DotNetNuke is an open source web application framework that is written in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. The content management system (CMS) of DotNetNuke is completely customizable through the use of skins and modules that help in the creation of dynamic websites rapidly. DotNetNuke was first developed on the basis of IBuySpy Portal. This was released by Microsoft as a sample of the .NET framework. Since then it has been diversified and is currently on its 4th edition. The current version of DotNetNuke requires ASP.NET version 2.0 while previous versions will run on ASP.NET version 1.1 One installation of DotNetNuke can serve multiple websites with each site having its own look and feel. Version 4.0 also has multilingual support.
The DotNetNuke web application framework comes with a basic core that is extensible through plugin modules and in this manner it provides added functionality than what comes through the original installation package and includes the look and feel of individual sites through customized skins.
The DotNetNuke project has a board of directors who formed a corporation to control the development of this project in September 2006. The co-founders of this corporation are Shaun Walker, Joe Brinkman, Nik Kalyani and Scott Willhite.
There are close to a dozen plugin modules include with the core package of the DotNetNuke distribution and additional plugins ay be downloaded from the DotNetNuke official website. These plugins serve a lot of functions like ecommerce systems, photo galleries, blogs, forums, wiki, mailing list management, and so on. There are also numerous third-party plugin modules available through the open source community and other commercial software developers. Applying the modules to an existing DotNetNuke installation is very easy. All you need to do is download the relevant plugin and then upload it into the core through the administration web pages that serve as a management front end for the core.
The DotNetNuke architecture was designed to make use skins and hence it has two separate identification objects for content and design. This enables web designers to create skins for websites without requiring to possess any special knowledge about DotNetNuke or ASP.NET framework. All that is required is a basic knowledge of HTML and an ability to visualize how the skins will be implemented so that they can be adequately included into the DotNetNuke core. The skin of a website is nothing more than an empty HTML shell with placeholders where images and colors are going to appear when rendered on the end user's computer. A typical skin is made up of images, style sheets (CSS documents), JavaScript, and so on, all of them compressed into a single file. Once compressed, skins are uploaded into the DotNetNuke core the same way as plugin modules, they are simply uploaded via the administration web interface of DotNetNuke.
DotNetNuke is used globally. That means that the difference between hosting services, languages, end user expectations, administration features, all need to be localized. Every website is unique but when spread across different cultures and languages the term unique in itself gets a unique twist in several directions at once. That is why DotNetNuke provides features that allow easy addition of new languages and their and resource file translations. This includes an application programming interface (API) for core modules as well as the plugin modules for successful localization.
Since version 3, DotNetNuke has provided the localization of all modules that are more or less unchangeable once installed. These parts or components are also referred to as static and are made up of text labels, error messages, information blurbs, help, and graphics that appear throughout the DotNetNuke interface.
The first few releases of DotNetNuke consisted of only static translations. What this means is that DotNetNuke will only translate static content but not content that is dynamically generated at runtime. In other words, translation was not possible for content that was fetched from a database during the execution of the website application.
Localization is a very important part of building websites, especially in countries that have more than one official language. That is why dynamic localization becomes important because without it, all dynamic content would have to be replicated for as many languages as need to be serviced.
DotNetNuke also distributes the authority to manage websites directly to website owners. So all web administrators can use a single DotNetNuke core to manage their websites, intranets, and extranets. This is made easy through the web interface using which these administrators simply browse to the section where they wish to add, remove, or update information.
Since DotNetNuke is an open source product there are no licensing restrictions applicable to its use.