Recommendations for commercial Modules

Well I can say from experience that you have just taken the first step in making sure that your future purchases are ones that you are going to like a lot more than your previous ones.

Finding out from people who have "been there and done that" goes a long way in the world of DNN.

By and large, the top sellers on Snowcovered are pretty good, especially if they have maintained those spots for a number of weeks. You won't find all the best modules there though, because as the market has matured, the better vendors have started selling from their own sites.

A new player on the scene called FlatBurger plans to adress your specific concerns head on, and they have already done a good job proving they are up to the task.  Unfortunately you missed the Accelerant Program where a $1000 of modules was offered free for one year so you could try before you by.  But there is more to come from the My FlatBurger where module developers will have access to powerful licensing, and website creators/end users will have the opportunity to find trial licenses of modules.

That being said, I can personally recommend some modules for the tasks you described:

If you don't already have this one (and who doesn't?), get Will Morgenweck's ActiveForums module from ActiveModules.  This package could single handedly handle all the tasks that you asked about.

If you want a specific Articles/News module then you can't go wrong with getting a subscription to Scott McCulloch's site. Actually, it doesn't matter if you want anything specific.  The subscription has so much value that anyone would be crazy not to take advantage of it. You don't have to take my word for it though, check out this thread.

For a full fledged Documents module check out Peter Donker of Bring2Mind's Document Exchange.  It's a little pricey, but if you want to manage documents there isn't a better module in my opinion. 

Cool, I'm glad you were able to take advantage of the FlatBurger deal.  And also happy to know you are a customer of Skincovered.

As far as OnyakTech's modules I have had some success, but I don't have enough experience with most of them to give a decent review.

What modules are you interested in there?

Hi Jesper.. did you know that I'm Danish!! Dual nationality years ago - Lived there for a while too.. In fact, we had frikadellas for tea last week.. :-D YUM... And my daughter her name is Pia.. but I guess I am really Australian - in spite of not being able to speak English as a kid!! Now, here's my thoughts on modules.

I've tried more modules than I care to tell the world about and the amount of time I've worked on trying to get a module to what I think, or how it was portrayed to me has been an interesting experience to say the least.

Sometimes I think there is a lacking in interpretation of what 'developers' think they have written, to how the end user will interpret things. This is generally not related to 'commonly understood' modules like the forums one, which is all I could think of off the top of my head.  But even the Presstopia forums which are different to the Active Modules or default forums has a different way of doing things - based I would think on how a 'good forum' should be developed from another developers perspective.

Take into consideration the different articles modules around apart from Ventrian  (I have to go check my little list before posting here) and I find the 'logic' used by different developers is very interesting indeed.

But does this make a module good or bad?  Or is interpretation of what's good relate to how it installs??  I'll be honest with you - I've purchased the Onyak subscription and found there is value there - but very confusing.. and the skinswitcher which is what I ended up paying for a whole subscription just to get - I couldn't get working - it came up with errors all the time.  I tried a few other modules and had no luck but then moved on to other solutions without really complaining since to be honest, I've read good reports and his modules have successfully ben 'reviewed' by the module reviews program so I'm assuming that perhaps it's my setting somewhere that's causing the error. 

I'm going to give them a try again soon - since I'm going to relaunch a site I started back in 2005 - ModuleReviews - and it was going great until I found that particular module didn't allow developers to mangage their own listing.. it gave them access to all..  That site will be relaunched in the near future but for now here is a good place to voice some opinions on modules.

I can say that I've worked extensively with the ventrian articles module - in fact I've worked with a company in deploying their intranet with 4 websites using less than 40 pages for the whole portal which manages the 4 separate website - and it's running the articles module instead of the html module and it's become one of the most efficient portals I've seen - and I'm going to be flying over to train their staff on utilising DNN more efficiently and I'm keen to see how it pans out in 12 months time since it hooks into a 'document server'.

I think sometimes people should spend more time learning what the standard modules do - and not fall into the trap of installing and then going shopping.

To be honest, I don't use alot of modules. I don't even install all of them - and I don't tell my clients about them either.  I only put on what they need at the time and use the 'premium modules' setting under the Admin/settings area and hide most modules from clients to eliminate questions and support and also if I want to upgrade a site, or export the templates alot of the modules don't either export or have to be redone anyway.

So, back to Onyak - I think he's got some very good modules - I don't think they explained as well as they could be in spite of  having lots of documentation, and they could have better formatting with CSS to integrate more attractively  - but overall, he's been a consistent developer, and supports his products well - which is great so I will try and have a go at his modules I couldn't get working on a 4.4.1 build and see if it wasn't just unlucky that I couldn't get them working and then I'll report back here.. how's that for food for thought.

Nina  -

My recommendation for Web Stats is that you don't try to do them in DNN.  Logging this information in the web application is a serious performance hit.

If you have a dedicated server, then for free web stats try http://www.smartertools.com/Products/SmarterStats/Free.aspx, I use this package and it is great.

Most hosting companies will also provide you with a Stats package, lots of them use SmarterStats.

Or if you don't have access to your server for installing a Stats package then http://www.google.com/analytics/ is probably the best you can get.

Logging your stats outside the application is a good idea in my opinion, and with Google analytics being so good and free it probably keeps a lot of developers from even trying to compete.

Hay there... we were reading through your post, and thought you may be interested in our Announcement / News module.

AnnounceIT

http://www.interactivewebs.com.au/announceit/

We feel much the same way with substandard modules from snow, we have put a lot of effort into our module to ensure that it works as advertised. Hope this is of assistance to people.