Versatile ASP.NET CMS in C#

Question

We are making a public website on ASP.NET and we are looking for a really versatile CMS that will give us enough freedom and allow us to create not only standard content pages (a feature which all CMS offer), but also pages with custom ASP.NET programming.

Imagine the following case: our site will contain several custom ASP.NET pages programmed in C# which allow the visitors to view and search for some financial products (the site will actually be devoted to structured financial products in Russia). Those pages will be programmed in pure ASP.NET / C#.

At the same time, we will have lots of content pages (with simple text, images, etc., but without any programming), and we would like to be able to add those pages to the site using a web interface like in most CMS systems.

The problem is that most CMS systems like DotNetNuke make it very difficult to add custom ASP.NET pages to the site. In DDN, one has to create special DNN modules, and there this requires lots of additional efforts.

My question: is there any lightweight, versatile CMS system that lets users manage simple content pages and at the same time create custom ASP.NET pages? Maybe what we require is not a classic CMS, but rather a set of components that can help us manage simple content pages?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Umbraco - http://umbraco.org

Written entirely in C#, free, small footprint, uses master pages and very flexible.

Custom .NET can be added via Macros (.NET user controls) or complete ASPX pages, provided you specify in the web.config that the file exists and Umbraco doesn't try to find it in the content database.

Answer 2

Two open source CMS systems written in .NET that you may want to evaluate are:

1) DotNetNuke

and

2) Oxite from Microsoft (emphasis on blogging)

Answer 3

N2 is a free open source ASP.NET CMS with support also for MVC. It's opinionated, uses .Net classes for the programming model and is very open and extensible.

Answer 4

You can try Kentico CMS (www.kentico.com). It is not free but very powerful. YOu can add your custom code to your pages/templates as you can see here:

devnet.kentico.com/docs/devguide/adding_custom_code_to_the_aspx_page_template.htm

Answer 5

Thank you for your answers.

I am wondering whether using a CMS is the only way of solving our problem? Maybe there are ASP.NET controls that allow to manage pages in a CMS-like way? So we ideally would like something very lightweight.

Answer 6

Have a look at Cuyahoga as well. Here's the feature list. It has a WYSIWYG content manager

Answer 7

From what you describe I would say that you need a development platform and a CMS in one. Take a look at Sitefinity, I would say that what you are looking for is exactly its main advantage. It makes custom development a piece of cake.

Disclaimer: I am on the team developing Sitefinity at Telerik.

Answer 8

When you dont care to much about workflow and other premium CMS stuff, but like to have an inline HTML editor and care a lot about programming your application.... take a look at SmallCMS. It is free, open source, lightweight and a good starting point.

http://smallcms.net