Core Team

The core team comprises individuals invited to join the team by Shaun Walker, whom they affectionately call the "Benevolent Dictator". Their invitations were based on their contributions and their never-ending support of others in the DotNetNuke forum. Each team member has a certain area of responsibility based on his or her abilities. From database functionality and module creation to skinning, they are the ones responsible for the continued advancement of the framework. However, not being a member of the core team does not mean that you cannot contribute to the project. There are many ways for you to help with the project. Many developers create custom modules they make freely available to the DotNetNuke community. Other developers create skins they freely distribute. Still others help answer the many questions in the DotNetNuke forum. You can also be a contributor to the core architecture. You are welcome to submit code improvements to extend, and/or expand the capabilities of DotNetNuke. These submissions will be evaluated by the core team and could possibly be added to the next version.

The DotNetNuke Discussion Forum

When the DotNetNuke project started, one of the things that helped to propel forward its popularity was the fact that its forums were housed on the ASP.NET forums website (http://www.asp.net/forums/showforum.aspx?forumid=90). With well over 200,000 individual posts in the main DotNetNuke forum alone, it was, and continues to be one of the most active and attentive forums on the ASP.NET forums website (http://www.asp.net/forums/). Beginning sometime after the version 3.x release, the DotNetNuke team puts its finishing touches on its own forum module. It now utilizes this module for most new DotNetNuke questions (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/tabid/795/Default.aspx). In both forums, you will find help for any issue you may be having in DotNetNuke.

The main forum is where you will find most of the action, but there are also sub-forums covering topics such as Core Framework, Resources, Getting Started, and Custom Modules. You can search and view posts in any of the forums but will need to register if you want to post your own questions or reply to other users' posts. The great thing about the forums is that you will find the core team hanging out there. Who better to answer questions about DotNetNuke than those who created it? However, do not be shy, if you know the answer to someone else's question feel free to post an answer. That is what the community is all about: people helping people through challenging situations.

The Bug Tracker

Like any application there are bound to be a few bugs that creep into the application now and then. To manage this occurrence, the DotNetNuke core team uses a third-party bug tracking system called Gemini, by CounterSoft. The bug tracker is not for general questions or setup and configuration errors; questions of that nature should be posted in the discussion forum. You can view the status of current bugs at the Gemini site (http://support.dotnetnuke.com), but will not be able to add new bugs to the system. Reporting a bug is currently done by posting to the DotNetNuke forum. Follow the guidelines currently posted there (http://www.asp.net/forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=752638). To summarize: you need to first search the bug tracker to make sure that it has not already been reported. If you cannot find it in the system you will need to supply the forum with exactly what you did, what you expected to have happen, and what actually happened. Verified bugs will be assigned to core team members to track down and repair.

DotNetNuke Project Roadmap Team

If you want to find out what is in the works for future releases of DotNetNuke then you will want to check out the DotNetNuke Project Roadmap (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Development/Roadmap/tabid/616/Default.aspx). The main purpose of this document is as a communication vehicle to inform users and stakeholders of the project's direction. The Roadmap accomplishes this by using User Stories. User Stories are closely related to Use Cases with the exception that they take the view of a fictitious customer requesting an enhancement. The priority of the enhancements depends on both the availability of resources (core team) and the perceived demand for the feature.