Written by: Joe Brinkman
1/2/2009 5:41 AM 

The DotNetNuke project, with the release of DNN 5.0 and DNN 4.9.1, officially moved our project downloads to CodePlex. There were some questions in the DotNetNuke Forums about this and when my response started growing, I thought I would blog about it instead.

To address some specific questions:

Q:  Was this an impulsive decision? 
A:  This is something that has been in planning for many months and was not something done out of impulse. 

Q:  How do I find all of the related projects on CodePlex?  All the downloads were available on the same page at SourceForge.
A:  If you look on the DotNetNuke page on CodePlex, all of the other official DNN projects are listed.  You can also click on the DotNetNuke tag in the tag cloud (visible on the CodePlex homepage) to see a complete list of all DotNetNuke related projects on CodePlex (there are currently 88 listed). 

Q:  Are all of the core projects on CodePlex?
A:  Yes.  Scott Willhite and Shaun Walker worked with the CodePlex team to move over all of the official DNN Projects.  Not only did they move the project downloads, but they also moved the project’s historical data as well.  In addition, since CodePlex is also the official Forge repository, all past and future projects created from the DotNetNuke Forge will also show up on CodePlex.  So now we will have all of our projects consolidated in one spot.  There will still be some community projects which choose to use other repositories, but over time, you will see CodePlex becoming the first place people look for Open Source DotNetNuke related projects.

Why do I think CodePlex a better home for us?

1. We have more control over advertising - On SourceForge it was not uncommon to see companies like Kentico targeting ads to our SourceForge listing.  I personally thought that was over the top.  SourceForge was selling ads which were harmful to the very OS projects they were hosting.  On CodePlex, this cannot and will not happen without the project's consent.  There is an ad network available, but the project must sign-up for the service and the project derives revenue from those ads. Microsoft is pretty financially stable and doesn’t rely on a few ad dollars from CodePlex, so we don’t have to worry about this changing anytime in the near future.  Quite honestly, if they did start putting up ads, I would want to move off there as well.
   
2. We have better access to project stats - On SourceForge, access to project stats were very erratic this past year.  In fact there were whole periods where the stat server was down and the stats were not collected.  In addition, the stats required manual processes to collect, which didn't make it easy to track them.  CodePlex provides us access to our stats in a more automated manner so we can use them to help monitor the health of the project (these stats are but one of many that we use for measuring health).
   
3. CodePlex is more responsive - As anyone who has been on SourceForge for very long knows, they are not very quick to add features or to fix bugs.  It is only in the last year or so that they have started updating SourceForge to be a little more modern.  I had a long talk with the CodePlex program manager, Sara Ford, at CodeMash this past year.  Within a week after returning from CodeMash she had written up my suggestions and added them to the Issue Tracker.  Within a few weeks after that, I started seeing some of my suggestions implemented.  That never happened on SourceForge.  When members of the .Net community asked for SVN support - the CodePlex team got to work figuring out how to provide it.  When the first cut wasn't sufficient, the CP team went back and updated the feature.  This is great customer service and something that CodePlex team obviously takes very seriously.  This is a tradition that started under Jim Newkirk and which Sara has continued.
   
4. CodePlex is targeted at our main user community – As the leading Open Source repository, SourceForge hosts projects for lots of different operating systems and development platforms.  It is not targeted at any one community.  The same is not true of CodePlex.  CodePlex is very squarely aimed at the Windows community and the .Net community more specifically.  Almost everyone who visits CodePlex is a likely candidate to be a DotNetNuke user.  The same is not the case for people going to SourceForge.
   
5. CodePlex provides us better exposure – Lets face it – it is highly unlikely that DotNetNuke will ever have the download numbers of a project like Azureus or eMule.  On SourceForge there are much larger projects than DotNetNuke and those projects receive the bulk of the exposure on SourceForge.  Whereas on CodePlex we are at the top of the heap.  This necessarily affords us more promotion opportunities.  Whether it is our position on the top downloads page, the page views listing, or even within the project tag cloud, there are lots of ways for people to easily find us on CodePlex that were not available to us on SourceForge.  In addition to the exposure from our relative size, we also receive exposure from the branding provided for DotNetNuke related projects which are listed through the forge.  Any project listed in the forge automatically gets a DotNetNuke logo included on the CodePlex project page.  This makes it easy for users to tell that a project is associated with DotNetNuke and provides further exposure to the DotNetNuke project.
   
6. The CodePlex team has a good working relationship with the DotNetNuke team – 2008 saw the launch of the DotNetNuke Forge which allowed DotNetNuke related projects to be listed on CodePlex and DotNetNuke.com.  While preparing for the launch of this program, we had an opportunity to work with the CodePlex team.  We were very appreciative of their assistance and their willingness to work with us to add features which we found crucial to helping our projects stand out and succeed.  Having worked with the CP team, we are confident that if there were significant problems our concerns would not be brushed aside.  I believe that had the Stats server gone down on the CodePlex site, like it did on SourceForge, they would have been much more responsive to fixing it, and they would have been better at keeping us, and their other hosted projects, informed of the issue.  I know that CodePlex will never give us everything we want or could hope for, but at least I know that they are listening, and are willing to help when and where they can.
   

In summary, I am confident that our CodePlex experience will be 1000 times better than our foray onto GotDotNet several years ago (I would include a link but alas GDN is no more - Sara can you still get me my old files on GDN?) and I am looking forward to continuing to forge a much stronger relationship with the CodePlex team.  They are a great group of people who really want to help the .Net Open Source community and I for one am happy to be associated with them.

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Tags: DotNetNuke , CodePlex

Categories: DotNetNuke

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