I have been involved in creating a content managed website that needs to run on a Windows server, and integrate with a current site that is written in .NET using Visual Studio. My first reaction was weeping with despair, after seeing how complicated everything was. I am used to lean PHP content management systems.

It was going to be a custom built from scratch job, but after a bit of digging I discovered Umbraco – unusual for .NET CMS products in that there is a decent free version. A couple of hours after downloading it, I had set up a laptop as a local SQL and IIS server, and installed Umbraco v3. I added Warren Buckley’s free “Creative Website Package” v0.98, and was pretty surprised to see a complete, easy to administer website complete with a great search function, blog and RSS feed

This was pretty much what we would have programmed, if making it from scratch. Umbraco’s templating system made adding in the graphic designer’s artwork a breeze and the site was looking good within a few days. The few questions I had were answered extremely quickly on the Umbraco forum.

While it was all good, there are a few slight problems. As of today, I have broken the RSS feed and have no idea how to fix it. I can hardly blame Umbraco for that, it is my enthusiastic mangling of code that has caused that

There is one problem that could be serious. The included TinyMCE rich text editor will not save page edits in Firefox on the Mac or PC. Editing the HTML and updating before saving results in saved edits, but that is not ideal. I am hoping this issue gets resolved, because that is the only real problem I have had with it.

In summary, Umbraco has saved us a massive amount of time and energy, works well and has all the features needed for a medium sized business website. I have come to understand and appreciate the power of .NET in creating a CMS, and would like to say a big “thank you” to the developers who offer the software free of charge, and the folks on the forum that have answered my n00b questions

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Computer, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.