mkizer posted on February 06, 2008 14:45
So, I have moved my original site (Michael.Kizer.ws) to MichaelKizer.com... the .ws just wasn't working for me, plus I wanted to start a DotNetNuke (DNN) portal as an experiment so here it is.
First off, I had no problems with Wordpress at all. It has worked great for my old blog and with all of the features and additional plugins available I even considered building whole websites around the Wordpress engine. My main reason for switching to DotNetNuke (its blog module is rather basic and limited as compared to Wordpress) was to try and limit the different number of website "systems" that I was maintaining and building. I've mostly done my websites on the Linux platform using varying combinations of HTML, CSS, Php, etc. as well as packaged solutions like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. For my day job I was mainly working in a Microsft Windows world, programming against SQL Server databases using Visual Basic and ASP.Net (even created a DotNetNuke site for an internal department quite a while back).
I decided that I really wanted to focus my web projects towards a single solution to make it a bit easier on myself and chose DNN so I could leverage my day job skills as well. I also have a new web project lined up that fit nicely with all that DNN has to offer, so it was about time to dog food DNN on my own sites too. So far so good (although I do miss some of the power that Wordpress offered me, even though I am not a very prolific blogger by any stretch of the imagination).
I created DNN versions of my semi-fictitious business site, Fugazi Designs as well as this personal site rather easily. Plus, running a bunch of the sites as child portals under one main portal is pretty slick. It really makes updating the core DNN much easier (do it for the main site and you are done).
I'm really just scratching the surface of DNN currently, but really like it so far. I also like the direction that the DNN team is taking the framework. There is still plenty of room for improvement, but luckily there are some really great third party developers out there filling in the gaps. I have to plug one in particular, Scott at Ventrian Systems. I'm using several of his modules for DNN and they are super, plus the support he puts behind them is outstanding. They are definitely worth checking out if you want to make your DNN site spectacular.
I'd also like to plug the hosting company that I chose, 3Essentials. They've got great prices, features and very responsive support services. They made setting up and configuring DNN a breeze. Click my referral link below if you are interested in getting your DNN site hosted:
I'll have some more articles in the future as work progresses on my conversion to DNN...Stay tuned.