Moving to .NET Core is something that we talk about as a community and at the leadership level quite a bit. However, it's a very complicated situation. First, .NET is not legacy, and webforms is technically going to be supported by Microsoft for longer than .NET Core. I don't recall the dates off of the top of my head.

You'll even have seen many recent updates to the DNN core keeping the future of .NET and Core/Standard in mind when you see things like enhanced MVC support, dependency injection, etc. So it remains a goal, but there is no target date (like with most open-source updates).

I'll have one of the other team leaders chime in here later. They're more hands-on with the conversation than I have been.

Oh, and a useful side note for me is I'm not personally worried about this until Microsoft migrates all of their own web apps from web forms to .NET Core. 😉

Hi. You may find the following blog articles helpful on this subject.

https://dnncommunity.org/...hnical-Future-of-DNN

https://dnncommunity.org/...tegy-To-Know-Thyself

The two articles linked by David are the best sources of information, and nothing has really changed from those articles. We have to acknowledge who, and what we are, and be the best of what we can be. We still have a long pathway ahead, but it is also important for folks to understand what can or cannot be done.

For clarity though to a few of your questions.

DNN website that DNN will be moved to .Net Core (in version 10?)

There are NO plans currently for DNN to be moved to .NET 6 (the framework formerly known as .NET Core if we are being specific)

is there a migration path for existing modules(.Net Framework) to .Net core

This is the entire crux of why we are not migrating, there is NOT a migration path, it isn't technically possible for 90% of the usage scenarios due to the fact that System.Web was not transitioned by Microsoft to .NET 6. Even Microsoft's recommendations are "file -> new project" for anything WebForms. based.

Also, I read in one of the blog that currently there is a way to run .NET core modules

This is not 100% true, you can do things to be closer to compatible, and you can even use some .NET 6 stuff within a DNN site, but its a bit tricky and not something that is on the supported routes now, as .NET 6 != .NET Framework. You can use things like .NET Standard (https://docs.microsoft.co...andard/net-standard) 2.1 to share code between .NET Framework & .NET 6, however, that isn't at the UI level.

I personally have had great success with some pairing of .NET 6 & DNN. Let DNN do the CMS stuff, let the .NET 6 stuff do some of the other heavy lifting but each project is different.

@Will Strohl, @David Poindexter, @Mitchel Sellers - The articles and your clarifications helped me understand where DNN is heading. Thanks so much!

You are most welcome @Ana_Dana

Mitch, Any changes?

Core support may be a deal breaker for a potential client.

... and would you give some examples of what you mean by "paired" solutions?

"I personally have had great success with some pairing of .NET 6 & DNN. Let DNN do the CMS stuff, let the .NET 6 stuff do some of the other heavy lifting but each project is different."
 

have any plans emerged to adopt .net core for dnn? i believe that it would require 2 code bases which might be cost prohibitive. on the other hand i would kill future development of the .net framework product and pour resources into .net core. but i realize that no one asked me. i am only trying to get the latest product direction for that technology issue.

The move to .Net Core is something I have always though a good idea. However, I believe it's impossible to do a compatible migration. It would be like starting from new and would brake compatibility. DNN is BIG and full of features you simply cannot rebuild quickly, Any new CMS created would have to have a cut down of features in the core. (not a bad thing in my opinion)

I have looked into the end of support for .Net Framework and there are a lot of different dates, past and future. The date I saw from a "Microsoft" source was that .Net Framework will continue to be supported until it is no longer shipped with the windows OS, which makes sense. So no need to worry about it suddenly disappearing.

All functional code for any modules I create are now in .Net Standard using the DNN API, so in theory any conversion to the ".Net Core" (.Net 8 now, I think) should be easy, Any non-DNN code I create is in .Net 8. DNN is used by us for websites and admin UI. I doubt very much DNN will move to ".Net Core" unless some kind person or company throws money at it.

I have looked at many alternative solutions for our company (even WordMess) and decided to stick with DNN.

The bottom line is DNN is still the best Open Source CMS you can get, use it.