Clive Best

For my work here I have been getting into DNN as a content management system and portal builder. Some observations:

1. It is not at all easy to install and configure. Here there have been problems with Vista and IIS 7.0.
2. Once installed it is easy to start building a portal. However I have had problems with some of the standard modules. For example Feed Explorer is a nightmare. It is very cool but cannot handle OPML files unless they are in the specific format they require. URL encoding doesn’t seem to work - EMM RSS feeds fail because they contain an & sign, which even if escaped fail to load, whereas copying the same file to anther site with a simple URL works. I also have the feeling this particualr core module is commercial as whenever there is an error it doesn’t tell you but defaults to view DNN marketplace for sales.
3. Modules we like and seem powerful are “user defined tables” “repository (archives of documents)” “reports” - simple SQL queries.
4. In comparison to say Drupal I would say that this system is commercial first and open source second. There appear to be some very powerful modules for database interfaces including customised forms - but these cost over 100 dollars - assuming that is they work.
5. The performance of DNN at least on my portable is not very good. Perhaps there are some tuning parameters to improve things . Drupal comes with an inbuilt caching system which is an easier solution, and outperforms DNN even running locally.

I arrived yesterday and am staying in a room at the Hilton. Today I went to sign the rental car agreement and buy some things, and then went for swim in the pool. The weather is sunny but not as hot as you would imagine. Addis is at 2400 meters, which is higher than Cervinia, so although the sun is very powerful, it never gets above 25 degrees and can get really quite cold at night. This place is full of people and I begin to realise that Addis is the diplomatic centre of Africa, and many people stay at the Hilton complex. I am still hoping to get one of their apartments, which are actually cheaper than the rooms and more private. If I am going to stay 6+6 weeks then I would also like to cook my own food, prepare breakfast etc. There is plenty of time to sort that out. However I managed to get an Ethiopian SIM card - but SMS seems to only work within Ethiopia. It even has 3G - but for some reason network connectivity doesn’t work. Meanwhile I will survive on very expensive Hotel broadband - which is not too bad.