Chapter 1. What is DotNetNuke?

From company intranets to mom and pop shops to local chapters of the 4H club, most organizations are looking to have a presence on the World Wide Web. Open-source web portals answer this demand by providing easy-to-install-and-use websites that are not only extremely functional but also free. Whether it is to sell services or to have a place to meet, web portals play an important part in communications on the Web.

In this chapter, we will first discuss what web portals are and what successful web portals have in common. We will explore different types of open-source web portals and discuss why we selected DotNetNuke for our project over other available portals. In addition, we will cover the benefits gained by using an established program as a framework and the benefits of DotNetNuke specifically. We will then introduce Coffee Connections, our fictional client. We will get a brief overview of Coffee Connections, determine the specific requirements for its website, and gather the requirements using user stories. This will give you a general overview of what to expect from this book and how to best use it depending on your role and experience with web portals and Visual Basic .NET.