Yes, I know, this is not YAF specific - but since YAF is the core of my site at the moment, I hope I can get some help and advice from our knowledgeable members...

First a little background...

I have been running a plain HTML/Classic ASP hobby site since 1998...

I converted my ASP Snitz forum to YAF 1.9.4 RC1 in January this year, this also meant that I dropped any integration with the static site content ("site being reworked" message to visitors), as well as access to it since I thought the forum was "good enough" to keep the site alive. With 2600+ members and 1100+ unique hits per day nowadays, I have decided to do some serious work on the site itself and try to integrate YAF with some kind of CMS.

My original thought was to make a kinda site suite myself with simple self-developed CMS capabilities for articles & news, Photo albums, Wiki, and the YAF forum. I looked at the Screwturn Wiki & Gallery Pro but very soon understood it would be quite difficult for me to make them look ok together. Time and knowledge are the limiting factors. I know the basics of C# & SQL, but not good enough to do more serious web development.

Since all my members are registered with the YAF membership provider, I would of course like to continue using that for a whole site if possible.

I have some "must haves" (or rather, features I would like to implement...)

1 - Site and forum membership should be the same, if possible.

2 - Member mini-sites within the main site framework.

3 - Easy-to-use article & news publishing so Old Goat Neville also can publish with a bit of practice.

4 - Member photo upload/publishing/linking/configurable slideshows.

5 - Must be easy to maintain regarding look/feel and also code updates.

6 - A gang of "site editors" with responsability for different parts of the site and approval of additions.

So I have boiled it down to 3 possible options for me & my site for the future...

1 - DotNetNuke Community Edition with YAF DNN version.

Two questions arise:

A - Can DNN use the YAF membership provider in an easy way?

B - If not A, can the YAF DNN module continue to use my YAF provider for the forum part only - not ideal, but a workable solution if I separate forum & site access - meaning 2 logins for site contributors. Not perfect, but the world is not ideal so maybe my interested users can live with it.

2 - Sitecore (since I use it at work as a kind of "webmaster"...)

The question:

There is some kind integration possibility with YAF, but can any Sitecore-savvy members here tell me if I can use the YAF membership provider for Sitecore too - as well as integrate YAF nice visually?

3 - Sueetie, since it already uses YAF membership and adds the Screwturn, Gallery Pro and some more into a kind of common framework.

This one is actually an effort similar of what I had in mind and looks ok. But not totally visually integrated yet to beat eg DNN. Since Dave is a very valued member here, maybe I can get some pointers towards a roadmap for Sueetie to convince me to use this.

http://www.marklin-users.net  site, a site for model railroaders.

It will be around for some years, and the initial target of being the authorative international site regarding the hobby is still there...

Lot's of work to do, though...😄

Any kind of advice is welcome regarding the best way to use YAF integrated on a site.

At the moment, my personal bias is towards DNN....

Starting with the CMS and adding YAF is easy.

In the end I chose MojoPortal which suits my needs (multisite, simple admin); but its not an easy road atm. With an existing YAF membership I've had to import into the MojoPortal one, and then write my own provider based on theirs in order to make sure the hash algorithms match. Next up is the profile provider which I'm not looking forward too and then sorting the Jquery errors out.

In terms of support I'd suggest either DNN or Sueetie. Dave does a good job in building his framework, and DNN has some good support here from tha_Watcha and his work on the module. Sitecore, I haven't seen many threads that pop up with Sitecore integration, also is Sitecore actually open source. If you've got your basics hammered out in C# its always good to look under the hood when playing around with integration.

Again good luck ! :D

"It's a case of RTFM.. the only problem being we don't have a manual!"

When I post FP:Mek in a topic, I'm leaving my footprint there so I can track it once I get into coding/supporting. (Yes I stole this off Ederon 🙂 )

Umbraco was #4 on my shortlist, is it possible/easy to integrate YAF membership as the "master" for the user login/security? That would then make it a hot candidate too.

As you say Mek, it is the completely wrong sequence and I am very aware of that, but my priority in the beginning of the year was to move away from Snitz, since the .Net implementation of it didn't move forward so much... And 1.9.4 RC1 was not an "application" in the same sense as the final.

One of the questions earlier was if the YAF DNN module can still use the YAF membership, while the DNN part uses the DNN security model? It would be a liveable compromise, I think...

I don't believe DNN can use YAF membership -- but tha_watcha would know better.

But as it's a WebForms control you should not take Razor-based CMSs.

Simply keep in mind that YAF native Memebership Roles and Profile providers are dependent on each other. But you can use any standards compatible providers with YAF.

But in the case perfomance will be lower as the YAF providers have perfomance tricks inside.

would I still see a performance issue with that? DNN page load times are also something bothering me. my site does not have much on the DNN side of things, yet it takes longer to load than it should.