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I want to use some ASP.NET based CMS for creating my website and don't know which to choose...
I begin it in Sitefinity, but with it very hard to manage code as you want... And it generates ASP.NET WebForms code...
Now I heard about Orchard, which is CMS developed by some Microsoft employers, and is ASP.NET MVC 3 based...
Now I have some questions about that
What advantages have Sitefinity against Orchard?
Is there any issues and bugs with using Orchard? Is it comfortable
to use?
If you have any other suggestions about using other CMS, I will be pleased)))
full disclosure: I work for telerik, the company that makes Sitefinity, but these opinions are based on my own experiences with both platforms.
as is often the case, it really depends on a) your needs b) your environment and c) your abilities
Sitefinity is uses asp.net webforms so indeed that is the paradigm behind its pages and controls. This has the advantage that if you are experience with ASP.NET, you've already got a lot of the skills needed to customize and extend Sitefinity. Templates are simply master pages, widgets are simply ascx user controls, and themes are standard asp.net themes.
Orchard follows a parallel of this approach, but as you said, in the MVC world. It makes use of views, layouts, controllers, and other mvc patterns as its foundation. If you're strong with asp.net MVC, it can be a pretty solid platform.
As Mystere Man pointed out, it is relatively new CMS, and I might add seems to be mostly community based. When trying to figure things out in a project I was working on, I felt like I was at the mercy of whatever developer created that one component of the platform and whenver he or she had time to respond.
On the other hand, one of the many advantages of going with Sitefinity is the excellent support you get from Telerik, as well as an active community forum.
Sitefinity is also ramping up its release schedule, with major point releases coming three times a year as well as service packs in between to improve performance and constantly add new features, always based on feedback from customers.
Ultimately, it is always going to come down to your own experience and what is a best fit for all people involved. A site can have any number of involved people, from developers to designers to content writers and of course your visitors. Try each product and think about how each role will interact with the system, and see which feature set best aligns with your needs on all fronts.
hope this was helpful!
No fully featured CMS is going to be "easy" to program. They might have easy modes that let you color inside the lines, but as soon as you want to do something they didn't account for it gets very hard.
Orchard is a fine CMS, although it's not as mature as many others. You can create your own MVC based sites to go inside it. However, extending Orchard beyond the trivial becomes complex quickly (althought you can do a lot with the trivial).
It's extremely simple to install and use. I'd suggest doing it and playing around with it, also look at the developer pages on the web site.
I have only worked with Sitefinity 3.7. To be honest, and even despite the support from Telerik, I found it extremely difficult to use, once you went beyond the basics.
As regards Orchard, I agree wholeheartedly with Josh that the support is the big issue. Bertrand Le Roy will answer your questions once a day on Stackoverflow, sometimes very briefly. Over 3 or 4 days, you get to the bottom of the problem, but support is something that Orchard needs to improve on, despite Bertrand Le Roy's good will. So with Orchard you are in at the deep end.
The other downside to Orchard is that it has a very poor user interface for the END USER who isn't a programming geek. A programmer can cope with layers and zones and working with lots of them in lists. Ie, Sitefinity is MUCH more WYSIWYG and, I would say, better for the END USER.
For a programmer, however, I find Orchard, despite the minimal support, MUCH easier than Sitefinity.
Two examples of the differences between the two CMS:
Menus.
Sitefinity is great, because you have a drag and drop treeview to organise your pages, and this reflects instantly in the menu.
Orchard says they will have a built in hierarchical menu in version 1.5. However, you have to work with entering pages into a form, rather than having a graphical drag and drop situation like in Sitefinity.
Pages.
Again, in Sitefinity, you just drag and drop controls onto the page.
In Orchard, you have to configure layers and widgets in a VERY geeky (to an END USER) way.
Also, if for example, you have a site where each page is has a custom header image, plus custom content in left and right columns, then you are going to need a layer for each page that has these extra custom pieces. (Orchard "pages" only allow you one block of content). This can be a nightmare for anyone but the most geeky.
FEEDBACK from USERS:
I developed two Sitefinity 3.7 sites. One for someone with experience with WordPress, another for a couple who run a travel agency and were very IT challenged. I don't get any feedback from our users. Which is the best feed back you can get. Just look at one of the sites (the IT challenged couple):
PrestonReid
We set it up for them over 3 years ago, and haven't heard from them since. ALL the content is input by them.
If we had done the job with Orchard, we would regularly be setting up layers and widgets for them.
MY SUMMARY:
I really like Orchard. I find it easy to use as a programmer. It is a nightmare (I think) for the end user, but if you write a few modules, most of the obstacles are overcome.
For example, I have written a module called Wingspan.Views (not on the gallery at time of writing) that allows for 3 extra editors on each "page" or view as I have called them: one for a Main Image, one for Right Content and one for left content. You also have the plain old Body part to provide the main content. Menus are still a problem I am working on.
We will use Orchard for clients that we have continued involvement with, so we can set up the layers and widgets that are needed. We will develop funcitonality (modules) that will be as complex as the client needs and can afford.
For the IT challenged type of client, we will use Sitefinity 3.7. We will refuse jobs in Sitefinity if complex extra functionality needs to be developed.
NOTE:
One of the best bits of functionality in Orchard is the Shape Tracing tool. Not sure if Sitefinity has something similar.
SO WHAT IS ORCHARD AND WHERE IS IT HEADING?:
Orchard is open source and seems sponsored by Microsoft. As in I think Bertrand Le Roy is paid by Microsoft.
From reading blogs, etc, the idea is to provide code that can be used by other MS partners, eg, DotNetNuke.
To really zing, Orchard needs a MUCH more graphical user interface, otherwise End Users are going to find it way too geeky.
Which is a shame, because for a programmer, it is a great tool that is easy to work with and to configure.
The best way to describe Orchard is that the core works, but the rest of it, the interface is missing. You shouldn't have to edit XML files to configure where content is placed on a page. Ironically, the Orchard team thinks it is more important to automatically download and install modules than it is to provide decent content configuration and creation tools. It seems more like a project to demonstrate .NET's flexibility than a real product.
Sitefinity on the other hand is a more complete and functional product with years of history behind it. The new version 5.1 supports ASP.NET MVC, which unlike Orchard, doesn't add additional complexity to it. Sitefinity's backend is very easy to use. As for customization, it's architecture is very .NET centric. They leveraged as much of .NET as they could, making it fairly easy to understand.
I can't recommend Sitefinity, however, over Orchard for three reasons:
The Library Manager imposes a versioning system and likes to store information in the database. You can change it to a file provider, but this only creates a file type with a GUID as a filename. Don't expect your graphic designer to update images using FTP.
The performance is horrible and I don't mean milliseconds. It can take several seconds for the site to respond to a request even after warm up! Telerik recommends that you cache everything, but this doesn't seem to help either.
If you must have MVC, find a sample MVC application and customize it to your liking. It is likely to be more performant than Sitefinity and easier to get your head around than Orchard since your wrote it. If you don't care about MVC, I would suggest looking at the latest version of Sitefinity 3.x. Unfortunately, there aren't very many good options available in the .NET space when in comes to CMS.
For about a year and a half I used Codeigniter to build my sites. Then a client begged me to build theirs in Wordpress. I soon found the joy of using a CMS (if Wordpress can be called that). So for about the last 8 months I have been using Wordpress as much as possible to buld my sites - I made the content fit the design.
Well, I began to grow very tired of the limitations of Wordpress - I needed more control and flexibility over my sites. So, I have recently started using Drupal 7 (not 6.x - I really like the admin panel).
After working with Drupal now for a little under two months - I have begun to feel like I'm using Stone Age Tools to build Space Age equipment.
So my question is: does Drupal get any better? Do you really have to use Views to display your content? Asking for help on the forums is just a shake better than asking a wall. I feel like to do anything requires a module. Why? Is one better off sticking to a framework?
"After working with Drupal now for a little under two months - I have begun to feel like I'm using Stone Age Tools to build Space Age equipment."
Well, my intiial reaction is that this is what you're going to feel like you're doing when you're working with Drupal 7, which isn't out of alpha yet. A good number of the folks who maintain modules haven't started upgrading to 7 yet, and that means that you're missing out on one of the great features of Drupal, which is it's wide and deep space of premade modules.
Try 6.
Do you need to use views to display all content? No, not at all. You can go in, create a new module, and write the sql and presentation that you want. Or you can find a module that will display things for you. Or, depending, you might be able to get the effect you want just by adjusting the theme you're using.
(As a side note, using an admin theme really pretties up the Drupal experience. I'm fond of rootcandy, although Rubik is nice too. Problem with Rubik is that it's not on drupal.org.)
The strength of Drupal is that by using modules, you don't have to re-write code that someone else has written - you can instead take that code and modify it (with hooks) to do what you want. This means you don't have to write an authentication/autherization system again - it's there in core. You don't need to write up openid handlers - it's in core. You don't need to write code to integrate with twitter directly - there's a module that contains an api that helps out. You don't have to write an xmlrpc server from scratch - you can use the services module.
You don't need to write a website from scratch. Instead, you can start with Drupal, add most of the functionality you need, and then spend your time making it fit what your client wants.
Firstly, you can install the Admin module to pretty up Drupal 6 admin. You don't have to use 7. 7 is still in alpha, by the way. Garland sucks, but, Garland is just a theme- its not 'the' admin itself. The Drupal admin can take the form of any Drupal theme, which is useful in its own right, depending on the use-case.
In Drupal, you can create content types clicking through the interface in Drupal 6 or 7. As far as I can see in WP3, you have to script it. A few clicks vs scripting, the choice for me is not hard there. The first way is a lot more efficient, and a task you can hand off to a non coder to get done.
You don't HAVE to use Views to display content.
You -can- use Views to make the display of content easier, by telling Drupal to gather data and provide a Page, Block, or Feed to display . This lets you create specific sections of content for areas of the site. Otherwise, you would have to create a node, and hijack its template, run a direct sql query yourself AND write the pager functions just to show something easy like the latest 10 "Press Releases" content type. Then, if someone added a new field to that content type, you have to update all that SQL code and display code. Views makes your life easier in that respect. In minutes you can flesh out site sections and arrange content in a myriad of ways. In Wordpress, this method of arranging content without functionality of Views is/was a modern nightmare and a reason I do not want to use it at all unless its a blog and nothing more.
The Drupal Support Forum is tricky. Not all modules are as active as say, Views or Pathauto (being two of the most popular modules). However, SO is also at your disposal. I answer a lot of Drupal questions here. The trick to the Forum there is you have to ask it in the right spot. True, sometimes you may have to wait a few days to get an answer, then again no one -owes- you an answer for a free product. Thats the nature of open source.
Every developer has their favorite modules to use with Drupal, and more often than not, its the same 20 or so modules. It depends on what you are doing, what you are trying to implement. It's not that 'everything needs a module' its that Drupal is such a vanilla install because Drupal does not want to assume your purpose nor overwhelm with options. The UX is something they are trying to improve anyway, and popular modules are making their way into core.
Well, I began to grow very tired of
the limitations of Wordpress - I
needed more control and flexibility
over my sites. So... I have recently
started using Drupal 7
Why not go back to CI? Drupal certainly has it's strengths, but I don't think Drupal will give you any more "control and flexibility" than Wordpress.
If the standard modules/plugins, themes/templates, from WP, Drupal, or Joomla, fill your needs, then using a CMS can be a lot faster than building a site from scratch. But, if those CMSs do not fill your needs, you could find yourself "fighting the framework" and never really getting what you want.
You're just coming out from WordPress, which has great support and is relatively easy to extend to overcome what you call its limitations, if you know basic PHP, HTML, CSS & JavaScript. Every framework has its own potential/limitations.
As a user of WordPress my humble opinion is that you should have stayed with it.
As of you last question, It depends, to stick with one and only one framework has its advantages and disadvantages, the best of all is that you get to know it very well and eventually learn how to extended it. The bad part is that very often frameworks lose popularity and you are left to you own without an active user community and support.
Regards.
All of the popular CMS products (I'd maybe add Expression Engine to the mix) are great for 80% of what you want to accomplish and a huge pain to handle the other 20%.
That's just the nature of the beast.
On the plus side, it's OS so there's lots of people hacking away at it just like you which opens up the potential for someone else already having invented the wheel.
And with bulky enterprise CM solutions like SharePoint I find that you have to reverse the equation to 20/80 (ugh!).
If you're discouraged with Drupal and prefer to stick with WP, WordPress has many thousands of plugins, including ones that can overcome the limitations you're running into and make WP behave more like a normal CMS.
Just do a Google search for "top Wordpress CMS plugins." There's a lot of articles out there that can recommend ways to get WP to do exactly what you want.
I'm going to be moving my website to a CMS in the coming months I'd I need some help on choosing an appropriate CMS. Many of the websites I've seen tend to say "use Drupal, hands down". However, my website truly doesn't have a need for commenting or community features. Its pages will need to be modified occasionally, but not extensively. My website will also consist of many programs, each with their own sub-pages and menus.
There are probably 25 people that will need access to the content on my website and will need the ability to update it.
I do like the idea of being able to tag and categorize the content, and the modular aspect of Drupal but is it really right for my website? If not, which CMS may fit my needs better?
It sounds like Drupal would be an excellent solution to your company's needs. I used to recommend WordPress for smaller, single-blog type sites, but now, even for those, I recommend Drupal because you can start small and scale up as your needs grow. It has a very dedicated community and there is a module for just about any need you may have.
I would agree with Drupal. The thing about Drupal is that you start out very small and add on as you need things. There is a ton of documentation, it is well coded, always being expanded on, good forum support, and free. It's the easiest to install, most problem free, and most maintainable CMS system I've seen so far.
You can turn Drupal commenting off with the press of a button, and if/when you decide to add onto your website, perhaps you want an ad rotator, more extensive user permissions, etc, etc, it is all already developed for you and ready to go.
I am not sure if Wordpress supports multiple users on a site.
The smallest you can go for a CMS is something like 10kCMS or the more popular TinyMCE
If it is something small I will go with WordPress as it is easily themed and extensible. There are a lot of community plugins and support. Their documentation is also fairly simple as they don't have a thousand of functions and stuff you need to remember and understand. With some creativity the basic functionality of WordPress is sufficient to solve almost all problems that might arise in small to mid-size website.
I also like Drupal, but you may consider Umbraco as well. http://umbraco.org/ I'd use Umbraco over Drupal if your team is stronger in .Net than PHP. (Really, I think that's a larger concern - what are your organization's strengths? Play to suit them. You are making a decision that will pave the way for many developers besides yourself, and business decisions of your company.) Both are extendable and open source so you can write your own modules/components to customize. It may be cleaner to import into Drupal tables than Umbraco, since it goes down to xslt files. (EDIT: This looks to be no longer the case in the new version - http://umbracohosting.com/umbraco-4---get-excited/one-cms-any-database) From a front end dev perspective, both offer great control of the final output.
From working on legacy stuff a lot, you may end up hiring interns to do the gruntwork. There's bound to be tons of inline tables and all sorts of un-reusable code in there, it may be easier to scrape the content manually and start w/clean markup for the content portions.
I know that most people will consider this post as irrelevant, and yes, I've read tens of posts saying that Wordpress is "just a blogging platform". However, facts speak for themselves - people do use Wordpress a lot. Moreover, large projects are being developed using Wordpress as the underlying platform. Who doesn't believe it could check the showcase. Even my team has developed a couple of magazine websites full of rich media and different content types.
The point is: what can we do to make the development, and management process even easier? I hope that this post will draw the attention of Pro wordpress users and a lot of plugins, extensions, and techniques will be posted here. Please, do not hesitate to share your experience, if you have done a project with WP that is way out of its "blogging only" capabilities.
Thanks.
You're right, Wordpress can be extended to do anything. After all it's just a database with functions that put stuff in and take stuff out. Speaking from experience, I found that the API is pretty robust and can accomplish anything you want to, however, it's probably better to spec something out and build it yourself using a more agile framework like RoR.
Sometimes less is more.
It is amazing how much one could achieve using simple concepts such as posts, pages, categories, tags, and custom fields. The thing that I do not like in many content management frameworks and more advanced CMSes is that they often hinder development by putting too much abstraction on top of simple concepts like these. With Wordpress I could prototype a site in less than a day, again due to simple templating options which, of course can be extended on demand.
No one says that code should be written here and there with no structure at all. The thing is that WP API allows enough options to add abstractions when and where needed.
I remain a clear proponent of the use of WP for bigger projects than originally intended. All that is necessary is a little twist of mentality.
Of course, WP is not without its drawbacks. Its strongest side, the plugin community could turn out to be its weakest one, unless measures are taken to educate newbie plugin developers about some good practices. I've worked with some great plugins that fail in users's eyes because of weak API and integration hardships. Nobody would care about functionality if they cannot integrate the plugin at all, right ?
Anyone sharing any of this?
Two pretty good plpugins for extending wordpress beyond blogging are flutter and pods that allow you to do more with custom fields, in pods case much more.
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Looking for some feedback on those of you who have evaluated umbraco lately.
I've been on a quest for the 'best' cms that balances ease of use/extendability/customization etc. to use as a base for a new vertical product I am in the planning stages on, so for the past month or so I have been downloading, installing, reading source code and creating test sites in every asp.net cms I can get my hands on - and so far I have pulled down GraffitCMS, MojoPortal, Oxite, Orchard, Kuboo and maybe a couple of others that I am not remembering of the top of my head.
For each of those, except Umbraco, I have been up and running in less than a couple of hours, including adding pages, customizing templates, and in some cases (especially Graffiti), writing drop in widgets in C# in a matter of just a few hours....
But with Umbraco, after wrestling it for almost 2 days just getting it to run, and now another morning watching videos, and then building pages etc, I am still unable to even get even a simple site operational, and even the pages I have gotten working crash routinely (not to mention being a dog)...
So, the question is: Am I doing it wrong? or is it really that hard to work with? and more importantly, if I continue to push forward, will it be worth it? or do I cut my losses and move on?
Edit: asp.net with SQL Server support are requirements of anything I pick.
UPDATE ONE YEAR LATER (Feb/2011):
My initial impressions are still accurate, Umbraco is different than most of the other CMS's that I have used in the past, and for me took a bit longer than usual to 'get it', but now that I have, I have to say I have a much better appreciation of the product, what it does, and how it does it - and to top it all of, it really performs really well - especially with the latest release of 4.6.1. So call me a convert - I am glad I stuck it out and then took another look. I only update this post now, over one year later so as not to leave my initial negative 'review' here for posterity.
The learning curve for umbraco is short but steep. Once it all 'clicks' then you'll be up and running in short order.
It's different from other CMS platforms in that you doesn't give you anything out of the box - just a blank canvas to work with. Other cms systems will set you up with a default template and allow you to drop in pre-built functionality. Umbraco is, by design, not like that at all. You only get out what you put in, it doesn't generate anything for you.
This is ideal for developers and designers who want 100% control over their code/markup.
Version 4.7 (currently in release candidate) introduces the Razor syntax for creating macros. This does away with needing XSLT+XPath which I think was a big stumbling block for a lot of people. Even if you're not familiar with Razor, it is much intuitive to learn than the XML based offerings.
The videos have been mentioned by other posters below. $20 is a small price to pay to get up and running quickly.
Does it matter? What I mean is, if you find it hard to use, and there are other alternatives available, why persist? If it's non-intuitive to you, then you're going to find it hard to use. If it doesn't have some killer feature you (think you) need, dump it and move on. You don't need the hassle of trying to wrap your head around some oddly-designed (to you) product, and the product's developers don't need the hassle of trying to support people who think their product should work in some way it wasn't designed to.
None of this is intended to be harsh, just practical. You have the freedom to choose, so choose what works best for you. This sounds like it isn't working, so move on. My brother-in-law wanted to buy a Volvo, but found the controls and dashboard totally confusing, so he wound up with a BMW instead. Nothing wrong with the Volvo, nothing wrong with my brother-in-law, just cognitive dissonance. Don't worry about it.
I've been building sites with Umbraco for something like 5 years now, and I don't recognize your description of Umbraco as a very difficult CMS, but I'll try to provide a few pointers here to help you if you're still considering Umbraco:
Go to http://our.umbraco.org, read the Wiki-pages, and post any questions in the forums there, it's a really friendly community.
Always use Microsofts Web Platform Installer when installing Umbraco, It'll help you create your site, and set up your database. Just be sure not to install Umbraco in a sub/virtual directory, since Umbraco can't handle a setup like that.
If possible, do your install on a development machine with IIS7 and SQL Server Express, it'll work for sure, and deployment of a finished site can be done with a xcopy transfer and a restore of a database backup.
Don't start a new Umbraco site, before you've coded the HTML you'll be using for the site, or at least have a really clear idea about the page types, and html content you'll need.
I hope I'll be seeing you on the Umbraco forums.
Regards
Jesper Hauge
As a grizzled CMS veteran I can say that Umbraco is no harder to set up and use than many other CMS solutions.
However much of whether you find it hard or easy depends largely on your previous experience with CMS and your expectations for what a CMS should provide out of the box.
I've worked mostly with larger CMSs:
Microsoft CMS
Immediacy
Obtree
Reef (anyone remember that one!)
etc....
Against those it is no harder to use and is probably easier as it tends to get out of your way and lets you get on with building the functionality you require.
However if your expectations are more based around things like Wordpress, i.e. install and go but with more limited options, then it can be hard to start with (if you just fire it up without installing a website starter kit).
My recommendation is that if you are building a small site you take a look at the Creative website starter kit at our.umbraco.org. There are also many packages that you can install to make things easier or add specific functionality (including pre-built navigation controls and full blog solutions).
Also take a look at the Wiki on our.umbraco.org and ask questions in the forum, the community is helpful and friendly.
Umbraco is a bit different than other CMSs like Sitefinity, DNN, or Drupal. It does compare well to Sitecore.
Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve. I think the XSLT can cause that, but more likely its just the fact that you have to understand how Umbraco is structured. There are very few "modules" out of the box that you have to arrange and style. Rather, it allows you to easily create your own structure and markup that doesn't force you into a box that is hard to get out of.
I've used Drupal, Sitefinity, WordPress, Sitecore, and some others and frankly Umbraco is my favorite. If you know how to develop great web sites and you don't want limits on your design, markup, or client experience then Umbraco is a great choice. If you aren't really building a site but just want to put pieces together and get "something" working, then it may not be worth your time. If you build lots of sites or want your end users to edit content easily (not just a big rich text editor), then it may be worth overcoming the learning curve.
The videos are totally worth the $20 to watch BTW. They are far better than any documentation you can find and after maybe 5-6 videos you should be "getting it". Just buy one month and cancel after that.
The community is awesome too. If you're struggling, head over to the http://our.umbraco.org forums and get some help. There's lots of it over there.
Also, try installing the Creative Web Starter Kit package or the Blog 4 Umbraco package to get a head start. Those will be more familiar to those coming from a Sitefinity or Drupal background and may help the learning curve flatten out.
Good luck!
As a senior .NET programmer naturally I gravitate to .NET based solutions, and Umbraco seems to be a solid CMS. So I installed it and tried to gain some knowledge and getting it going and these are my findings:
Videos are ridiculously thin on content. The first introductory video talks of a runway. What on earth is a runway??? No jargon please, I'm a first time user.
You have to pay for the most advanced videos. No wonder it hasn't taken off as a mainstream .NET based CMS.
Out of the box demos are non functional (I chose the business theme an the menus don't work)
Admin area very non-intuative
Installation forces Web-Matrix installatiuon.. I have IIS7 and so do our production systems... I DON"T WANT WebMatrix!!! Finding documentation on this is also not easy.
All in all EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING to use and put me off Umbraco totally.
So I've picked up on Wordpress in the mean time and find it extremely easy to extend the admin interface. Documetnation and community support is superb. Just a pity its PHP bases because that won't fly in my company that has invested heavily in .NET developers :-(
Opinions aside, this all depends on your background. I'm a software engineer not a webmaster. So, I think like a software engineer and not like a webmaster.
Umbraco was VERY frustrating for me to install simply because there was no easily found TEXT documentation. Once I finally found that, it was a breeze to install.
The problem for many web designers is that they are not software engineers. Nothing bad about web designers who aren't also software engineers, it's just a different way of seeing the world. I have worked a lot with web designers who needed to interface with my C++ and C# back ends; they have a completely different perspective of almost everything.
Once I got past the goofy implied install process (which is bad, bad, bad -- you should never require another product JUST to install your own!) I found Umbraco to be simple and intuitive. Even my (non-programmer) girlfriend found it to be much more logical than some of the other CMS's we had been playing around with. Drupal, for example, was simple to install, but isn't really designed for a Windows development (ASP.NET/SQL Server) environment and I hate PHP, so I eventually abandoned that. MojoPortal was really nice and simple, but... it was... well... simple. Too simple.
I like Orchard, but the last time I looked at that there was so little in terms of what to start with that I decided that it would be a problem in the immediate future. I wanted a web content management system, not a web development platform. I kept thinking Orchard is a lot like *nix: "A nice place to live, but ya wouldn't wanna visit there."
Umbraco for me is a nice medium place, extremely flexible and easy to extend. It tries very hard to not get in your way. If you want to extend it you would probably do best to either learn C# (or {cringe} VB) or co-opt someone to write the CodeBehind for you. But, using it is extremely simple and straight forward.
I can't say whether it's just hard to use in general - but I came to much of the same conclusion as you did. I was especially disappointed by the lack of useful documentation - all the potentially useful video resources at their website are for pay $$$ only - what's up with that??
Also, the few intro videos I saw never quite clicked with me. They presented lots of concepts, but really never explained them much.
I also had tried Graffiti, but that never quite worked, either - and with its future less than sure, I gave up on that. Others seemed overly complicated for my requirements (Kentico, CommunityServer, and others).
In the end, based on a tip by a fellow on superuser.com, I went with BlogEngine.NET for my club's web site, and so far, I haven't looked back at all. It's pure ASP.NET which appeals to me, it's easily extensible, has a fairly large community with extensions and themes and stuff. From my personal experience, I can only recommend you check it out, if you have a mostly (blog) post based site in mind.
Strange. It takes me 5 minutes to install new Umbraco site, in 2 hours i managed to create standard portfolio website (well, when I've already got used to XSLT). It's very easy to create, modify, add custom controls, add smth to administration section, etc.
What was hard to understand (took me half an hour) that I don't have to write any SQL or C# code until I need some additional data model that's above Documents concept or Umbraco capabilities. Such samples: auto-resizing pictures, invoking some web-service, etc. - anything that comes from business logic layer that can't be covered by CMS model.
In most cases Umbraco is so easy to use that even that little bit of documentation is enough. There's pretty thin and easy API provided by Umbraco, but there's a good tech. level needed from developer, and that's XML 1st of all: XQuery and XPath to use maximum of XSLT.
And once more about installation: I just followed each step of installation guide and that's all.
The problem with Umbraco is that the UI is awkward and it's not immediately apparent how to use it and where to find things. There are several section buttons at the bottom of the page and when you click on one, you're presented with a tree view where you drill down to what you want. This is bad UI 101: no mystery meat. All functions should be organized and visible to the user. Dropdowns with submenus would have been a better approach.
The UI element names are ambiguous. For instance, there's a Members and a Users section, a Developer and a Settings section, a Content and a Media section. Isn't Media supposed to be Content? Aren't Members also Users? Aren't Settings something a Developer would do? You get my drift.
With the release of version 5, none of these issues have been addressed. The best thing they did was to kill XSLT/Classic ASP.NET and replace it with MVC and Razor. This makes getting your head around the product much easier from a developer's standpoint, despite a lack of adequate documentation for version 5. From a content creation standpoint, it's still lacking, however.
If you want to see a great UI, look no further than SiteFinity. Even though the new design isn't as good as SiteFinity 3 versions, it's content editing is the best I've seen on the market. It's too bad it doesn't support MVC and it's controls are cumbersome to modify and style.
what i wish i would have known!
Umbraco - Before you start