How hard is it to build CMS driven websites in WSS/MOSS?

Question

We build CMS's with ASP.NET using tools such as Umbraco and DotNetNuke etc

A client is asking us if we can build a site in WSS which I think is Windows Sharepoint Services.

Are there any experienced MOSS people out there who can tell me how hard we would find this? Would it be just like learning another CMS? Or will it be a nightmare?

Also, what software do we need to build the site in house for testing? We don't have a MSDN subscription and use free Microsoft tools (Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express)

Answer 1

Sharepoint is great for use with its own document management features, and it integrates well with Office products.

It's not such a good platform for development. The API is a nightmare, web parts are incomprehensible, and the database has a terrible structure (fields are named NumericField1, TextField2, etc. Yuck).

If you eventually need a web-facing server, MOSS is very expensive.

Answer 2

It's not that hard. I don't find it as easy as DotNetNuke, but it's still fairly straight forward once you have some of the concepts down. There is a really great intro to CMS on MOSS at Web Content Management with SharePoint MOSS 2007. You are going to need least the lowest level subscription to MSDN because CMS is part of MOSS not WSS. Search around for deals on MSDN.

Answer 3

Take note that WSS is not MOSS. WSS is the free version of SharePoint and MOSS is the paid version. MOSS is also the version designed for public facing CMS web sites.

With a bit of reading you should find MOSS relatively straight forward to develop a CMS site on top of. JP's link is a good one and I also recommend reading Andrew Connell's book Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Depending on your requirements, in most cases you can work out-of-the-box with MOSS and SharePoint Designer. If you find you need more than what these can provide your learning curve will jump by quite a lot so tread carefully!

For development you will need at least a MOSS and SharePoint Designer license (as JP suggests MSDN is better and also gives you the option of using Visual Studio). Your client is going to need to fork out the licensing costs for MOSS. I think there are additional costs for public facing web sites but check with your Microsoft account manager.

See some cool stuff you can with public-facing web sites for the product at Top SharePoint.

Answer 4

I will preface this by saying I am currently finally wrapping up a more-than-2 3-year project building one of the largest WCM sites deployed on MOSS in the world. We're talking thousands and thousands of content editors, nearly a million pages, millions of hits per day.

Depending on what you need, it could be moderately painful or extremely painful. MOSS is never a pleasure to use, so at the very least it will be an unpleasant exercise to deploy an out-of-the-box WCM site and make it look kinda like the design you want. However it should not be too terribly time-consuming or overly difficult.

If your needs look more like ours - do you need complex cross-loaded content on your pages? Content syndication and connected content? Flexible editor-controlled layouts? XHTML-compliant markup? Pixel-perfect design? If so, trying to use MOSS will absolutely be a nightmare.

Answer 5

Actually if you are aware of the share point technology , then wont find it difficult to built CMS using it. Designing content management system using share point is actually possible.