Need recommendation for a Content Management System (.NET)

Question

I am searching for a CMS that meets the following requirements:

• Based on .NET
• Works with a tree structure for content items
• User-defined content types (content templates)
• Manage external tables
• Extensible with my own management applications
• Support for versioning
• .NET API for content retrieval

Note that i am looking for a system that does just content management, i don't need it to handle rendering or supply me with a templating engine. I just want to be able to manage my content and custom applications from one system without writing it myself.

Curious to what you guys would recommend!

/Ruud

Answer 1

I've been using few of these systems, but N2 is one of the best in terms of extensibility, content definition and maintenance, versioning...

Definitely the best choice. More details:

http://n2cms.com/

Answer 2

It depends a little bit on the rest of your requirements. What kind of website is this? Do you have existing content that is already stored in a database?

I would recommend N2CMS

• It is free
• It works both using classic .NET Webforms as well as ASP.NET MVC
• It is easily extensible, for example with your own applications
• It has versioning and uses a tree structure
• It has decent support, considering it is free
• It doesn't try to do too much for you

One disadvatange I could think of is that, out of the box, it doesn't look too impressive. Which is fine, if you have time to 'pimp' it yourself, or if you use it for a site where the CMS GUI is not that important. However, it certainly won't 'WOW' your customers.

In your case, I wouldn't recommend the larger CMS frameworks like Umbraco, SiteCore or EPiServer. I'd use a free, lightweight CMS like N2.

I'm currently implementing it in my project. We did an overhaul of the GUI, but other than that, it works really nice.

Answer 3

Percussion CMS is a java based system but it's completely configurable, in fact 60% of it's customers are .net based. API, WEb DAV and wysiwyg are all ways for end users to publish content for the website. With that said I'm not going to continue with the other solutions it offers because it's not technically .net, if your interested for more info feel free to contact me back.