Brief Overview

DNN platform is considered to be better for skin design, module development or web hosting, including setting components which make it easier to run website.

Virtualization has matured over the recent past and now hostersare beginning to shift their accounts from dedicated to virtual servers. And with the advent of cloud services, such as Amazon EC2, some of them are even doing away with owning a server.

Website owners earlier had to choose between shared hosting and having to maintain expensive dedicated servers. And it came with its own drawbacks; such as sites handling volumes of traffic affected the performance of others sharing a single machine etc. 

A typical VPS account includes RDP access, thereby making it easier to manage server settings or web files. These also provide greater isolation between sites, making individual sites less vulnerable to the effects of hardware sharing. However, VPS accounts are expensive when compared to a shared hosting.

Framework Design

DotNetNuke is a flexible content management system, one in which contents and designs are separated, proving advantageous to both designers and developers. Designers can implement diverse site designs, utilizing design tools and techniques, such as HTML5, CSS3 or JQuery, while developers can create/edit modules displaying the site content and functionality impromptu.

DotNetNuke is currently offered in 3 editions, namely-

•   Community Edition (CE) – free

•   Professional Edition (PE) – costing about $3000/year

•   Enterprise Edition (EE) – over $12000/year

DotNetNuke development trends, such as MVVM based KnockOutJS (JavaScript library), as well as utilizing web services through the services framework, offers API’s and skins objects that speed up website development.

Site administrators can perform diverse roles which give access to individual pages or specific modules on pages.

Handling Cloud

DotNetNuke can be run in a variety of cloud environments wherever required, including Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure. An Azure accelerator makes it easier to install DotNetNuke in the cloud using a wizard-based installer that resolves most of the technical work.

EC2 is a great cloud platform. There are many sites, including video tutorials, which explain how to configure a basic DotNetNuke site on Amazon EC2.  this is not a very simple task. Managing your instances, elastic block storage, and elastic IP addresses can be a bit of a challenge for a small business owner who doesn’t have a lot of IT experience. 

DotNetNukealso offers cloud folder provisioning for low budgeted web hosting. Site administrators can now select folders within their file-structures and designate them for the cloud. This goes a long way in reducing file storage and decreasing page load times.

Enabling Twitter, Facebook and Google+ has become easier over DNN as the platform gives users scroll similar to Facebook’s wall. With privacy controls at every level, users can organize themselves into social groups, post status, make friends, collaborate, and messaging within the system. A new API allows modules development for dynamism.

DotNetNuke has an active community frequenting over user group meetings, conferences, and competitions with members always willing to help further the platform.

However, most businesses want predictability in their expenses, a feature not currently offered by cloud providers, which makes it an expensive cloud hosting option.

Conclusion

DNN, from the DNN Corp, has successfully balanced most featuresrequired for large organizations, such as granular permission, content workflow, high performance caching, web farm synchronization, first-class support, and a SharePoint connector. It is only a matter of time that this platform overwhelms other competitors and evolves as the number one free hosting option.