I picked up a copy of Professional DotNetNuke 4 from Wrox Press yesterday. Chapter one was so interesting, I couldn't put it down. It was quite fortunate that I started reading it, given my earlier troubles the same day with iTunes.

The first chapter is by Shaun Walker and he paints a really interesting picture of the history of the product, some if his biggest mistakes, strokes of luck and gems of wisdom he discovered along the way. Its a very interesting chapter and I highly recommend, if not require, reading it if your involved at any level with DNN.

I admit that I've been a little disappointed with some features in DNN. Perhaps I've been swayed by some nay sayers, but after reading that rah-rah chapter, I'm back on board. I feel its an outstanding product for its niche. I'm sure other applications can fit similar niches quite well, but to be sure, DNN does what it says, very well. I'm sure that I'll also pursue a custom WCM route at the same time for a variety of reasons, but I sure do appreciate all that DNN does.

If you're waffling on using DNN, here are next questions you need to ask yourself:

1. Are you susceptible to the Not-Invented-Here syndrome?
2. Does XHTML 1.0 mean that much to you over HTML 4.01?
3. Are you willing to work with an existing framework, including its constraints, or to you think your time is better spent creating a new framework, with new constraints?
4. Are you planning on using any of the core modules, commercial modules, or custom built modules?

Here are some interesting points I learned in the first chapter:

1. Page 15 - DNN is ADA and Section 508 compliant
2. Page 24 - DNN was a mere 15K lines early on, ballooned to 46K lines, and now is well over that metric
3. Page 31 - DNN found its way into Fortune 500 companies, the military, goverment websites, and international vendors
4. Page 31 - DNN has over 30 language packs, now that's local!
5. Page 33 - A important part of DNN 3.0 was the inclusion of Forum, Blog and Gallery modules
6. Page 36 - Hosting companies integrated DNN offerings into SW-Soft (Plesk), WebHostAutomation (Helm), and Ensim
7. Page 37 - DNN will happily run on a web farm
8. Page 40 - When DNN 3.1 was released, the core team believed it will be some time before DNN can be considered a market leader in Content Management offerings
9. Page 48 - In November, 2005 they had 200,000 registered users. They currently have over 350,000.
10. Page 49 - By the end of 2005, www.dotnetnuke.com had achieved an impressive Alexa ranking of 6,741 and a SourceForge.Net ranking of #75 out of all open source projects.