Content Management - ASP.NET Recommendations [clos

Question

Build vs. Buy... We've all been down this road... It seems like content management solutions need to be a tool that you keep inside the toolbox for some quick wins and they are only getting better. I could certainly look at building one, but by the time you get all the bells and whistles in there, it would have been cheaper to get one off the shelf...

I've searched StackOverflow for some recommendations, but it appears that there really haven't been any highly rated ideas for ASP.NET implementations.

Don't get me wrong, PHP and mySQL certainly have their place, but there are some instances where you really have to stick with ASP.NET and SQL Server implementations due to other limitations. Both Drupal and WordPress seem pretty cool, but I won't be able to get these setup and installed in the environments I have to work with.

What are the best ASP.NET CMS solutions out there?

Answer 1

I have been using DotNetNuke recently and highly recommend it. It was very easy to install, especially from the Web Platform Installer (from Microsoft) and also really easy to customize.

My clients ended up buying a skin, but I found it really easy to build a skin myself and customize the purchased skin as well. Try searching for Free XHTML DotNetNuke skins.

It was also really easy to build new modules as well! I've written four so far - in C# - and it was very easy.

The actual DNN source was written in VB.NET with lots of HTML tables. It is definitely not anywhere near what most people consider best practices, but it does work quite well. It's one of those software projects where it works really good and then you look behind the scenes and you regret you did that.

I once evaluated it, and didn't get past the source because it was VB.NET. I regret that now - this last project went really well for me. So, I highly recommend it. It's not like it will cost you anything but the time you spent evaluating. :)

Answer 2

I'm coming to this discussion a few years late, but I'll pitch in some thoughts from the procurement side for prosperity. The landscape changes, but for commercial CMS, I'd look at the vendors recommended by research firms. For open source solutions, I'd look for a large active community, documentation, and a support model you could live with.

We started research for a CMS in 2008 with online searches and the ultimate CMS list http://www.cmsmatrix.org/. (boggles the mind how many "CMS's" are out there)

We ended up looking at ".NET-friendly" CMS recommended by Gartner and Forrester. Gartner's "Magic Quadrant" of leaders/challengers and niche/visionaries and Forrester's "Wave" point out both feature sets as well as marketplace and vendor roadmap.

A good request for proposal (RFP) or comparison tip isn't to ask "do you feature X?" but to compare and see which solution does it better.

At the time, Kentico and Sitefinity were on our evaluation list as .NET-friendly. We also considered DotNetNuke, though there was a mild objection to "becoming DNN programmers" rather than staying mainly .NET (I'm sure there's a mis-perception in there, no offense).

We ended up comparing RedDot and Tridion and found Tridion to be a better fit for us because of its .NET API and flexibility.

Answer 3

You could try these:

• http://rainbowportal.net/
• http://www.ektron.com/
• http://www.joomla.org/
• http://www.opensourcecms.com/