I came across WebMatrix by accident on the Microsft web site recently and downloaded it to my Windows 7 laptop. It installed very easily and then created a DNN site also with ease.

Just wondering if anyone else has used it and whether there were any downsides.

Hi Pingle,

It really depends on what you are wanting to use WebMatrix for. When Microsoft was developing WebMatrix, they asked us to participate in their WebMatrix partner program. While WebMatrix is a very interesting tool, we felt like it was a step in the wrong direction for DNN and we opted not to participate.

Here's why:
Webmatrix was designed so that people can build a site locally and then "publish" the site to your hosting server.

1) I would be willing to bet money that your local machine is configured differently than your hosting server, regardless of what hosting provider you use.

2) WebMatrix does not use production-ready configurations. It is set up for a more dev-environment configuration.

3) There are many different versions of SQL server and databases are not cross-compatible. This means that if you have SQL 2005 on your desktop and SQL 2008 on your server, you can deploy from 2005 > 2008, but then you can't take a backup from your server and restore it locally without upgrading your local environment (even if the backup originated on your local machine).

4) DotNetNuke websites are typically built "live" and not "published". If you were to "republish" a DNN site, you'd loose any users, forums, or other data that accumulated on your site between publishes.

5) The DotNetNuke developers/organizations who do implement website publishes, are so technically savvy that they won't use WebMatrix.


All in all, web matrix reminded me a lot of an enhanced version of an "upload your site via FTP" button... and that's a thing of the past.

For those interested in Web Matrix, Chris Hammond has a blog post on the DotNetNuke.com blogs page.

Thanks for your reply, Tony. Glad I waited for a reply before I got stuck in!