The core team comprises individuals invited to join the team by Shaun Walker, whom they affectionately call the "Benevolent Dictator". Their invitations were based on their contributions and their never-ending support from others in the DotNetNuke forum. Each team member has a certain area of responsibility based on his or her abilities. From database functionality and module creation to skinning, they are the ones who are responsible for the continued advancement of the framework. However, not being a member of the core team does not mean that you cannot contribute to the project. There are many ways for you to provide help for the project. Many developers create custom modules that they make freely available to the DotNetNuke community. Other developers create skins that they freely distribute. Still others help answer the many questions in the DotNetNuke forum. You can also be a contributor to the core architecture. You're welcome to submit code improvements to extend and/or expand the capabilities of DotNetNuke. These submissions will be evaluated by the core team and could possibly be added to the next version.

When the DotNetNuke project started, one of the things that helped to propel its popularity forward was the fact that its forums were housed on the ASP.NET forums website. With over 200,000 individual posts in the main DotNetNuke forum alone, it was one of the most active and attentive forums on the ASP.NET forums website (http://www.asp.net/forums/). Beginning sometime after the version 3.x release, the DotNetNuke team puts its finishing touches to its own forum module. It now utilizes this module for DotNetNuke discussions (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/tabid/795/Default.aspx). The DotNetNuke forum is the best place to find help for any issue you may be having in DotNetNuke.

The main forum is where you will find most of the action, but there is also a subforum that covers topics such as core framework, resources, getting started, and custom modules. You can search and view posts in any of the forums but will need to register if you want to post your own questions or reply to other users' posts. The great thing about these forums is that you will find the core team hanging out there. Who could be better to answer questions about DotNetNuke other than those who created it? However, don't be shy, because if you know the answer to someone else's question, then feel free to post an answer. That is what the community is all about, helping people through challenging situations.

Like any application, there are bound to be a few bugs that creep into the application now and then. To manage this occurrence, the DotNetNuke core team uses a third-party bug tracking system called Gemini, by CounterSoft. The bug tracker is not for general questions or setup and configuration errors; questions of that nature should be posted in the discussion forum. You can view the status of current bugs at the Gemini site (http://support.dotnetnuke.com), and you can also add new bugs to the system. Before submitting a bug to the tracker, please review the guidelines currently posted on the DotNetNuke website (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Support/ReportABug/tabid/645/Default.aspx).

To summarize, you need to first search the bug tracker to make sure that it has not already been reported. If you cannot find it in the system, then you will need to supply the details including what you did, what you expected to happen, and what actually happened. Also, if you are going to include code to reproduce the bug, then be sure to limit the code to 10 lines or less. Verified bugs will be assigned to core team members to track down and repair.

If you want to find out what is in the works for future releases of DotNetNuke, then you should check out the DotNetNuke project Roadmap (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Development/Roadmap/tabid/616/Default.aspx). The main purpose of this document is, as a communication vehicle, to inform users and stakeholders of the project's direction. The Roadmap accomplishes this by allowing users to submit enhancement requests. The priority of the enhancements depends on both the availability of resources (core team) and the perceived demand for the feature, based on the number of votes it receives.