by Nik Kalyani
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 1:50:37 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
InfoWorld's recent comparison of Open Source web CMS systems gave DotNetNuke high marks with a "Very Good" rating. DotNetNuke was the only ASP.NET-based contender in the field of five. We are working hard on many exciting new enhancements and it won't be long before we will bridge the gap from "Very Good" to "Excellent." You can see the report on which this comparison table is based:
| |
DotNetNuke |
Alfresco
Community Edition |
Drupal |
Plone |
Joomla |
| Version |
4.4.5 |
2.1 |
5.2 |
3.0 |
1.0.13 |
| Publisher |
DotNetNuke Corporation |
Alfresco Software |
Drupal |
Plone Foundation |
Open Source Matters |
| |
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|
| Rating |
Very Good |
Excellent |
Very Good |
Very Good |
Very Good |
| |
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| Criteria
(weight) |
|
|
|
|
|
| Ease-of-use
(25%) |
9 |
9 |
8 |
9 |
8 |
| Features
(25%) |
8 |
10 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
| Security
(15%) |
8 |
9 |
9 |
8 |
8 |
| Scalability
(15%) |
9 |
9 |
8 |
9 |
9 |
| Management
(10%) |
8 |
8 |
8 |
9 |
9 |
| Value
(10%) |
8 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
| Score |
8.4 |
9.2 |
8.3 |
8.6 |
8.4 |
| |
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|
| Cost |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE |
| License |
BSD-style license |
GPL 2 with FLOSS exception |
GPL |
GPL |
GPL |
| Platforms |
ASP.NET, Windows Server, SQL Server 2005 |
Windows and Linux |
Apache or IIS Web servers; Unix, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows or
Mac OS X; PHP; PHP-supported database server (MySQL or PostgresSQL) |
Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, Solaris and SuSE |
Apache, PHP, MySQL |
| Support |
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| Website |
dotnetnuke.com |
alfresco.com |
drupal.org |
plone.org |
joomla.org |
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| Bottom
Line |
Written in VB.Net, DotNetNuke is an extensible content management
system suitable for intranets, extranets, and public Web sites. The core
distribution includes three dozen CMS modules, including a skin system (based
on simple templates) that separates design from content, personalization, and
search; other modules range from e-commerce systems and photo galleries to
blogs, forums, and wikis. Commercial publishers offer other components. |
This very inclusive offering, developed using Java, sits on top
of a JSR-170 content repository. Out of the box Alfresco provides a Web
portal framework; CIFS (file share) interface that works on Windows and Linux
clients; and a Web-content management system –- plus document, imagine, and
records management. Further, Alfresco scales well with options for deploying
content to multiple servers. |
Written in PHP, Drupal's Web application framework anchors a
content management system that includes modules for e-commerce and workflow.
Drupal, unlike other systems, also has a taxonomy system to classify content
– but this does take extra work to configure (as does setup). Themes are
created with the standard PHPTemplate engine. A blogging system makes this
system good for building online communities. |
The Plone CMS, which is built on top of the Zope application
server, performs well for intranets – as well as a document management server
and team collaboration tool. The system is easy to use and also notable for
its multi-lingual capabilities. Additionally, Plone powers a number of
high-traffic Internet sites, though this configuration should included
additional components, such as Squid caching. |
Joomla, written with PHP and back-ended by a MySQL database, is
appropriate for external Web sites and intranets. The system's caching
provides good performance on higher-volume sites while various extensions
cover essential CMS functions; these plug-ins include news, blogs, polls,
search, and internationalization. To further expand functionality, such as
site backup, both free and commercial components are readily available.
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by Nik Kalyani
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 11:03:04 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
After having successfully weaned myself completely off Outlook, I decided that Internet Explorer was a good candidate to also stop using. Realistically, I doubt I can ever completely stop using IE seeing that I have develop web software and need to test with it, but I can certainly choose to not use it for everyday browsing. For two weeks now, my default browser has been Firefox. And I am loving it.
In addition to not crashing as often when I have 15-20 tabs open, the single most compelling feature for me is Firefox's "Restore session?" dialog when you startup the browser after a not-so-clean shutdown of the computer. I love the fact that without doing anything, Firefox remembers all the tabs I had open when the event that caused my computer to "shutdown unexpectedly" occurred and brings up the browser exactly the way I had it. I am sure IE has a similar feature that I can enable after clicking around through a few dialogs, but the beauty of the Firefox solution is that I had to do nothing.
There are other things I like about Firefox, such as the pretty source code and its color-coded search, overall stability and adherence to standards, etc., but the "Restore session" feature is my favorite.
by Nik Kalyani
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 5:48:54 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
A recent head-to-head comparison of Open Source CMS products credited DotNetNuke with "high
usability, a large number of stock modules, and a penchant for
commerce." The article compares DotNetNuke and other offerings such as
Alfresco, Drupal, Joomla and Plone:
The review identified authentication, workflow and versioning as
shortcomings. Of these authentication has already been addressed in 4.6
and the remaining features are in the pipeline.
We also have some exciting things in store for DotNetNuke 5.0 which will make DotNetNuke even stronger (OpenForce '07 attendees will get a first-look).
by Nik Kalyani
Tuesday, October 02, 2007 6:40:32 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
It is now one month since I started using Zimbra, a free, Open Source
mail server. I previously used Thunderbird, then started using Outlook in order to handle calendaring with work colleagues. I have hated the Outlook experience every
step of the way. Here are some of the problems: - Periodically need to shut-down and restart the app to get new mail
- Regular White Screen of Death situations where the app just goes white and does who-knows-what before returning control
- Lousy feed handling (I use Google Reader now and it is fantastic)
- Problems keeping Internet calendar sync'd
- S-L-O-W
Outlook is probably good if you have one or two email
accounts, but when you are managing more accounts and mixing IMAP/POP,
Outlook just is not up for the task. I got totally fed-up with the whole situation a month ago, and started searching for an
alternative. More specifically, I looked for a web-based alternative that so closely
resembled a desktop client, that you would not be able to tell the
difference. I found many Windows mail servers but all of them had
crappy webmail clients and the ones that were crappy were too pricey. When I saw the Zimbra demo, I knew my
search was over. One big problem -- it runs on Linux. I saw this as an
opportunity to keep up my skills on the Linux platform. I got a cheap Ubuntu dedicated virtual server at
Linode.com, downloaded and installed Zimbra and a few hiccups later, I
am in email Utopia. All my work and personal email, in one location, web-based with
sharing of Address Books, Calendar, Documents with other family members,
full-support for email identities. To be honest, I did not need to get the virtual server...I found an exceptional hosted service at 01.com that is a pretty good deal, however I have always liked to have full access to my mail server and I did not want to lose this. So far, things have been great. I don't think I am ever going back to Outlook or any other Windows client. The speed, responsiveness and features (that matter) of the Zimbra web client rival and exceed those of most Windows client (definitely better than Outlook). Drag-and-drop, context menus, alerts...everything just works. I look forward to seeing what innovative things happen with Zimbra now that Yahoo! has purchased it.
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