Thread

I know, asking for ASP/ ASP.NET- based CMS recommendations on an EE forum may not yield unbiased opinions. Like most of you, I happen to think that EE is the ultimate CMS development tool. But if you had a client who needed you to choose and configure a CMS to work in their ASP/.NET Microsoft server environment, what would you choose?

The most important factors to me are:

1) Shortest learning curve possible.

2) Ability to customize and manage membership and access privileges (one of the things I love about EE)

3) Attentive support (another thing I love about EE). Forget Dotnet Nuke and other free open source options. We’re going to need help and ask lots of nube questions!

Looking into Sitefinity and SiteCore (although I suspect that the latter is ridiculously overpriced for my needs. Companies that won’t publish pricing on their site generally want to make a big $ enterprise sale).

I’d love to hear from EE fans. When ASP/.NET is non-negotiable, what do you choose?

Bad news if it’s for asp.net and you want to do much design and possibly make it cool, then it’s just a huge learning curve. Suggest they install php on their server, maybe the Zend Core stack would be the way to go, they offer support for running PHP.

Maybe look at Graffiti (graffiticms.com), in-house here I’ve been held a DNN hostage. Umbraco’s another, asp.net options seem to be strictly a programmer’s game Visual Studio is a must, I guess g-rrr…

Sorry more after reading, what-do-you-choose? you could outsource it if ASP.net isn’t your cup of tea, just a thought… maybe you are up to the task then.

http://axcms.net
http://www.kentico.com/
http://umbraco.org/

graffiti is also popular. I have not used any of them.. :(

I’ve had a bit of involvement in Ektron - but it’s been a couple of years.

The problem that I am having is that there are too many choices. All I want to do is:

—Manage membership/users/permissions
—Ability to do design without skinning hassles (ability to use my own markup and CSS)
—Have A UI that content editors can use easily: One that separates content from design.

If I could do these things AND get access to good US-based support + a thriving developer community, I’d be happy.

I don’t need a $5K enterprise solution (Ektron), but I do need to go beyond the very basic template-based CMS offerings like Graffiti.

$5K?  Did their prices come down? 😉

When I did that project Ektron was $10K for 5 users.

At the time there simply weren’t any cheaper but reliable/established/capable players in the MS backend space.

It’s one of the reasons I just don’t understand it when people complain about EE’s price.  A year or two in the “Enterprise” world would cure them of that…

Anybody who complains about the price of EE really ought to spend some time in the world of Enterprise CMS. Systems like SiteCore license for around $15K. Even the basic ASP/.NET CMS tools like SiteFinity, Kentico, and Umbraco cost 3-5 times what EE costs—and in many cases do much less.

The biggest decision factors for me right now are learning curve and support availability rather than license price. But in every respect, I think that EE is a bargain that really has me spoiled.

You are fast coming to why people settle for DNN, even they offer a pro version now, not sure what it costs, too much would be my guess.

You are fast coming to why people settle for DNN

I am an experienced DNN user: I think I owe my fondness for EE to past frustration with DNN.

When it comes to design issues, I personally find it absolutely wretched. The design-by-skinning makes it totally unsuitable for this particular project.

This one googled towards the top: http://www.firebirdcms.com/default.aspx something new to me. But so does this very thread google to the top, too funny. I just searched asp.net cms new, here we are in the vicious circle. Sorry for being blunt aloha it looks like you do have some experience w/ asp then.

we used xigla before moving over to EE - pretty good and very flexible; not a patch on EE, but good value if you must use asp.net

http://www.xigla.com

Jim

we used xigla before moving over to EE

Xiglia seems very similar to EE in its blog-like approach. It is also relatively inexpensive, but not as fully-featured as my leading contender, Sitefinity.

To me, some CMS tools seem content editor-centric (Wordpress, Xiglia) and some seem developer-centric (Drupal, SiteCore). EE and a handful of others have something for everybody. (EE seems to cater to the needs of designers more than just about any of the others). 

Finding the perfect CMS is a lot like searching for the holy grail. Lots of expensive trial and error has taught me that no one of them is right for every job: It pays (literally) to have several in my bag of tricks. This is why the learning curve and availability of support are HUGE factors for me.

I’d rather pay $1,000 for a well-supported system that I find intuitive than deal with a company in a distant land or climb a steep learning curve. On this particular project, membership/permissions management, security, and the ability to separate content editing from design are the priorities.

Hello Alohashirt,

In the interest of full disclosure, I work for Telerik / Sitefinity.  Google led me to this forum thread.  Here are a few thoughts

> Shortest learning curve possible.

As with any CMS, there is a fine line between “easy to setup” and “the ability to customize”.  With Sitefinity we wanted to create a web development platform.  Sitefinity has a very rich API and we encourage developers to use it.  This power forces us to sacrifice some of the “out of box” ease of other CMS’s.

With Sitefinity our marketing tagline is “if you know ASP.NET, then you already know Sitefinity”.  This bragging point probably doesn’t have much power to someone working with PHP.  Crssp-ee said it best, if you come to the MS world, be prepared to use Visual Studio or the free Visual Web Developer Express.  The learning curve you encounter will depend on how well you grok ASP.NET.  What can I say? 

> Ability to customize and manage membership and access privileges

Sitefinity comes out of the box with several security features.  You can create Roles, assign Roles permissions and then assign users to these Roles.  Under the hood, this is all based on ASP.NET Membership & Role providers.  You can replace these Providers with your own custom providers, if you wish.

> Attentive support (another thing I love about EE). Forget Dotnet Nuke and other free open source options. We’re going to need help and ask lots of nube questions!

We have open forums (just like EE) and Sitefinity developers actively participate in these forums.  We’re not hiding anything.  Go look at the forums to gauge our support.  We don’t regularly do phone technical support, however. 

Sitefinity is priced at $899.  You’ve seen the price tags on other ASP.NET CMS’s.  We think we offer a really good value.  This pricing model doesn’t allow us to finish customer’s projects for them though.  Questions are fine.  In fact, questions are great!  Getting a 60MB zip file and a list of customer requests is not.  😊  (Hey, it happens.)

——

Long-story short, we have an open demo on the web site (http://www.sitefinity.com/) and you can download Sitefinity and test it on your local machine.  Our software isn’t time-bombed and you don’t need to talk to sales to give it a try.  Kick the tires and give it a spin.  Let us know if we can help!

Best wishes,

Gabe Sumner
Developer Evangelist
Telerik / Sitefinity
http://www.sitefinitywatch.com/
http://twitter.com/gabesumner

I’ve used DNN in the past, but now go exclusively with Sitefinity. It’s very feature rich and somewhat like EE from an end-user perspective. I love the flexibility of custom content and controls. The one key feature missing is a membership/profile management out of the box, a la EE, but that can be created rather quickly.

Price point is similar to EE and their support is excellent.

Sitefinity also has the benefit of the entire Telerik RadControls available for use.

EE and Sitefinity are my go-to CMS’s depending on the need for PHP or .Net.

SiteCore is impressive, especially the web-based development, but the price point starts at $15k per server, if memory serves.

Christian

Glad you’re not going for DNN; it is a dogshow; gosh that was a painful job…