Coimpliments for your blog. I support your vision and attitude.

I want to add one thing to people who complain about problem releases: get involved and offer your support in testing or bug trashing. Spend time on a contribution, not on complaining.
There is so much good in DNN for free, why not give something back?

Ernst Peter,

Very valid point, I'm going to update my post to include that as well!

Thank you for a well-written and timely post on your thoughts of the DNN community and the recent releases. I pretty much mirror your opinions and thoughts. I think people are too quick to pass judgement lately, instead of trying to understand what's going on. Having going through growing pains at a few different companies now, I know better than most that these things happen, despite our greatest efforts and best intentions. In the end, the warning indicators are not that something went wrong. That will happen. There's no way around it. A true warning indicator for those who are skeptical is to pay attention to what happens when something does go wrong.

The release process and the sometimes painful upgrade process is really an achilles heal for the platform. I've been using DNN for a long time, a lot longer than most, but it is a system not built for novices to install, maintain and upgrade. You're almost guaranteed every release is going to have a major bug. I can only remember a few releases that I would consider "stable" (subjective term, BTW).

In contrast, try Wordpress. I don't think WP is as flexible as DNN in some aspects, but for the handful (5 so far) that I've done, the upgrade process is as smooth as can be and the critical bugs are very few and far between. Installing modules, or plugins in WP speak, is a breeze and done directly from the site admin interface. I think DNN should be looking at WP to pick up some pointers on handling installs and upgrades. Usability and stability are things that DNN has lacked, historically speaking.

That said, if you have to use the MS technology stack, there is no better CMS out there from what I can tell. It just needs to improve in those two areas, usability and stability, and a better rating system for third party modules (also better on WP).

Great article about the state of the community. I've noticed as well how quick people are to judge the platform because of a bug that enters into the system upon a release. But as you pointed out it's important to test each update before upgrading sites. Blindly updating leads to more issues.

>Yes a small amount of time, but what about the users that upgraded?

We really thought about exact this case. But what if you have saved backup of every DotNetNuke version and can rollback to previous one in two clicks?

That's why we recommend to every DNN user to use DnnAutoUpgrade module: http://www.snowcovered.com/snowcovered2/Default.aspx?tabid=242&PackageID=17995

Good points Mitchel - I am averaging one upgrade a year these days and only when I need something critical, like the new Telerik Editor etc.

Thanks for the advise Mitchel,

I fully agree with your advice on not doing blind upgrades. I learnt that the hard way :)
The problem is though, that once you have upgraded to a release with a major bug (like the page disappearing bug in 5.4.1 and 5.4.2), your obliged to upgrade to a release that fixed this bug.

I think the DNN Corp should focus on a way to get more feedback from the community on new releases. I know they have tried this already, but there must be a way. The Gemini platform is more for developers. I'm talking about non-developers.

Why not set up a trial site for a new release. Let people register, an toy around with a new release.

Greetings,

Anthony
www.webmove.be

All well said!

I would like to add:

Almost everyone installs 3rd party modules, almost everyone tweaks their intalls to some extent, and just about every single DNN install is different from the next.

With this in mind, it's next to impossible for the DNN team to maintaint compatibility with all vendors, unless a release is tested by end-users and vendors.

This is the primary reason I will wait for my 3rd party vendors to announce support for a specific release, or I will test an upgrade and report issues to my vendors and DNN.

DNN has been doing a good job thus far, and owns up to any issues when they arise.

I LOVE how a positive post about a product elicits mostly positive comments. This was well written by you Mitchel.

It was long on the positives and very short on any negatives. The true thing that rang out to me was the part about testing, testing, and more testing and not trusting the release of ANY product. There really are too many variables involved to trust a release without seeing how it behaves with the other products involved.

Saying that...I would like to know if the latest release was pulled back because it was an interference with a third party module(s), or was it something NOT to do with third party modules, but rather, was a poor release?

Thank you for your thoughts and knowledge, as always.

@Mark -

Based on Joe's post it is mostly due to third party issues and a bug in the Data Access Layer of the API.

DotNetNuke is a great platform, I just wish there was more emphasis on the UI. Reduce the postbacks, make the action menus work without delay, make the new ribbon-bar actually attractive and intuitive (I could go on). If they could focus on UI for a few releases instead of developer-centric features, they could make a lot of non-programmer administrators giddy thus raising satisfaction levels at the top-of-the-chain: consumers.

Nice Post with a good focus.
I am a bit of a feature addict so I really update as soon as I can, with the exception of full Point upgrades. I am slower at these that I like.

The funny thing is that I really like where DNN is now. I would much prefer a bold company that is willing to stumble a bit than a painfully slow company where you wait for what seems like forever for small updates. Instead of arriving in a few years to your next "Dream" it is more like next year. That fits with my patience.

The Coping mechanisms you mention will protect 99% of the people from serious issues.

@Mike: Hallelujah to that!

As the (still fairly new) UX/UI Developer at DNN Corp I can't help but agree that we should be spending time focusing on improving the user experience and the user interaction of DNN's existing features.

Given the nature of the business, I doubt we'll ever be able to get away from providing at least some new features in each release, but I can tell you that we already have some UI improvement initiatives included in the roadmap for the next year or two so you can expect to see improvements around the user experience over the next several releases.

I welcome feedback and suggestions relating to DNN UX from any community member, so feel free to email me with your ideas. I can't promise when or if we'll implement any specific suggestion, but I can guarantee that I'll read everything I'm sent, will give serious consideration to any reasonable suggestion and will reflect upon any valid feedback.

Thanks,
:-j(enni)

DotNetNuke Corporation
UX/UI Developer
** Walking on water and designing to requirements are easy, so long as both are frozen. **

Well stated Mitchell. In terms of advice one additional but critical thing to mention as far as upgrades. DNN philosophy is to support DNN core and DNN module ONLY. Many times 3rd party vendors are in a reactive mode when a new release occurs. This means that if your site is using a 3rd party module it may work fine with DNN core functionality but may not always be the case for the 3rd party (or custom module). Another reason to delay an update, perform the update in a staging environment before migrating to production.

Unfortunately this is getting difficult for Turkish DotNetNuke Community. Because, we test every new release, report bugs, however having to deal with new issues causes more trouble while developing content. Instead of it we have to deal with breaking issues.

Well, i still believe in DNN. However, heart breaking things happening this year. Adding new features and improvements shouldn't break main purpose of application.

And i strongly recommend anyone to wait a few days/or at least a week or two to upgrade to new release.

Just my thoughts..

Great post....

I do think that most problems are related to 3rd party....

Someone said that there should be a test site... well I totally agree... take for instance DataSprings, I've been using some of there modules, and they have test environments for clients... so when something does not work, everyone can test in in that environment, we can check what is different, and perhaps implement a similar environment if we can (like same DNN version, or avoid using a module that might be brooking something).

But I also think that some parts of the core team do take much time to reply to forum posts with important questions, I mean I get notifications for like everything (one of the reason I do this is to keep track of problems with recent releases) and most of the team its the same person that replies to the same discussions...

So we all need to stick together and help each other instead of complaining with stupid comments and insults, like I so many times see in DNN forums or even codeplex reviews

Thanks Mark for this wonderful piece of information.

Comments from the following blog entry: DotNetNuke 5.x and Beyond - Best Practices Updates, located at: http://www.iowacomputergurus.com/blog/12/dotnetnuke-5x-and-beyond-best-practices-updates.aspx

I'm very confused. My 5.4.2 install is beginning to look very shaky and I just revied the forum for the latest 'stable' release and see a post from a mamber of the core team stating that 4.9.5 is the last stable release for international users. That version is nearly a year old.
I think there needs to be more transparency about the problems and more honesty about what the real situation is.

Kudos Mitch for a well written block of advice for DNN site managers... the "don't upgrade unless necessary" is one that we've had a time explaining to some clients. The "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule applys to DNN (and almost any) site. We advise clients when we see a new feature or functionality that will greatly impact or improve their site, otherwise, for some sites, DNN 3 or DNN 4 older installs are in perfectly fine condition and don't need upgrades