Howdy Community )

I have a couple of questions about DNN and its suitability to my tasks.  I am a classic ASP programmer and have recently begun programming in .NET with C#.  I use SQL Server as well.

I have been tasked with building a site with a few features that i "suspect" DNN might help me accomplish quicker and slicker ;)  I am a bit unsure about the terminology so if anyone can answer these questions and or give some advice i would greatly appreciate it! 

Primarily would DNN be a quicker solution for the following (rather then just code in visual studio with .NET)? 

Can anyone suggest modules for the following parts of the site?

My site will be "generally" social networking like but greatly simplified without much of the interconnections that social sites have (messaging, friend list, ect...)

Each user will have thier own profile page allowing photo gallery, contact information, and a bloging section. These profiles will all be formated the same. In other words users cannot move sections around... the blog is always in the same place, the user profile photo/logo always in the same place, contact info in the same place.

Each registered user will have a form to populate thier profile page AND add/organize thier gallery

Each profile will belong to a "group". Each group will have a landing page. Basically these pages will be formated the same... just contain different text and CEO content so each group can be targeting by users search.

What do you call such pages like the "group page"??  page template? or a child portal?  is there available module for creating such a "template" that admins can quickly populate with the appropriate data?

 And thier will be a search form to allow site visitors to search a group or the site for particular profile based on certain fields.

thanks again for helping with this... i only recently found DNN and am curious to use it and join the community.  I have looked into "out of the box" solutions like Sitefinity CMS (commercial software that does the same as DNN??) and things like Your Membership, an out of the box complete hosted solution for social network sites (fairly expensive over the longrun).

It would need a litte modification, but you could get a lot closer to this out of the box with Community Server ( I can't believe I just typed that, but it true) if I understand your requirements here properly. You may want to take a look before you decide. Keep in mind that DNN is free and CommunityServer with this configuration is going to cost you.

Bruce

i looked at community server and besides it being very expensive seemed like OVERKILL.  I dont need the typical "collaboration" features of a normal social networking site... just a Profile for each registered user, each profile associated with a group. Each Group would have its own "home page" or landing page.... just a page with info about what this group is and who's profile should be associated with it.  All the users should be able to modify thier own profile page.

Besides that all thats needed is a search function for non registered or registered users to find these user profiles.

i hate reinventing the wheel so just wanted to know if anyone new of modules that would satisfy these needs keeping SEO in mind...

rich