Content Management For .NET

Jul 25, 2006 tools suggest edit

Anyone have recommendations for Content Management systems for ASP.NET (ideally 2.0) that can handle a lot of traffic and allow for extremely customized site design? I am curious about which products are out there other than DotNetNuke and Microsoft Content Management Server.

Ideally this is something that you have implemented successfully on a project.

Found a typo or mistake in the post? suggest edit

Comments

39 responses

Simone Chiaretta • July 25th, 2006
My solution works fine and has an history of more than 3million page a day...
but doesn't allow "extrem customized site design":-)
Jim Holmes • July 25th, 2006
Have you looked at SiteFinity? (http://sitefinity.com/)
I haven't used it, but have great faith in and respect for the folks at telerik (small "t"), the company that makes it. Their ASP.NET controls are killer stuff.
Mountain • July 25th, 2006
Rainbow Project (C#)
I haven't used it, and I'm sure you have heard of it already (because you have used DNN).
The Rainbow project is an open source initiative to build a comprehensive content management system using Microsoft's ASP.NET and C# technology.
http://www.rainbowportal.ne...
The more famous ones are:
Mambo
Joomla
(these are not dotnet, of course)
Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Mambo is one of the most popular Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) on the web.
jayson knight • July 25th, 2006
Pretty nothing beats CMS, but it is of course extremely expensive. I've also heard great things about RainbowPortal. Have a look at Dozing Dogs as well (recently acquired by Telligent).
Jeff Atwood • July 25th, 2006
Why can't subtext be a CMS instead of Yet Another Blogging Solution?
I'm just sayin'. DIY boyeee!
Haacked • July 25th, 2006
@Jeff: Because I want to keep it tightly focused for now. It does one thing and does it well. It's geared towards a particular usage.
Haacked • July 25th, 2006
Besides, I barely have enough time to work on Subtext as it is. Biting off such a large chunk of functionality is a lot to chew.
And I couldn't get it done quickly enough should I require a mature CMS system in the near future.
However believe me, the thought has crossed my mind.
Steve Harman • July 25th, 2006
@Haacked: Sounds to me like we need an Angel Investor or even better would be a rich benefactor to pay a few of us to work on subTEXT full time (at least for a while) just because he/she/they want the project to be a huge success and dominate the world! Well, at least the first part...
Ahh - we can dream, can't we!?!
Chris • July 25th, 2006
Also, Is there a good blog application similar to WordPress or Movable Type for ASP.Net?
Haacked • July 25th, 2006
Keep dreaming Steve!
Rashed • July 25th, 2006
why you didn't think in dotnetnuke !!!
Ayende Rahien • July 25th, 2006
I use Cuyahoga, and it is very nice.
Alexander Groß • July 25th, 2006
Axinom AxCMS - a german .NET Content Management System.
JiltedCitizen • July 25th, 2006
When I was looking to update my website I did some searching and found some others that were not DNN or Rainbow or CS and free. I've not used any of them.
http://www.sharpcms.net
http://www.umbraco.dk/
David Shields • July 25th, 2006
@Steve Harmon: In regard to the angel investor need, did you happen to read "The Philosophy" of AxCMS.net?
It is worth reading:
http://www.axinom.com/axcms...
Leo Nelson • July 25th, 2006
AxCMS.net looks pretty good. Has anyone else used it?
David Shields • July 25th, 2006
@Phil: does it have to be open source?
AxCMS.net is not open source afaik, but it is extensible (and free of charge).
Also, you can probably run stuff like Joomla and Mambo on Windows (with WAMP).
The two mentioned by Jilted are open source:
http://www.sharpcms.net
http://www.umbraco.dk/
Haacked • July 25th, 2006
@David: Nope, it doesn't. The reason I'm asking is that we have used DotNetNuke successfully for some of our clients.
But DotNetNuke may not be suitable for some of our potential clients. I'm trying to get a grasp of what alternatives are out there.
Shan McArthur • July 26th, 2006
ADXSTUDIO CMS 2006 is a native ASP.NET 2.0 CMS. It has full support of master pages, membership/role/profile providers, and 40+ server controls. Very affordable commercial licensing.
Timmy • July 26th, 2006
If you can spend the money look into Sitecore... very impressive .NET solution
www.sitecore.net
Mischa Kroon • July 26th, 2006
My research led me to:
www.kentico.com
and
www.sitefinity.com
For the seemingly best pair of CMS systems.
Sitefinity is evolving pretty fast so it's definately one to watch.
Chandima • July 27th, 2006
Check out EpiServer [ http://www.episerver.com/en/ ]
Greg Young • July 28th, 2006
I am surprised that noone has mentioned ektron.
They have a reasonably nice CMS. It has support for things that alot of others don't that are often needed in the enterprise (like the ability to setup workflows for translation services).
Hartvig • August 2nd, 2006
I'd take a (serious) look at umbraco (disclamer: I'm the founder!):
- Open source GPL (and a commercial license if you don't like the GPL)
- .NET 1.1 (also runs with 2.0 and v3 coming in september is .net 2.0)
- Generic datamodel
- Beautiful and extensive web client with full GUI for setting up data structures and types (you can actually develop in the browser if you like)
- Very active and friendly community
- Extensive use of XML and XSLT
- Extremely flexible layout engine (umbraco doesn't generate html by if self) where you can use any usercontrol or xslt
Feel free to mail me (nh AT umbraco dot dk) if you have questions...
/n
Greg • August 14th, 2006
I second the call for Umbraco.. its open source (just 3% donation for commercial projects to keep the project developing), extremely flexible (definitely targeted towards developers who wish to extend the sytem, and make it work to their needs), and as NH mentioned, an active and friendly developer community.
Check it out - www.umbraco.org
Thibault • September 12th, 2007
Hi,
I'm a .NET beginner and would like to set up an ecommerce solution for my company.
I'm torn between Umbraco and Cuyahoga.. both seems to be really strong and well written.
Which one would be the best to receive my personal e-commerce solution ?
Thanx
Haacked • September 24th, 2007
I'm not familiar with either of those, so I'm unfortunately not a good person to ask. Sorry.
Pieter • November 26th, 2007
In case you don't mind classic ASP, make sure you check www.quickersite.com, by far the most complete and powerful CMS ever written in ASP/VBScript. It beats many $$$ CMS, whether they are written in C#, VB.NET, PHP or any other technology.
Daniel • March 12th, 2008
Hi all. I'm currently looking at solutions right now after playing with Joomla for a few weeks. Joomla has some problems:
1) Probably the WORST and least responsive user community I've seen yet for any product
2) Base confusion as to what the product does, how it does it, and what's important. Most of the templates talk about "tableless design" and then leave the default "views" which use tables.
3) If you look at the underlying code, it's poorly written and poorly optimized for speed (which matters because PHP is interpreted). So it's not surprising that the end results are SLOWWWW...
4) I could go on, but this is not the right forum for it. Anyway...
I was excited about Dot Net Nuke until I tried out their website, which is broken in so many places that it left me wondering if I want to start with that.
And now I'm going to look at Umbraco. Looks like they have their stuff together, but I don't know how much is done and how much is doable... I really have simple needs, but Joomla was killing me and wasted so much of my time for very unimpressive results. Now I'm back to the drawing board again. It pains me to say it, but I really like .Net and GoDaddy makes it all cheap to implement.
Dan
www.SATTutorInABox.com
America's #1 Private SAT Tutor
Now on Video
Dan Norcott • March 14th, 2008
Seconded - Joomla is *TOSS*.
I'm starting to look at umbraco at the moment - it looks good so far. I've used EPiServer, and it was UTTERLY HATEFUL. I have now refused to work on any further jobs using it :)
Darin See • April 8th, 2008
I understand that this is a request for .NET apps, but I have to say, that for straightforward content management, I don't think that there is anything out there (at least in the open-source arena) that can compete with the PHP project, CMS Made Simple. http://www.cmsmadesimple.com - hands-down, it is the most straightforwardly conceived CMS out there. I've used PostNuke, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, and have even coded my own very simple CMS. Give it a spin and you'll be up and running creating HTML or CSS templates in an hour.
I've recently been working on a DotNetNuke project, and can definitely attest to the fact that it is absolutely more powerful than CMS Made Simple - but more power is not always the best way to accomplish a task. I find that anything CMS Made Simple can not accomplish, I'd rather code myself from scratch.
Akshay Sura • August 19th, 2008
I suggest Umbraco and DotNetNuke.
Don • September 9th, 2008
I developed Clover Content using .Net. You can access content using a .Net client library and it's really flexible.
It's also good for custom and complex layouts and interfaces.
http://clovercontent.com
Jack • December 7th, 2008
I would strongly recommend against Sitefinity if you want to do any sort of customization, or anything thats not straight out of the box.
(Ironic considering its meant to be 'for' developers).
- The whole architecture is a bit of a mess (inspite of their admiration for their own product).
- The ORM is horrid (Nolics)
- The standard answer to "can I extend this" is "yes, by rewriting the entire thing". If you look in Reflector you can see that Sitefinity use an aweful lot of copy & paste in their own code.
- Documentation is very poor (it reads more like a marketing pamphlet).
- Events are very hard to use
- Basically a .NET 1.0 product - many APIs still return IList
- All round, the whole thing is not easily extensible
I think we are going to try Umbraco next...
paxer • April 26th, 2010
Today in 2010, the best CMS from architecture vision based ont .Net 3.5 and flexibility is probably N2 CMS from opensource world, and Sitefinity from commercial software. Kentico is very good too becouse of very user friendly editing interface but it's API a bit outdated and all based on .Net 2.0 DataSets, DataTables etc.
Baserz • June 14th, 2010
paxer: Ive searched a bit after open source mvc cms but i fell for Kooboo wich i think is really nice. Though think i will check N2 out just to see how kooboo matches up with N2
Anton Burtsev • June 15th, 2010
Talking about customizations I want to say that DotNetNuke has a number of developer-oriented modules. One of them - XsltDb. It offers a web-based development with syntax highlighting and codecompletion, provides direct access to database and ASP.NET controls usage. Since DNN 5.2+ goes with Telerik ASP.NET controls your customizations are limited only by your imagination. XsltDb is free and opensource. Download it from http://xsltdb.codeplex.com
Carlos Figueroa • August 12th, 2010
Wait until Orchard releases Phil.
Suren • October 27th, 2011
Its is 2011 October 27
I am working with EPiserver , and believe me its something you would not like to work with.
Now I am looking for some free CMS and thinking to try AxCMS.net , and may be Umbraco , DotNetNuke, even N2, but have to first test all of them to see which one serves better.
High customization and friendly Editor is important features.
If anyone knows anything wlecome to share your thoughts.