Top 5 .NET Based CMS (Content Management System)

A content management system (CMS) is a computer program that allows publishing, editing and modifying content as well as maintenance from a central interface. Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual steps or an automated cascade. Wiki

First of all, even before you decide which Content Management System to use, you have to decide if you need a CMS in the first place? You should have good enough reasons to use a CMS for developing your new website. Planning everything from the start is almost always a good idea. You can easily find out if you need a CMS by answering these simple questions:

• Is this website a blog, news site, gallery or e-commerce store?
• Do we need to update the content on the website regularly?
• Can multiple users update the website simultaneously?
• Do you need control over the content publishing for the website?
• Are the users of CMS non-technical people with basic computer knowledge?
• Do you need the website to be SEO and Social Media friendly from the start?

The more positive answers you have for the above questions, the more it is clear that you need a Content Management System for developing your website. Now the main question is which CMS to use for your development? Deciding which CMS to use depends on the type of website you want to create, development platform (.NET or PHP) you are comfortable with and if you want a paid or open-source solution.

Although there are lots of good CMSs out there worth a look, we have curated a list of top .NET based CMS that you can use to create your website or web application. If you are a .NET developer, you can have a look at these options to find out which suits you best for your current project.

DotNetNuke (DNN)

http://www.dnnsoftware.com/
DNN, formerly known as DotNetNuke is an open, extensible, secure, and scalable content management system powering over 800,000 websites worldwide. DNN is one of the most well-known and popular open source CMS based on Microsoft .NET. The DNN Platform can be used as a content management system as well as an application development framework. It can be used to quickly create and deploy rich, modular and highly interactive websites and web applications.

Strong Points: Stable and Mature, Ease of Install, Strong Community, Lots of options for themes and plugins.
Licenses: Free (Community Edition) & Subscription based (Professional and Enterprise Editions)

Kentico

http://www.kentico.com/
Kentico CMS is an enterprise Web Content Management System and Customer Experience Management System that provides a complete set of features for building websites, intranets, community sites and e-commerce solutions on the Microsoft ASP.NET platform on premise or in the cloud. It supports mobile websites, marketing automation, SEO, document management, online marketing tools, multilingual websites and translation management, multisite management and it ships with 70 modules, 400 configurable Web parts and source code available.
Kentico CMS is a highly configurable platform that can be easily modified and extended so that it fits your client needs. Updating your website with Kentico CMS is really intuitive. All pages are organized in a tree hierarchy that reflects the site navigation, so you can easily find the page you want to edit. Kentico can easily handle small to enterprise level websites.

Strong Points: Stable and Mature, Ease of Install, Highly Flexible and Scalable, Strong Community, 400+ built-in web parts, Options for plugins.
Licenses: Free (Need link and logo on your website) and Paid ($3,499 – $59,999)

Umbraco

http://umbraco.com/
Umbraco is a fully-featured open source content management system with the flexibility to run anything from small campaign or brochure sites right through to complex applications for Fortune 500's and some of the largest media sites in the world. Umbraco is easy to learn and use, making it perfect for web designers, developers and content creators alike.
Umbraco is easy to use, simple to customize, and robust enough to run the largest sites such as wired.co.uk and asp.net. Umbraco’s modern UI, pure .NET architecture, and active community make it the best choice for web CMS. Umbraco supports both MVC and WebForms. One thing that goes against it is the extra efforts to get started because it is designed with developers in mind.

Strong Points: Open Source, Open API, Stable and Mature, Ease of Install, Highly Flexible and Scalable, Strong Community, Options for plugins.
Licenses: Free (Open Source) with options for paid support and add-ons.

Sitefinity

http://www.sitefinity.com/
Sitefinity CMS is the next generation web content management system for creating compelling websites, intranets, portals and blogs. It offers many enterprise features, and simple, easy-to-use online administration for managing your website. The new revolutionary User Interface is very task oriented and simplifies the user interaction with the system.
The Sitefinity CMS has been developed by Telerik, a team responsible for some great solutions such as RadControls. Sitefinity uses .NET standards such as MasterPages and Controls for template management all of which makes setting up the front end of the site straight forward.

Strong Points: Easy to Install and use, Supports Responsive Design and Mobile Website Development, Documentation and Support.
Licenses: Paid (Starting at $2,999 for Standard edition)

mojoPortal

http://www.mojoportal.com/
mojoPortal is an extensible, easy to use, full featured, mobile friendly content management system (CMS) and web application framework written in C# ASP.NET. Includes Blogs, Forums, Calendar, Google/Bing Maps, Contact Form, Newsletter, Polls, Surveys, ecommerce & more. If you can make an ASP.NET UserControl then you already know how to implement a feature. Supports Microsoft SQL 2005/2008/SqlAzure, SQL CE, MySQL, PostgreSql, SQLite, or Firbird Sql. mojoPortal places a lot of emphasis on web standards and accessibility.
When it comes to developing your own applications, many people prefer mojoPortal because it can act as a starter kit for advanced .NET sites or portals. mojoPortal is considered to be very strong as a standalone CMS. It is easy to learn and very simple to use. It also has a very strong community which makes troubleshooting extremely simple.

Strong Points: Open Source, Ease to Install and Use, Strong Community Support, Add-ons.
Licenses: Free (Open Source) with options for paid add-ons.

Other Options

Other popular Content Management System you can consider for your development are listed below.

Orchard

• http://orchardproject.net/

Composite C1

• http://www.composite.net/

Sitecore

• http://www.sitecore.net/

Conclusion

Content management systems have made the life of developers easy as well as of users who have to maintain contents on these websites. Still we have to choose these tools with care and planning as selecting the right tools and technologies at the start of a project makes the process easier.

Using a CMS to develop website or web application can provide lots of extra benefits such as:

• Tons of third party plugins, themes and extensions
• Community based support
• Low cost development using open-source CMS
• Easy to setup and run
• Better security
• Flexibility and Scalability

We want to know which Content Management System you prefer to use when creating websites or web applications. Please leave your comments, suggestions and feedback in the comments section below.

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