What is DotNetNuke?
DotNetNuke is an open-source Web Application Frame-work ideal for creating and deploying projects such as commercial websites, corporate intranets and extranets, online document management or publishing portals and custom vertical applications. DotNetNuke is provided as open-source software, licensed under a BSD agreement. In general, this license grants the general public permission to obtain the software free-of-charge.
DotNetNuke was originally based on the IBuySpy Portal released by Microsoft as a sample application for the .NET Framework. Later it has been expanded and developed far beyond the initial functionality of IBuySpy by the group of talented enthusiasts and is now in its fourth edition. Today DotNetNuke is being maintained by Perpetual Motion Interactive Systems Inc. that also owns DotNetNuke trademark. Version 4.0 or later requires version 2.0 of the .NET Framework, but earlier versions will run on ASP.NET 1.1.
DotNetNuke Features
Important feature of DotNetNuke is its extensibility. DotNetNuke has a basic core which can be extended using pluggable
modules and providers that enable additional functionality; the look and feel of individual sites (or even
individual pages
within one web site) can be customized using skins. Interfaces for modules, providers and skins are well documented and
supported with programmer's manuals thus giving a chance for third party developers to create their own custom components.
About thirty basic modules are included with the core DotNetNuke distribution, and further modules can be downloaded from
the DotNetNuke website including e-commerce systems, document management systems, photo galleries, blogs, forums, wiki,
mailing list and many others. Additional third party modules are provided by both the open source community and proprietary
commercial developers. No programming is needed to plug in new modules - new standard or custom modules can be installed
easily and automatically by uploading them through the administration pages.
DotNetNuke has a skinning architecture which provides a clear separation between design and content, enabling a web designer to develop skins without requiring any specialist knowledge of development in ASP.NET: only a knowledge of HTML and an understanding of how to prepare and package the skins themselves is required. Skins consist of basic HTML files with placeholders for content, menus and other functionality, along with support files such as images, stylesheets and Javascript, packaged in a Zip file. Like modules, skins can be uploaded and automatically installed through the administration pages.
DotNetNuke includes a flexible role-based access control system that gives an opportunity to create an arbitrary number of user groups (or roles) with different access rights to individual parts of the web application, to individual pages or even to individual modules within each page. It means, for example, that accessing the same web page, two users with different access rights may see totally different content on this page. It is very important for business applications where users often have different rights depending upon their positions and their duties in the company.
DotNetNuke-based custom solutions
Intelligence-Soft software engineers and web developers have a great deal of expertise in the development of custom web applications and corporate portals based upon DotNetNuke technology. Read more about our expertise in the DotNetNuke development on custom DotNetNuke solutions page.
