I am not typically a web developer but having gone through building 3 portals using DNN, I started to think that there should be a better way to do this

The main reason the guys in my team want to use DNN is that it gives them so much functionality out of the box but I still think that DNN is a pain for internet based portals (opposed to intranet portals which is what DNN is designed for in the first place)

Now I know FRANS is releasing HnD's source code so that we would have a great forum engine to add to a vanilla ASP.NET based website so what I am hoping for is an ASP.NET based Blog engine that can also be integrated into an ASP.NET based website.

I want to also know if there any other ASP.NET based CMS frameworks that can be used as a framework in an ASP.NET development rather than constraining the development experience to DNN's way of doing things.

Omar,

Check http://www.umbraco.org . They are releasing version 3.0 soon. The beta is already available.