNN just feels old.
I never really liked the way Microsoft abandoned classic ASP, which was not all that different from php. It encouraged developers to think about session state and requests and responses. It focused more on the html that was delivered to the browser. You could view the source of any page you wrote in classic asp and recognize the html as the markup you had written.
When MS moved to ASP.Net webforms, they tried to let desktop developers feel comfortable with web development. You could drag a button on a page, double-click it, and write some code for it. You didnât even have to worry about what kind of tag it would produce. Who wants to use HTML anyway, right? It was awful. You got a new breed of web developers who didnât know any html or javascriptâonly .net.
Iâm glad Microsoft is really pushing the MVC framework, which gives developers more control over the HTML that is produced.
DNN is a good platform, but written with a bad technology. I hope someone notices the writing on the wall for .net webforms and starts a massive rewrite into a more current language.
