

Popular .NET Web Content Management Systems (CMS) - Open Source - bigstorm
http://www.devcurry.com/2010/06/popular-net-web-content-management.html

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megamark16
We're a Python/Django shop with a few ASP.NET/C# projects every now and again.
We use Django CMS for many of our clients, but we've used Umbraco for a few.
It was aweful, the interface is fine for editing content, but building and
templating a whole site through a web based client is painful.

Trying to build extensions was daunting, especially with the free version, it
seems like they have a Commercial version with a few more developer bells and
whistles.

Version control was also a pain, because everything is stored in the database,
including templates and styling, so you can't really version control that with
an outside VCS (we use Git). And what you CAN put under version control is
half binary files anyway, hello conflictville, population you and a bunch of
binary conflicts every time you sync.

Overall, I'm in love with Django CMS, and .NET is an old lover whom I don't
really want to talk to any more, but she's still in my phone so I know who's
calling when she drunk dials me.

~~~
Gobiner
As of v4, Umbraco uses nested .master pages for page rendering which saves you
from the "template stored in database" pain.

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euroclydon
If you're a developer, using a CMS quickly becomes grating enough, but for me,
using a .NET CMS eventually became unbearable.

After I had a few of these up and running for a couple of years, having
implemented custom modules to collect form data, and even going through the
trouble to pack the modules up all nice and kosher, when it came time to make
a minor change to one of those modules, and I had to find a correct setup of
Visual Studio, with all the dependencies, and then compile and deploy the
module, just to make a small change, I said: never again do I want to write
websites in a compiled language!

~~~
rbanffy
Any good CMS should separate logic, configuration and presentation clearly. If
you need to recompile something to change anything less dramatic than the way
the CMS works, this separation has been broken.

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gkefalas
I haven't found a single .NET CMS that doesn't drive me completely batty. I
think most CMS tools, including non-.NET ones, break down when they start
trying to be able to do all things for all people. It's debatable if any are
able to pull this off (though admittedly I'm not up on current CMS tools to
know if that world has improved.)

Because of that, I've been rolling my own basic backend for my own personal
use on projects for myself, friends & family for about a half-year now; the
ultimate goal being dead-simple templating using standard HTML pages, fast &
secure data & code, and ease of extensibility. It does what it needs to. But,
because it's domain-specific, I'm not trying to make it a general-purpose
"CMS," so I currently don't have to worry about stuff like
registration/authentication, comments, etc. I would never release it in its
current state, though, and likewise I'd probably never plug a bunch of other
junky code into it, expose a ton of dubiously-designed interfaces & reflection
as "extensibility," require master pages (ew) or some custom markup language
(ew x 2) to make templates, and call it a full CMS.

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GiraffeNecktie
Is there a reason to use a .NET CMS other than the obvious (i.e. it's a .NET
shop)?

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Aaronontheweb
You realize that it is possible that someone might like a CMS because of its
features, not the language it was implemented in, right?

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Yes, that's my point. The OP is a list of .NET content management systems, not
a list of CMSs that have broad or interesting features. Hence my question
about why anyone would specifically want a .NET CMS.

~~~
Aaronontheweb
Blah my bad - I misunderstood you then. I thought you were just making a
general "eewwwww .net" comment :p

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Gobiner
_DotNetNuke, also known as DNN, is the ideal platform for building
professional websites with dynamic content and interactive features._

This made me laugh. My coworkers that have worked with DNN have many horror
stories. I've never heard from a developer that used DNN and liked it. Given
the superficiality of the descriptions, I assume all the info was copy/pasted
from the marketing material for each project.

~~~
gkefalas
DNN is a heap. My God, is it a codebase trainwreck. Apologies to any DNN devs
that may be HNers, but holy cow is that an example of how serpentine code gets
when you try to be all things to all people without a strong planning phase.

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Aaronontheweb
BlogEngine.NET is a wonderful blog platform (I consider that a CMS) that's
easy to extend and the codebase isn't so massive that you can learn it
quickly. Some of these, like DNN, are nightmares.

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jf
People interested in .NET Content Management Systems may want to watch the
Orchard Project: <http://orchard.codeplex.com/>

