I love DotNetNuke and all of what it offers, but after 3 years, and being somewhat battle scarred and weary - I got sick of having to compromise in so many ways with having to put up with 'second' best. And it flows on to many aspects about DotNetNuke that I guess I've had to grin and bear, and I would get so jealous of these very cool and funky looking blogs others had.

I visit and read other blogs and the distinct thing I notice is the lack of "blog" look and feel and functionaliy the DotNetNuke ones have, and partner that with the cumbersome URLS, the awkwardness of getting it to look like blogs (Ok I only made a half arsed attempt) I thought - wow, there has to be some time you make a stand and say - OK - I love the DNN project but I have to stop making excuses for settling for second best.

So, just before Christmas, I talked with John Mitchell who uses DasBlogs and thought I'd give it a try - I had a look at the ones from Presstopia and they are also very good but these blogs have a wider user base and themes you can apply without too much hassle.

Now, what I noticed surprised me - how fast it was picked up by search engines, how I can use the friendly urls which are just perfect - and with the Core DotNetNuke blogs, you'll be waiting a month of Sundays I think to get anything that will work.

I believe they are going to do a push and get the blogs moving this year- I thought they were fantastic when I looked at them and was new to blogging, but found that they have lost the plot somewhat because other things have moved so fast, and we're still working with clunky, matronly module type management.  And when I saw how fast, easy and well placed other blog applications that connect neatly and efficiently to websites, it also gives me the option of not being 'stuck'.

What concerns me about anything in the DotNetNuke core is the inability to upgrade as efficiently - so I've got my xd.com.au website on dnn 3.2.2 (yes that absolute shocker of build) and I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to upgrade my website and business model in the way I think gives me true independence.

Blogs are simply one of those things that are what they are.. I read a while ago - perhaps 3 - 4 weeks about an article saying that blogging will hit it's peak around mid this year -with something like 111 million bloggers world wide - hard to comprehend those figures, but nevertheless, a figure that caught my attention, as we see different ways people are communicating through podcasts, videos, blogging - you name it, we are communicating differently and I don't think some of the core DotNetNuke modules cut it when it comes to 'proper' business practices.

It seems that it's ok to spend all this time telling us how good and special we all are, when really, all I want to have is blogs that look and do what the others do.

What I found about these blogs was it took a little bit to configure them - and I played around with some extensions that do 'clouds', are xhtml, css managed, and as you can see, can be tailored to look like the website too. I guess that's what I'm looking at these days.

In the world of technology and open source, and passion, there also comes a time to think realisticaly that perhaps there is a need to step back and look at what you're trying to achieve as a whole.. rather than thinking that it must be one way or the highway.  I have enjoyed using the dotnetnuke core blogs, but I guess what I'm saying is that I've outgrown them. I stated with them, they were great, but now there are more things that are important to me, and the core blogs don't cut it, so because I want my blogs to grow with me, and not force me to compromise because I'm using DotNetNuke.

So, now I feel that I can actually upgrade my xd.com.au website since I will be bringing all my blogs across to this site in the next short while and work on a fabulous new DotNetNuke build that goes like a rocket.. 

If you are looking at blogs - think hard about how important it is for your business and establish whether you should be keeping this valuable information, independent from any other application - regardless of DotNetNuke or not, so that you're not stuck like I was with the thought of having to upgrade or do a new build of a website.

That's my take on the matter

Nina