The old Renegade Minds web site had a few fatal flaws that really doomed it.
Many people that know me have heard me go on about DotNetNuke and how it just plain rocks. We'll, it does, but some 3rd party developers definitely do NOT rock. They just plain suck. This was the core issue for the old site. I was locked into it because of some 3rd party modules that I couldn't easily get rid of. And besides... It was running DNN 2.1.2. Fanstastic CMS, and rock solid, but still, it was a tad old with the new version being at 4.8.x right now.
The problems were basically down to 4 modules:
- Magic Gadget - The biggest problem
- TTTGallery - Similar to Magic Gadget
- ActiveForums
- A Blog module
- Signed up members
Everything simply boiled down to 4 evil words that in IT can also be spelled, "death": LOCKED IN WITHOUT OPTIONS.
It's ok to be locked in if you've a reliable vendor that supports their product and upgrades it in tandem with the market. You've then got the option to upgrade whenever you like. No problems there. I use lots of software and hardware where I'm locked into it without options to go elsewhere. But for the software side, I rarely have any problems upgrading. I do have problems with hardware. It just seems like hardware vendors really like you to buy entirely new products and throw out what would otherwise be perfectly good stuff. Software vendors are much, much better in this area in my own experience.
Well, on to the problems and the solutions.
Magic Gadget was the absolute best thing since sliced bread for DNN. It rocked. It let you use all kinds of nifty tokens to personalize pages for people and was just the cat's meow. I forget what I paid for it, but it was a deal at almost any price.
Then the author dropped off the face of the Earth without so much as a whisper, leaving all kinds of people locked into using his software with no options to upgrade and no source code available. Jerk.
That was bad, as large portions of the site used his DNN module. Yuck. I just didn't want to do all the stupid boring work needed to fix things. Some of them I couldn't fix at all, but there was 1 alternative from Speerio.
The Speerio guy saw this agony that people were in, and promised to deliver the same functionality in his own product! Fantastic! Speerio to the rescue!
So with the promise of replacing Magic Gadet after it had dropped out of sight with an even better solution, pre-sales began. Just buy it now, then later on he'd add in the functionality and you'd get the upgrade for free. Ahem... Yeah...
Well, I bought into it purchased the module. I don't even remember what it was called now as I never got to use it. He never added the functionality. When asked about it, his response was something along the lines of, "You can do it yourself." Umm... yeah... I thought that was what I was paying HIM for.
So that killed that. I stripped out a lot of the MG stuff, but couldn't get it all as it was working so well. Locked in. Not nice.
The next problem was this TTTGallery. It was a gallery for pictures and things. Well, it got dropped to. Just one of those projects that the developer lost interest in. But it was free, so I really can't complain about it much. I was able to import a lot of the content through MS SQL Server into the new gallery that I'm using anyways. So while it was a tad painful, it wasn't all that bad. It got done.
Then there was ActiveForums. I'd purchased like 5 copies of it including source versions for various sites over the years. However, over the few years that I was using it, I'd run into problems that the developer simply wouldn't fix. When I posted in his moderated forums, he'd delete anything that wasn't gushing praise. I'd post and post, and email and email, and simply got no response. Well, in that case I'll put my money somewhere else. While the product was ok, and had a lot of cool functionality, I just got sick of being ignored. Not how I want to treat my customers, for sure.
In the end, I simply decided to ditch the old forums and all the old posts. While I'd like to keep it, it's just too much of a PITA to be bothered with. I'm busy and it's not really all that important when looking forward.
Then there was the blog module. Now this wasn't too much of a problem as I was able to import old posts pretty much seamlessly through MS SQL Server. I lost the names of users in comments, but hey, you can't win them all.
Then there was the issue of importing users. Yuck. The security models were entirely different, and while I would have worried about it for a client, it's not really all that important here at Renegade Minds. The amount of time I'd spend on it simply wouldn't be worth it. Again, just one of those things where you've got to move on with things and get them done sometimes.
So those 5 things stopped me from upgrading the DotNetNuke installation for the Renegade Minds web site. Sigh...
At the end of the day it just turned out to be easier to scrap the entire old site completely and start almost from scratch. I kept a lot of content and the basic design. There are a few tweaks and improvements in the design like some style changes and the search bars, but it's all pretty much the same.
This time around things are all pure stock DNN, and things have been nice and smooth. There are a ton of new features in the site. Well, most people won't see them all, but I certainly do! :) But in addition, I've not got a clear upgrade path for the future and looking forward to it. I've learned a few lessons along the way, and won't make the same mistakes again.
Cheers,
Ryan