I have been a long time DNN user, over 8 years now, and I have to say over the last year+ there has been a large, noticable decline in DNN as a product, company and community.
Take for instance the separation of the DNN Community from DNN Corp, which at first sounded exciting and the proper move to make. But now it seems like it was only a half implemented idea of what the original thought and purpose was to be, leaving these two separate entities that leave users, especially new ones confused. I understand that the Community is of course just that, volunteers who support the platform that they use, picture yourself as a prospective new user researching CMS’s to use:
I do realize these are just a couple of small, nit-picking items, but again to view these coming in from a potential new user its not very promising to see stagnant/broken content like this.
But on to more important points about the company itself.. I know of a couple of colleagues who have been using licensed versions of Evoq/DNN Professional for some time and have been quite happy with the choice, until, again, the last year+. Since then, there has been a massive drop in the quality of customer support, account management, and from simply having the most recent version of DNN available in Evoq form. It took roughly TWO MONTHS for there to be a Evoq 9.6 version after Platform 9.6 was released, which addressed a number of security vulnerabilities or bugs that paying customers were left having to fend for themselves. Additionally, even viewing the DNN Corp website on the latest release of Safari for macOS or iOS, since they went with WebP images, all images appear broken. macOS is one of the top choices for web developers, and with Safari being the default browser on both macOS and iOS devices, its a pretty glaring omission.
Now, I don’t mean to come here and complain without trying to contribute to some sort of solution, to help a product and platform I have been using successfully for nearly a decade. I will willing to help out on the Community front, but I do fear for what the future holds on the corporation side. Anyone have any similar thoughts as mine?
Yes I understand that, as mentioned in my original post.
I was more so looking for others input if they also aligned with what I have been seeing and feeling as of late regaridng DNN at a high level - the platform, community and corportation.
I think the split between the company selling Evoq and the Community is great. I do agree that the state of dnnsoftware & support by DNN corp is an issue, but at least you can now see that the community is still alive and kicking. This is the best thing that has happened to DNN in years IMO. Who would have thought that the community would be able to do all the stuff that's going on right now "on it's own"? I hoped this "split" would work out the way it did but I wasn't sure from the start. A simple example, the forums on dnnsoftware were virtually dead but I'm really happy with the renewed activity in this forum. DNN is more vibrant than 3 years ago. We are even seeing new users showing up in the forms again. On modules: there are a lot of modules that are not supported any more or vendors that stopped selling or developing them. (BTW Daniel Valedas did a great job getting most of the old core modules up to par again) but you also should not forget that modules like Open Content and 2SXC are way more flexible and can, with a bit of work on a template, replace many of the "old" modules. Our (40FINGERS) focus shifted from single purpose modules to mutilpurpose module like Open Content, ActionForm etc. some years ago and it works great for us. So I think DNN is in a much better position than some years ago because the community are now in control. But I'm also very happy we have all our clients on DNN platform and not on Evoq. BTW if you did there are also ways to upgrade Evoq to DNN platform, but obviously not all functionality will be available after that. (unless you custom build it or even better create a pull request for DNN platform)
And if you want to help the community, please do. DNN platform == Community
I think that Timo said a lot of good here. But I'll add more to this as well.
Technologically, security, and functionality wise we have accomplished more as an Open Source product in the last 24 months than we have seen in quite a while. It might not seem that way sometimes, but we really have. As a volunteer-led project there are certain things that expectation wise cannot be met any longer though, such as roadmaps. We have struggled with this concept for a while, we can have all of the best-laid plans, but if the volunteers are not available and don't get the submission in, the item will slip.
We can for sure do better on communication, but anyone can jump in to help us move things forward. I personally feel that we are in the best place we could be right now. We have a way to go, but we have the right support structure to really keep it going. Just my $0.02
I have a client who has been reading DNN's bad press lately, e.g. Joe Brinkman's recent article and he is headed for the door.
Can anyone please point me to some recent, credible articles or blogs stating DNN is still viable
and has a bright future. Thank you in advance!
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