Are You Getting the Most Out of Your DNN Investment?

DNN Platform is a web application platform for .NET Framework which was started in late 2002 (under the name DotNetNuke). Engage has a long history of supporting and building on DNN and has created decades of connections with businesses that have built web-based solutions upon DNN. When you consider your organization’s investment in DNN, are you concerned about if you’re getting enough out of it? Let Engage’s experts help you explore what DNN is best for, what to expect from DNN in the future, and what other options you may want to consider.

DNN Is Great For Some Projects

DNN is a good fit for teams which are comfortable with it and know how to be productive and make use of its features while coding custom solutions and administering content. When the developers are happy to stay on .NET Framework (while having access to newer approaches, like dependency injection), there is no big push to move towards a new platform.

One of the major built-in features which can be a deciding factor for using DNN is multi-tenancy. Scenarios in which there are many sites which will share functionality and some amount of look-and-feel, but be accessed via different URLs are often great candidates for a DNN-based solution. We’ve had a lot of success creating DNN-based applications for franchises such as True Value Hardware and Little Caesars Pizza.

While DNN is often considered alongside CMS options like WordPress, Drupal, or Umbraco, the truth of the matter is that DNN does not come with a built-in content management system, but is instead a web application platform. It is a set of building blocks to support a custom application more than it is a repository for storing content. When custom software is the direction driving the platform choice, DNN makes sense to be on the list, but when the main concerns are around organizing and arranging content, you won’t get enough mileage out of DNN, compared to other choices.

Where Is DNN Going?

Whether choosing a platform for a new endeavor or at a crossroads for an existing investment, it’s important to consider where the technologies you’re building upon are headed and what that means for the long-term viability of your approach. For example, it’s good to know if .NET Framework is still a stable foundation for development.

Regarding DNN itself, DNN 10 was recently released, which focused on some API cleanup and moving forward with dependency injection. Since DNN is totally volunteer-run, what is coming in the future is dependent on what people are able to contribute. However, there are efforts to reduce the platform’s coupling to ASP.NET WebForms. Long-term, it’s not clear whether that could lead to support for ASP.NET Core or how much change would be required from extension developers and site administrators to get there. For the time being, DNN is modernizing, but not rushing towards adopting the newer framework in a way that would bring lots of breaking changes.

DNN Is Not The Best Choice For All Projects

While Engage has a long history with DNN, we definitely don’t believe that DNN is the right answer to every project. We recently moved this website off of DNN (to Astro) because we noticed that the site didn’t need anything that DNN was giving us. Specifically, we’ve decided that content-driven sites without custom functionality don’t need a heavyweight application layer behind them. We prefer easy-to-deploy (and maintain) static HTML when we can.

The performance of DNN will never be able to compete with static sites. Even for sites with custom functionality that require at least some components to not be static, DNN is going to be hard-pressed to operate with similar speeds to a custom ASP.NET Core site or another more streamlined choice.

Finally, a team which is excited to use the latest and greatest features of C# and .NET (or doesn’t want to use C# or .NET at all) will struggle with DNN, which supports many newer C# features and libraries but also has many limitations. If new and shiny software development is a priority for your team, DNN won’t fit the bill. If solid, stable, and boring is your team’s M.O., then DNN might be worth considering.

Conclusion

You have DNN sites you’re managing, and you’re trying to decide if your next project should use DNN or if you should investigate other options. Get the most out of your DNN investment by using it for what it’s good for, like multi-tenancy and custom development. For content-driven or performance-sensitive sites, you may want to consider other options.