Our DotNetNuke Strategy
Many of our clients will receive the most value for their development dollars by leveraging a pre-existing portal development platform like
DotNetNuke instead of developing everything from scratch. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. This allows us to simply “configure” many of your requirements and save your development budget for features that require custom programming. In the end you will have a fully scalable, database driven website built on Microsoft best practices that will have significantly more capabilities than your original requirements call for. It is not uncommon that 80% of a web development project disappears when we reevaluate it in the context of DotNetNuke. This combined with our hybrid team approach gives us an unmatched ability to deliver quality systems for an exceptional price. We deliver value!
What is DotNetNuke?
DotNetNuke is an open-source Web Application Framework ideal for creating sites such as commercial websites, corporate intranets and extranets, online publishing portals, and custom vertical applications. DotNetNuke is available
free of charge as open-source software. Its license allows individuals to do whatever they wish with the application framework, both commercially and non-commercially. There are commercial versions of DotNetNuke but most of our clients are happy with the free version. DotNetNuke is built on a
Microsoft ASP.NET /
SQL Server platform, and is easily installed and hosted.
What can you do with DotNetNuke?
DNN users can immediately go about managing all aspects of their new website. That's because the DotNetNuke application provides all of the key features and tools required to operate and maintain a site, as well as giving the administrator complete control of the content, layout, user management, and security of the site. Within minutes after installation, a person with no programming skill can be piecing together a completely original, dynamic web portal. They can be creating new pages of content, using pre-built modules like announcements, discussions, events, FAQs, feedback forms, and multi-media. They could be creating user roles, sending bulk emails, and defining secure sections for registered site users only. They could even be setting up banner advertising and customizing the site’s appearance.
DotNetNuke Features:
· Easy to install and to host. Built on
Microsoft ASP.NET technology, and runs on
SQL Server. In addition, many hosting companies offer free installation of DotNetNuke with their plans. Just pay your first month's hosting for as little as $20 and you can be up and running with a fully functional DNN site in under an hour!
· Fully extensible and scalable. Suitable for a variety of projects -- from the smallest website to the largest corporate deployment. Internet or Intranet sites can be developed entirely with built-in DotNetNuke features, or can be augmented through third-party modules and custom programming. DotNetNuke has built-in support for cloud computing making it highly scalable.
· Clearly licensed under a BSD-style license. Software can be completely incorporated, modified, and adapted to personal/business use without having to worry about any legal issues.
· Priority on security. DotNetNuke is built on a solid foundation of Microsoft Membership.
· Fully customizable. Changes can be made to portals at all levels – from basic stylesheet elements like font type, color, and bullet points, to overall site appearance. New skins and module containers can be easily applied to the site without affecting the site content and without involvement by programmers. Say after a year, you want a totally new look and feel for your site. Within 10 minutes you can upload a new skin and now you have a totally new look. Plus Keene Systems can provide professional graphic design services to produce a one-of-a-kind skin for your unique branding.
· Fully localized. Built-in multi-language localization features allow administrators worldwide to easily use and adapt DotNetNuke software for their own use.
· User-friendly interface. Well designed user interface makes it easy for users to manage all aspects of their projects.
DotNetNuke Development Strategy
Since you are starting with a preexisting platform, your strategy of development will be a bit different than standard development. At every juncture of the project you should be asking the question “Do I really need to write custom code for this?” Your strategy should be the following:
-
Does the functionality you seek already exist in DotNetNuke? For example, let’s say you want a customizable FAQ page. If so, then just install the FAQ module and start using it.
- Does the functionality you seek already exist in a 3rd party module? (many found at Store.DotNetNuke.com) For example, let’s say you want a fully featured ecommerce system (like Smith Shopping Cart). Just purchase the module, install it, and then configure it. All without programming. This strategy will save you many thousands of dollars and result in a much better website.
- If the functionality you seek is so unique that it doesn’t exist elsewhere then proceed with a traditional ASP.Net development process within the context of DotNetNuke.
Demonstration
Interested in seeing a demo of DotNetNuke in action? Watch a product tour
video on DotNetNuke here. More info on DotNetNuke can be found at the
DotNetNuke.com website. If you would like to see an actual DNN site that we produced then please browse to
www.NGSP.com. When National Geographic School Publishing merged with Hampton Brown School Publishing they chose Keene Systems to develop their new website. This site manages over 16,000 learning products and ties into several back end systems.