While skins define the overall structure, look and feel of a DotNetNuke site, and panes define where specific content elements can be placed within the skin, those elements to be placed are referred to as “modules” and represent the true power and flexibility of the DNN system. For example, a single content pane could have a HTML module added to it that contains the text and graphics welcoming a site visitor. A left panel pane could contain an Announcements module that displays recent announcements regarding the website company or organization, while a right panel pane could contain a newsletter sign-up module that allows visitors to register for upcoming newsletters. There are hundreds (going on thousands) of individual modules available for DNN; if you can conceive a particular business need or process beyond text/artwork for a page, odds are someone has already developed a module for it.

The core DNN framework comes with several dozen modules that can all be immediately accessed and implemented—there is no additional fee to take advantage of these base modules:

• Announcements – Provides a well-managed listing of general organization announcements
• Banners – Provides an automated way of displaying vendor-driven banners ads
• Blog – Allows a site author or administrator to edit and display a personal journal online
• Documents – Provides a mechanism for displaying an online, category-driven documents library
• Events – Manages and displays any and all events associated with a particular organization
• FAQs – Automatically displays a series of questions, along with the answers when clicked
• Feedback – Allows site visitors to post a response back to the organization (and can display such postings as well)
• Forum – Provides a means of documenting an online conversation between registered users regarding a particular topic
• HTML – Basic module used to display text and graphics (most common DNN module)
• IFrame – Allows an outside web page to appear within a particular DNN page (often used for legacy sites/applications)
• Links – Displays a series of hyperlinks that can be easily managed, reviewed and clicked
• Media – Automatically displays/plays a particular content element by file type, such as an .mp3-formatted song
• Newsfeeds – Displays an RSS-delivered page of associated news feeds
• Search Input/Results – Allows a visitor to search site content, typically by keyword
• Survey – Encourages site visitors to participate in a simple, online survey
• Wiki – Provides a collaborative mechanism where registered users can not just review but update content as well

Again, these are just the BASIC modules—check out our Premium Modules page for even more functionality (or see the DotNetNuke site for a complete list of "out-of-the-box" modules).