The Future of DNN

DNN Connect 2026 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium was a milestone moment for the MVC Pipeline project. Over four days in May, the community came together, tested, discussed, and pushed this project forward in ways that wouldn't have been possible without the people and organisations who put real money and real time behind it. Today we want to take a moment to simply say: thank you.

ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC 5 are both mature web application frameworks that run on the .NET Framework 4.8. While they share the same runtime environment, they generate vastly different HTML output and follow fundamentally different architectural patterns.

In this post, we'll dive deep into the generated HTML, examining forms, inputs, buttons, injected JavaScript, and the infamous ViewState.

We're excited to announce the technology preview test release of the MVC Pipeline for DNN! A significant amount of work has gone into finalizing these changes to deliver a testable preview. We invite you to explore this release, test it thoroughly, and share your feedback with us.

As per version 10.2.0 of DNN the code that used to be in the sample modules (MVC/SPA) repository (https://github.com/dnnsoftware/Dnn.Platform.Samples.Mvc) has been moved to /Dnn Platform/Modules/Samples. This move serves three purposes:

As DNN continues to evolve, we’re increasingly relying on modern .NET libraries distributed through NuGet. This has opened the door to powerful new features and integrations — but it’s also brought with it an old and familiar problem: DLL hell. In this post, we’ll walk through why our traditional upgrade process no longer fits today’s reality, and how we’re moving toward a more robust, installer-driven approach to keep your sites stable and easier to upgrade.

Take a first look at the DNN MVC Pipeline (MVCPL) in this admin settings Video walkthrough! 

For a next minor release (e.g. 10.2) we are planning to move DNN Platform off a project called Client Dependency Framework (CDF in short). We need you to help us test the proposed alternative.

In our previous blog post, we introduced the idea of creating a true MVC pipeline for DNN. From the very beginning, we want to be open and transparent about how this project evolves. That’s why we are sharing updates as we go, instead of only publishing results at the end

My last post talked about a new community effort to bring an MVC pipeline to DNN Platform.  As you may know, that could really open a door to a transition to .NET, as sites may no longer need to have any dependency on .NET Framework.  For this to happen, we have a LOT of things that we need to discuss, and this post is just one of my first posts, sharing some of the ideas, questions, and thoughts that I have of how we might be able to make this transition a reality.

It has been just about 5 years since my last overall update blog post was shared regarding DNN Platform, high-level technology needs, and future roadmap items. A lot has happened over these years, both for DNN itself, our community, and technology as a whole.  We have accomplished many of the goals that were outlined at that time, and we have some great new efforts by various DNN Community members that we need to revisit, embrace, and see where they will take the DNN Platform in the coming years.