I've been at Homax about two months now and have been shopping a Web Framework largely based on DNN (DotNetNuke) around to the executives here.  I've gotten a great response from Ray Mazur, my boss, and also Ross Clawson, the President.   I'm not breaking any new ground with a framework approach to the development of a web platform but it's the first time folks here have considered something so 'formal.' 

If you're reading this post and you have some input for me, please, by all means, let me know. 

The goals of this Web Framework effort are:

• Create brand identity and awareness
• Develop consumer direct markets
• Develop pay-per-click, banner advertising, affiliate, and other opportunities
• Create a scalable, maintainable, and usable platform on which any number of commerce sites can be deployed with relative ease and maintained with minimal IT resources

I think that about covers the scope of projects spanning many months and consisting of large teams.  We have about two months and a rather small team.  Here's a view of the logical architecture:

For the most part, DNN satisfies the requirements we have around architecture but there are a few additions from the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library, a product feed from 1-Sync, some integration with UPS Online Tools, Fedex e-commerce tools, a CMS module from Engage, as well as some home-grown utilities to send product feeds to Google and Live.  We're also working with an SEO firm (WriteSEO) on building in search-engine friendliness into the site.  Much of this work has been done by the DNN team with the recent releases. 

The one item that is still open is the Commerce Services component.  A rather key piece to making this viable.  Homax currently is licensed for the ML product from AspDotNetStoreFront and they're releasing a DNN specific product, but the license model is per-store ($899) which makes putting up the 11 stores planned rather expensive for what is essentially the same feature with no additional value added.  I'm not sure the AspDotNetStoreFront folks really get the concept behind DNN, but since the product is not even in beta yet I doubt it'll be ready for production anytime soon.  There are other commerce products specific to DNN, but they seem quite rough.  I'm currently leaning toward the Store :: Module from Will Morgenweck but it's not passed the DNN release process yet and there's no firm commitment from the team as to a date.  Any suggestions?

Currently I have several installs of DNN on Windows Server 2003 with SQL 2005 on Virtual Server and a variety of modules installed.  All in all I think the DNN product is quite solid, easy to deploy and quite flexible in terms of usage.  As soon as we make a decision on the Commerce component I'll create our baseline install image and get on to putting the sites together.  Already I've create the skin we'll use for the www.StoneCareforDumnmies.com site and a sample of the www.HomaxDeals.com site.  These seem to be fairly straightforward to create and change.

Next post I'll detail more as we decide on the commerce component and put up the test version of our sites.

-Paul