I am looking to develop a website for a club that I am in. Just a few simple pages plus a photo gallery. Nothing crazy complicated. The thing that I want to add is the ability for someone to log in and edit the text without having to have access to the original files or the webserver. (Similar to how a mod can edit the front page of TWW). I have looked at Dot Net Nuke and it is ok....but I am having trouble to get it to work. I have the layout and everything that I want, but looking for some advice on how to make it editable through IE.

Any cool tools out there or programs similar to DNN maybe a lil less complicated to set up?

2/19/2006 2:16:42 PM

http://students.engr.ncsu.edu/

If this club falls in MAE, ask one of your department IT folks how to get COE student organization webspace setup.

2/19/2006 2:26:49 PM

Erm - if you have DNN running then it is as simple as giving roles edit rights to certain pages/modules through the page/module settings when logged in as an administrator/host.

It really doesn't get much simpler than that.

2/19/2006 2:28:22 PM

unless you are going to host this website privately, forget about it.

the NCSU ITD sucks donkey shit balls for ANY dynamic hosting. They charge you 100+ bucks a year for access to a database (which you need with any nuke/cms app) and you are limited to php as far as server side scripting goes.

2/19/2006 5:31:36 PM

Wordpress or a simple CMS to start you off

and get outside hosting. ITD is such a ripoff.

2/19/2006 8:53:50 PM

find a CMS that works for you... http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

2/19/2006 8:57:48 PM

ill recommend drupal and mambo

2/19/2006 9:27:49 PM

yeah ncsu is not an option because I am no longer in school.

DNN is ok but I don't know VB...just C based languages.

2/20/2006 6:48:48 AM

If you just want to get a web site up and running, you do not need to know vb.net at all to use DotNetNuke. It has plenty of modules out of the box, including a standard html one, which will do most everything you need. Many, many people run DNN who do not know anything about programming at all.

Plus, since it is written in .NET, you can use ANY .net language to develop modules for it (which you really shouldn't have to do), including C#.

2/20/2006 9:41:26 AM

except you HAVE to use a Windows hosting environment which means more $$$, less flexibility, less end user control, and less open-source code to work with.

http://www.drupal.org
http://www.mamboserver.com
http://www.postnuke.com
http://www.phpnuke.org
http://www.wordpress.org
http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/

Are some of the MANY available. Don't get suckered into .net

2/20/2006 5:07:35 PM

^ahhh wordpress is a good one.

avoid .net like the plague

2/20/2006 5:13:09 PM

There is nothing wrong using another environment. Use the tool that gets the job done.

Those who discount another language completely are morons. .NET is here to stay and it kicks ass. Remember that when the next headhunter you talk to says "Do you know .NET?"

However, again, if you are just running a web site there are a ton of tools Noen has proffered that would do just as fine as job. If, however, Noen is implying something about .NET, that would be dissapointing.

2/20/2006 8:49:42 PM

I'm implying that is costs significantly more money to develop with, run and support a .net application.

Which is the absolute truth.

2/20/2006 9:14:37 PM

So you mean for a straight winforms app? A smart client? ASP.NET? C#?

Throwing in "developing with" implies that something like Java or some other language is better, which it is not; they are a wash in most respects.

Upfront tools and server costs are only part of the equation. I agree, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server is not a cheap investment, coupled with Windows 2003 Server/Sql Server 2005/XP Pro licenses and whatever other licenses you need. My teams are very efficient at what they do - we use Microsoft Best Practices - i.e. NDoc/Unit Testing/Automated builds/n-tiered architectures/Database agnostic DALs. Combine that with an incredibly robust toolset such as VS 2005 with Sql Server 2005 + Sql IS/AS for BI, and TFS for source control/project management, you have a great one stop, pluggable toolset.

2/21/2006 10:33:55 AM

^
Serious Question: How much does it take in terms of time and money to train and setup everything you mentioned there?

2/21/2006 11:32:15 AM

Its not cheap.

I don't know offhand what the license costs are for Server 2003 Ent + Sql Server 2005 ent. 2k$ each?

We upgraded our MSDN licenses to universal before November 9th so we got in "under the radar" with Team Foundation Server. It would have been a lot more expensive otherwise. So it ended up being a few grand a seat for TFS clients/Visual Studio 2005.

In terms of training, I only hire .NET people for my group. I do interview all C++ candidates for another group as well, since I am pretty much an expert there. This means that most of these candidates are already versed in .NET 2003 and some even in Visual Studio 2005.

The TFS aspects are pretty easy to pick up. Overall the IDE is awesome to work with - there are so many features you cannot begin to learn them all. Unit testing built in now (they hired the nunit author). Nant type build environment built in. Task and bug management with source control built in (NOT SourceSafe!). With BI studio integrated into VS2005 you get all your OLAP and SIS goodness integrated into VS 2005 now as well.

My one major complaint with VS2005 is that it is a hog. It tries to do so much dynamically (dynamic help, dynamic refactoring, etc), that sometimes it inexplicably hangs for a few seconds every once in a while which is very frustrating. And this is on a 3ghz/1 gig machine.

2/21/2006 12:44:10 PM

God I love my microsoft employee product pricing

2/21/2006 1:01:08 PM

Exactly.

Total Licensing cost to run a production *nix environment to support perl/c/php/jsp/java and mysql/postgresql is the 300 bucks to get plesk, cpanel or whatever virtualization management environment you want. If it's a dedicated server, it's completely free.

If you want to include all the IDE tools, for 90% of the php development out there, ultraedit or any other text editor with code completion will suffice for about 40-50 bucks.

To match up against VS, PHP has the Zend suite and Java had Eclipse and it's cronies. Both of which are vastly cheaper to purchase and implement.

NEXT is the cost of development.

With PHP, 99.9% of the time, I can save my clients multiple if not hundreds of hours of development cost by using existing opensource frameworks. The open source repositories for PHP are astoundingly large. .NET has NOTHING to compete with this. Which is why it's so much more expensive to develop.

2/21/2006 2:25:26 PM

First lets make an important distinction: ASP.NET != .NET.

You are talking straight, simple web design.

I am talking enterprise development, where the web facade is only a small part on top of business objects, business entities, and the DAL. We leverage our BO's across COM via interop in our MFC legacy applications. We also use our BO's with windows services and winform smart client applications that leverage rich client UI over the web. All in ONE package. No third party libraries except a single one for some UI elements. That is source control, unit testing, build management, change tracking, web projects, windows services, c++ projects, mfc, OLAP and database projects, DTS packages, C# winform/bo/be/dal, web services. In one incredible, completely pluggable IDE - one that even the Java purists admit to me (sometimes, if they are drunk, and I hound it out of them, and i let them sleep with my sister) kicks ass.

In this case, sure, Java is its main competitor, and Java does its job well.

In our case - and in many MS houses - the idea is that there will be a positive ROI of a unified approach to development in exchange for long term developability and maintainability of a large code base. This has been discussed ad nauseum in the Windows vs open source debates and TCO on the net.

And yes, I do use DotNetNuke at work for our intranet, instead of Sharepoint, to save money

2/21/2006 5:23:24 PM

it looks like word press has everything that i need...thanks for all the suggestions guys!!

2/21/2006 6:57:37 PM

i've done around 10 wordpress installations and you can make it do whatever you want.

we're (open lab) working on a college of management wordpress currently...

2/21/2006 7:04:47 PM

^^^

I am talking scalability. With PHP, I can do straight, simple web design. I can also develop into mid-level enterprise applications. I will grant you that for large scale enterprise, php doesn't make any sense, and Java is a much much more viable alternative.

That is source control, unit testing, build management, change tracking, web projects, OLAP and database projects, web services.

This stuff should be done in ANY professional development environment. And it can all be done with a myriad of ide's for php and java.

The ONE thing Visual Studio has going for it is it's IDE. Having used VS since it's inception, I will admit that it's hands down the best integrated IDE on the market. But that doesn't make development with it inherently faster or cheaper.

Quote :

"In our case - and in many MS houses - the idea is that there will be a positive ROI of a unified approach to development in exchange for long term developability and maintainability of a large code base. This has been discussed ad nauseum in the Windows vs open source debates and TCO on the net. "

Problem is that MS hasn't stuck with any of their language constructs over the years. Which really throws the whole long term debate out the window. They were behind J++ like it was god back in the 90's. Then it was determined VB would be it. Then we saw ASP roll in. Then came C# and the .NET architecture. Now instead of one grand unified platform, they have C,J#,C#,ASP and VB to support, develop and maintain.

I think it's rediculous how over-budgeted and over-engineered the VAST majority of systems have become. Maybe it's just been my experiences in government, but it's retarded. People have lost a bit too much common sense in this progression to throw out the most acronyms, create frameworks for non-existant needs, chart, analyze and track projects that should take a tenth the manpower and a hundredth the time to bring to production.

2/21/2006 11:08:30 PM