ASP.Net and ASP.Net Core CMS from scratch
In this section, we cover some of the best CMS and E-commerce solutions we have worked with in dotnet/dotnet core. Please don't take this as advice, but do appreciate we spent substantial time reviewing many CMS platforms. We will describe issues we found to help give balance - they may not be an issue if more time is allocated to them. A quick example is Umbraco - a phenomenal CMS, but with additional costs for its forms functionality. Another example - Piranha, our favourite dotnet core CMS but one of our partners prefers Orchard CMS.
Our website sits on top of piranha CMS. We have managed to work with their CMS, rather than against it. It provides slick content management, customisable pages, and blogging.
We did have to develop our own approaches to permit membership security, and we have found ourselves developing independent functionality, but this is not a negative against Piranha CMS.
It is an incredible open source solution which we love.
The set of features and documentation is impressive. This offers users with a slick interface and a committed developer use base. It is mature in terms of licensing modes, and whilst open source, Umbraco does try to steer users down their way of doing things. We found the Umbraco forms licensing a bit of a pain, but there are workarounds. Umbraco has just about made it onto dotnetcore - it took a long time but do take a look.
Whilst, this hasn't made it to dotnetcore, it is a neat and simple cms which allows for flexible design. It features a headless cms. Whilst we cannot recommend it over Piranha CMS, we do think it's flexibility and simplicity is noteworthy.
You will note, the project seems to have stopped in 2019, but we have include Kaliko CMS because we like it.
Earlier versions of Orchard CMS were clunky, but we have played around with their latest dotnetcore 6 version and we like it. Orchard has a committed following and committed user base. We are currently engaged in a partner initiative targeting a mid 2022 release with Orchard. Orchard is another headless cms.
Shopping cart/eCommerce platforms are rare in the Microsoft space. However, nopCommerce is hugely popular with a host of features. Colleagues have espoused how great a platform it is and so whilst it is not on dotnetcore yet, it has a committed following and is open source. It doesn't appear noopcommerce is headless yet.
We have been exploring features within mixcore and it definitely offers a modern feel and neat CMS environment on the dotnet core platform. Open source, their team will respond and we like the look and feel of this content management system.
From scratch.
Many clients will want a brand new implementation they can fully own and manage. They simply want for a provider to set them up with a new website, with instructions, some possible adhoc implementation, and let the client take over.
We can choose from a number of .Net and .Net Core preferred opensource Website Content Management systems.
Please reread this page and follow the links to the external platforms to get more of a feel. Remember, we can undertake our advisory service to help assess which solution may work best for you, even if another provider does the final implementation.
We will detail 5 platforms we are comfortable with setting up for clients from scratch. Our goal is to take a version from a base CMS provider installation and deploy it to an IIS server. We will set up the server-side configuration. We will document the installation in markdown format for ease of understanding. All code developed is owned by the client subject to any open source licensing restrictions by the provider we use. Any configuration will be documented. We will work with our clients to achieve design requirements, but may outsource more advanced requirements. Any clientside coding may or may not be outsourced, but we will architect the implementation with a goal of pluggability. We see our Bespoke CMS offering as an excellent way for clients to have far more control in how their implementation is undertaken.
We provide a full breakdown and comparison here. To summarise though;
It is worth recalling that whilst we can do domain specific functionality across a host of technologies, we focus on reusable generic products with our own solutions. We seek to make it flexible and some work may prove to difficult to estimate delivery on. Always give us your ideas and we will always seek to help you. We work with many providers who thrive on this type of work that complements our skills.
.Net Core and the older dotnet MVC are Microsoft technologies which are truly groundbreaking. They are our area of expertise and we see them as offering superior capabilities to other languages, yet offer fewer off-the-shelf capabilities to other providers. This is a trade-off any client must appreciate. There are some exceptional new advances .Net Core is offering - we even see there is a project attempting to do WordPress in dotnet core. We have seen projects which let's node js sit inside a dotnet core MVC installation.
.Net Core offers non Windows installation which enhances the number of operating systems it runs on. Whilst we don't develop on non-windows OS, we can stick to simpler dependency injection and configuration to mitigate OS dependency.
We can't give an exact price as we will need to discuss the scope of work with you. We are UK based but seek to remain competitive.
Find out more...We are highly experienced in building .Net and .Net Web Data Solutions. We have built processing applications and ETL solutions which are enterprise and customer facing. Let us implement your CMS to get our experience in multiple technology disciplines.
Find out more...- Headless - Customisable views - Slick user interface for the Content Management - Committed team - Can take an existing implementation and extend - DotNet core
CMS Systems are excellent for hiding the complex parts of developing and designing websites. There comes a point where a CMS cannot offer the advanced displays and user features required. We use three main approaches to make websites more flexible; View Components - Our content is managed outside the CMS. We have advanced components for doing neat things like displaying dashboards, charts, forms, cards. The advantage with this is we can decouple our work from the CMS. Headless CMS - Use a CMS system to create the content and consume it via an API without having to tie your website application into the actual CMS. This is because we are simply retrieving content and deciding how to display it ourselves. Content Modelling - We have built a content modelling tool to give more control over content can be generated outside of the website. We work with a structure of Ancestor - Parent - Child, and with this can extend this to fit different API and database data. This can extend the flexibility of existing ASP.Net and ASP.Net Core - any platform in essence.
Anybody on our CMS page already wants to know if they can have an expert set it up, and let them manage the content. They may also be wondering if they can use a DIY website designer such as Wix, WordPress, SquareSpace, or a web hosting package. Either; the website can be a really simple DIY solution OR you don't want to be building and maintaining content through a content management system. We think many organisations underestimate the risks and complexity of doing your own website. Ideally, customers should let a professional maintain and develop their website but have the flexibility to add content. An example would be to have blog articles first and then move more popular content off the blog. Alternatively, where data is needed in the website, perhaps use a data driven approach or API like a shopping cart or booking system, don't keep manually adding and removing content. We see that Website Content Management Systems are to allow for experts to manage content easier, and less so for DIY websites. The reasons is because how your content exists within your website structure should be oriented towards Search Engine Optimisation.