Hi David
I have just registered. I followed the development of the recent fatal avalanche in Tignes on Toviere.
Anyhow, as a sideline business, I supply hosting and other services for content management systems via Web application frameworks using DotNetNuke (DNN7).
I can see you are well versed in coding, and what DNN7 can offer out of the box is a fully functional Portal that can contain further portals and websites. On top of that, the site owner chooses the business modules from those included as standard, or buys other modules from the store, or develops new modules in-house.
In other words, it’s like buying a car chassis ready built, and adding custom modules to finish it, rather than making the chassis, wheels and gears from metal blanks every time you want a new car.
The functionality is completely separate from the visual design which is provided by simply uploading a theme to the skinning engine. There are page skins and module skins.
It provides Straight away a full CMS with authoring and approval workflow, membership facility, social groups, social networking and messaging, blogging, a Forum (Like pistehors is now), documents repository, photo sharing, project management apps.
The user architecture is by Security Group (same as a role). So groups of different levels of user are grouped and each group performs a separate role. e.g. Host; Site admin; Forum Admins, Forum Moderators; Page editor; Specific admins for each business function, and so on.
The core is written in c# but we developers don’t work in the core. The opensource core team of hundreds of international experts does that. We extend the system by developing business modules. These are actually usercontrols developed within a template project format that automatically builds in 3 types of housekeeping functionality.
The commercial version is royalty free, and is available to download free as an opensource licence.
I can offer you a free demo installation on my server for your use.
You could easily install it yourself on any Windows Server. The default database is SQL Server, but other databases are possible.
As for cost, If you host it yourself, you’d bear only your internal costs.
I could host it for you on my reseller capacity for an annual fee, plus fixed price work for development or design.
However, you could have access to the website control panel, do your own design, admin, maintenance etc.
It could be funded by selling subscriptions to include an email account and an independent SMTP server so that people can send email on the move without needing to have a gmail account.
There is also built-in the ability to automatically bill for click-thru banner ads.
Please get in touch if you’d like to get a demo and really see what can be done.
David.Cuthill@Asperto.Net There is one of my demo sites at http://www.asperto.net. Just go on to it and register. You’ll get standard register user status. I’ll then provide you with a page admin username.
As for other changes - I think most social nets now have real names not nicknames, and this engenders more civilised and accountable interactions.
Many thanks
David