Need ASP.NET CMS like MODx PHP one

Question

When I need to develop a solution using a CMS I recommend to my clients to use MODx, flexible to me as developer and easy to user for content managers. This time my client has introduce a requirement: the solution should be using ASP.NET. The problem is that in my research I couldn't find an equivalent ASP.NET CMS to MODx (http://modxcms.com). I gave a look to DotNetNuke but is not that I'm looking for, so complex.

I'll appreciate anybody help.

Best regards, Lester

Answer 1

I am mainly an asp.net developer but recently due to low resourses at work I've helped out with a few modx and drupal sites.

I didn't take to Drupal at all but I love modx, really love. IMO It just makes so much sense to a developer.

I've had a look around the asp.net market and tried a few but don't have anything conclusive yet. I really like the modx templating system and that's where most other CMS's fall down in my opinion.

I had some joy with mojoportal although I haven't been able to devote as much time to it as I would like yet to see if it is a suitable replacement.

Answer 2

There are a number of questions relating to ASP.NET based CMS's here already:

1. Content Management ASP.NET Recommendations
2. ASP.NET CMS search

I hope those help you - personally, I'd recommend that you take a look at N2 CMS, as I've been using it for a couple of sites, and found it to be a joy to work with.

Answer 3

I would point at Umbraco which should have a very clean seperation between code/ui. Modules for this can be found on Codeplex

Answer 4

Well, not really sure how complex you want your CMS, but I know of two:

1. Sitecore CMS - what we use, very powerful with it's own API, easy to add custom content
2. Sitefinity by Telerik - not as complex, but very easy to use.

Answer 5

I am not too familiar with the PHP CMSs, but I can speak to Sitefinity CMS.

Sitefinity is a very developer friendly CMS platform. It is a CMS for ASP.NET that doesn't "reivent the wheel" or significantly change the way ASP.NET works. If you're an ASP.NET developer (or have any ASP.NET experience), Sitefinity will be very familiar. For instance:

• Themes = MasterPages
• Modules = UserControls
• Config = Web.Config

For developers, it's also like "one big API." The APIs enable you to do everything from create pages to edit content to modify and extend the Sitefinity admin. In fact, there was a webinar today talking about the APIs. You can probably find the link to the recorded version later here, though:

Sitefinity API Tips & Tricks Webinar

Finally, for your end users / clients, the Sitefinity tools are very friendly. Sitefintiy ships with the Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX (leading UI components for the web), so you get great tools to work with that your users can easily use.

Oh- and Sitefinity is very affordable compared to most other commercial .NET CMSs. It's usually $1000's of dollars less than some of the other Enterprise-grade CMSs it competes with.

Hope that helps. More details and demos (of course) are available on Sitefinity.com.