Hello. We would like to create a fully featured community portal for our county. In addition to advanced content management and administrative controls, we would like forums, an event calendar, a photo gallery, a file depository (downloads) scheduling tool,
polls, classified ads, news feeds, a mailing list manager and more. In your opinion, between DotNetNuke, IBuySpyPortal and Rainbow Portal, which: a) is more stable b) is more mature c) has the best feature set d) has the most and best available modules We
would like to choose the best product at the start of our project so we don't end up changing mid way through. Any and all opinions would be very much appreciated!
I posted most of my reply in the DNN forum but I will try to comment more on your core question here (and less on responding to the enthusiastic response from DNN members - few of whom may have really addressed your questions.) You will want to check out the
content management and administrative controls between the two if that is most important to you. There are significant differences between the two in my experience. Rainbow has a two-stage approval process for newly uploaded content for many modules (unless
you only need this for forums). I have not seen this solution in DNN, though it may be available in some commercial packages. Both portals have the rest, although the mailing list manager is pretty basic in Rainbow and would not be likely to meet your needs
if you want to send different newsletters to different user groups. The one in DNN is better IMO. But if your needs are very sophisticated, you may not be satisfied with either built in solution and it would not be hard to write/modify any of the many newsletter
programs available to pull the data from the portal db. For that matter, it would be pretty easy to modify Rainbow's newsletter to be able to send based upon group affiliation. IMO and based upon experience with both: a.) Rainbow is more stable (Part of the
problem with DNN is multiple current versions, very rapid releases with a lot of confusion about which third-party modules work with what, they've just really gotten their core team and procedures in place, etc. I have fun with DNN, but I've spend far too
much time trying to get different release packages loaded with the full set of modules/functionalities I required.) b.) Rainbow is more mature (started 11/2002 versus 3/2003) It already has a skinning solution that works (although we're working on getting
it a bit more user friendly). Still, it is not hard to get great results from the package as is. (Compared to DNN just releasing what they say is a service release that has a skinning solution but is still pretty buggy based upon forum posts - it incorporates
skinning solutions, ADO, Esperantus and some pretty major upgrades so I'm not nearly as sanguine that these will be all fixed in a few days. But isn't playing with the code part of the fun? I'm sure it is for many Community members. c.) Depends upon your needs.
Rainbow comes with 45 modules that work (mostly) out of the box. DNN somewhat fewer. Both have different strengths. d.) Again, depends upon your needs. Both are somewhat geared towards supporting developers who are creating multiple portals for clients. DNN
has more third-party modules that can be purchased for a pretty minimal sum, while Rainbow seems more committed to open-source ideals and has more core and freely available modules. I've wasted a lot of time (days) trying to get different modules loaded and
working in DNN all at the same time, with worry about what happens when I want to upgrade. With Rainbow, I only added a couple of modules and both worked - total time spent was 15 minutes or less. I'm feel pretty good that all the modules I'm using will continue
to be included and supported in the next release. Because of the very rapid rate of new module development, DNN has pulled ahead some this summer, but then many core Rainbow team members appear to have taken the traditional long summer holidays (vacation)
and so I can't really judge what will happen in the fall. Dave Wakefield SSTS Inc.
An additional consideration: The core development for Rainbow is in C#. A VB version was available, but it is a port and I think it is very out of date. I believe DNN is based on VB. If you plan on doing your own enhancements, fixes, new modules, etc, this
may be a very important consideration.
prdc
Member
50 Points
10 Posts
Why Rainbow Portal? Why not DotNetNuke or IBuySpyPortal?
Aug 29, 2003 08:08 PM|LINK
hermitw
Member
705 Points
141 Posts
Re: Why Rainbow Portal? Why not DotNetNuke or IBuySpyPortal?
Aug 30, 2003 05:08 AM|LINK
mmcfarlane
Member
25 Points
5 Posts
Re: Why Rainbow Portal? Why not DotNetNuke or IBuySpyPortal?
Sep 01, 2003 10:41 AM|LINK
cisakson
Member
140 Points
28 Posts
Re: Why Rainbow Portal? Why not DotNetNuke or IBuySpyPortal?
Sep 04, 2003 03:25 AM|LINK