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I'm about to create a site that will act as public front site of company that sells furniture, but after user log in, he'll see much more options. Internal news, files to download, customized pricings, newsletters, etc. - stuff for wholesale clients.
I want to make it quickly and maintain/extend it easily. I'm asp.net developer and while I could write it in python, php, whatever else (I know these too), I still prefer asp.net. I was thinking about umbraco, since it gives a real productivity boost and that I familiar with it ( and extending it). I've had a short romance with ASP.NET MVC, so I know what it's all about, but I would still spend some time learning it (but what a fun!). Of course, there's also webforms, but that's my last choice here. Last but not least to mention is the SEO.
The question is, have anyone of you had similiar dilemma and what was your final choice?
EDIT:
Just wanted to notice, that this site will be maintained by me and by the client. And the goal is to set it up asap, but that doesn't end the development process. This product will live on for years.
This is the age old question - bespoke vs off the shelf.
With Umbraco you have the potential for an awful lot more site in a lot less time since the requirement is substantially to produce the content rather than the infrastructure. In terms of UI you can produce you should be pretty close either way - Umbraco gives you a lot of control.
With MVC you get to do anything you want - but one way or another you have to build it and, more importantly in terms of this question, you have to build the tools to maintain the content too.
And this is why there is a dilemma - because with Umbraco (or any packaged CMS) the question is 1) can you do what you need within its constraints and 2) where you can't how easy is it to extend the system to deal with those elements that need to be custom.
Finally there's the question of who is maintaining the content - if its to be the site "owner" (which it should be) how are they going to interact with the system? This is the advantage that Umbraco has in that the whole content maintenance thing is handed to you on a plate.
One last point - remember that you have a duty to your client to choose what is best for them and not to choose a platform because you want to play with new toys. Thankfully a lot of the time the two coincide (-: but its worth bearing in mind. (Oh, and before you write off forms completely, remember that ASP.NET Dynamic Data - forms based - will give you an instant database maintenance site which will go some way toward dealing with the maint problem that you'd have with an MVC site).
So... no absolute answer because there is no single "right" - you're almost always working on a case by case basis.
Comparing MVC and Umbraco is comparing apples and oranges really. Umbraco is a Content Management System and as such provides plenty of out of the box functionality that it seems your client needs, whereas MVC is a web development framework, and as such is at a lower level than Umbraco. Using MVC to implement the features needed by your client is very much the same as using asp.net web forms to implement the very same features. In fact, Umbraco could decide at one point to use MVC to implement it's features.
So I agree with Murph, the choice should be Content Management System versus implementing CMS features yourself using MVC or any other web development framework (and yes, MVC is brilliant).
Since you are familiar with Umbraco, as am I, you know that you will be stuck integrating packages. This may not be a bad thing, but it is a consideration. You will not be able to use that website with any other solution. As you know Umbraco consumes the entire website.
I personally would go with MVC, because I love it. Version 2 was just released today, making it even easy to put an application together in no time.
Just want to tell you that I'm going down the n2 + mvc road.
Thanks for the answers!
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I am undergoing training in asp.net and the topics which are being taught there these days are repeater and datalist control. I want to know that whether these things are used frequently in the companies. The other thing i want to know is that what are the topics which i should learn in depth so as to get a job. I don't want to go through out dated topics.
I am not aware of what's most demanding in asp.net job sector. Please guide me through.
yes, they are still in use. However, if you are new to Asp.net you might put more effor into learning ASP.NET MVC instead of Webforms.
MVC is a more modern approach with clean separation of concerns. Also you do not get the viewstate / abstraction that webforms has. Find out more here: http://www.asp.net/mvc
However, a lot of sites are still using the webforms approach and they are doing fine. Invest your time in the controls, in Linq and entity framework,
Data GridView, User Data Validation, and learn some basics as like Binding data, xml parser etc.
yes
talking about Asp.net all the server controls are used and will be used.. however Asp.net in itself isnt very good for learning website making as it abstracts away the underlying beautiful http request/response architecture of the web.
so if you are learning asp.net lay a great stress on ViewState that would also help you ultimately build the basics.
With it caching and update panel for ajax are also important. if possible use jquerys ajax that would tell you a lot about the AJAX thing and also would save your time.(i remember just bumping my head on update panel for hours trying to figure out what is going wrong).
then there are features in the c# language itself like linq which are very helpful with connecting to any sort of database on which you should lay stress
Every control group in asp framework is important.It depends upon the requirement of your application.To become good developer
1.)Clear all basics related with framework.
2.)You must know about all controls.
3.)You must know how you play with data.
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.
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I am a novice for both concrete5 and drupal however I have been looking at Concrete5 and Drupal. I am looking to create a web application that needs to be extensible. Client requirement will start from basic content management and it will need to extend to workflow based web application. I have been looking at the architecture for Drupal and Concrete5. For those who haved used either one which one would you recommend? Thanks in advance.
My two cents... Concrete 5 is far superior to Drupal.
I have over 25 sites using C5 right now. I have had 4 drupal installs in the past and have converted all of them to C5. I have also used Joomla, Expression Engine and PyroCMS extensively.
When I first started using C5, there were some great advantages for my customers in terms of end user updates to pages. It is FAR more simple for an average non-tech user to update content. This was a major win in my eyes. Most users were struggling to update content with the other options because it wasn't fluid or as WYSIWYG. The inline editing of C5 is outstanding.
That said, it was also very easy to convert HTML into templates using the tagging commands of C5. So in no time at all, I could take a site that was static HTML or PHP and convert it into a C5 instance. Again, very simple.
Within the last 6 months or so, I would say the extensibility has increased dramatically. New modules are added to the marketplace nearly daily. Some are FREE and some are paid, but I think ALL of them are cheap for the functionality and worth it. Most are $20 in that range.
If you know PHP well, you can write your own modules easily and not have to pay a dime and also not worry about the C5 core upgrades. There are lots of mechanisms built in that help developers take advantage of the system without having to worry about getting lost in software upgrades. This was another great advantage, that has cost me in the past with other CMS platforms.
In summary... Concrete5 is a top-notch CMS that is widely extensible with a ton of functionality that is super easy for anyone to use.
I've been using concrete5 for about 2 years now and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Drupal is more powerful, but the amount of work that needs to be done to get to the starting point that c5 gives you right after install is huge. The concrete5 core provides you with a whole lot of stuff out of the box, and adding further functionality is straightforward with its comprehensive (although not always terribly well documented) API and active forums.
In terms of downloadable addons, there are many which cost but I've found that in many cases it's simpler to pay what is normally a low sum to get the functionality I need than to spend all the time (and time = money) coding it myself. Those situations where I've had to code a solution have been pretty painless - any trouble has been my failing, not the CMS'. Hooking into the core is really easy, including adding Dashboard pages for particular functionality (there's a helpful howto from Andrew, the core dev, on the site which explains how to do it).
Of course, the trump card is users' ability to edit their sites without having to understand UI 'metaphors' and 'paradigms'. It just works. You go to the page, click edit, and type away. Simples. My experience with pretty computer-illiterate clients has been very positive indeed, and I feel genuinely confident when I tell new prospects that they can expect to learn how to edit their site in 5 minutes.
I have been using C5 for over a year now. The core team for C5 is committed to making it better and better every release, and they often implement contributed Code....but the thing I like most over say, Joomla, is that the directive of the CMS doesn't change. while it is open source in that solid community contributions that line up with the overall vision will be included, the core team (original developers) oversee all aspects of the code. So it's more carefully comed over than other "community driven" CMS's.
There is a huge community involvement and help in everything from getting started to deep programming.
And above all other things...Clients pick up using the C5 dashboard in minutes. You'll be lucky to get that in most other CMS's.
I have enough experience with to confidently say that it is pretty extensible. There are modules for most common things that you would want to do. If there isn't you can always create you own module. Downside is that the learning curve can be a bit overwhelming at first. Drupal's UI had been lacking but it's been improved with Drupal 7. But it also benefits from a decent sized community.
I also dabbled a bit in Concrete5 and was impressed with it's easy to use content editing functions. From what I remember, there was a smaller learning curve and the metaphor they used for content mimicked a normal static website with files and folders. The other big difference I noticed was that most of the modules have to be paid for. Not sure if that means they would be of higher quality but something else to consider.
I'm also interested in some perspectives from Concrete5 users.
Concrete5 hands down is the best CMS I have used. I'll second what Chad says about clients picking up on C5 in no time at all. When I demo Concrete5 to potential clients that first thing they usually say is "I can do that." Users also love that amount of functionality that comes rigth out of the box and I like that fact that most of the code that I have worked with in my experience has been pretty solid.
As CTO of concrete5 I'm a little bit biased, but I can tell you that concrete5 does offer a lot of extendability, and we try to do so in a way that scales the learning curve along with your knowledge of the system.
For example, the CMS tools are simple to understand right out of the gate. You can build sites with no customization that clients can easily edit. Then, when you need a bit more, you can go to our marketplace to download free or commercial add-ons that extend the functionality of your site. Once that isn't enough, it's easy to create custom block types which present small, encapsulated bits of presentational content on your site, and let your clients use the CMS to place new instances of them. If you need more than just bits of content, you can use concrete5's custom model-view-controller functionality to start working with full pages and external scripts. From there you can start diving into the framework itself, including our concept of events (similar to hooks in Drupal/Wordpress), helpers, attributes, and libraries, and start working with our file manager, user manager, permissions and interface at a low level. You don't need to know any of that stuff to get started, however, which is what we think makes concrete5 so compelling.
And, as Chad mentioned, when you get the stuck, the community is one of the best and most responsive out there.
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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
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I asked from few weeks ago this question:
How can I teach a beginner to write ASP.NET web applications quickly?
And i got some good answers but i liked the answer which tell me to make some small projects with them (me with the beginners)
So i decided to collect some small websites ideas to do with them (i do a part then they complete or show them some hard parts and they follow)
But i faced 2 problems hope you help me solve.
1- Couldn't get enough good ideas for ASP.Net websites to make with them.
2- If i want to make them train on using HTML websites created by the web designer to make
it dynamic using ASP.Net, where to find just HTML websites, or there is a better idea to teach them this part?
You may ask, whats exactly the level i hope they reach?
I want them to be Very good in ASP.Net, HTML, and familiar with JavaScript and CSS.
And the most important thing i want them to be a good searchers, means they got a problem and they Google the right way, and solve. "i think this will gain by time", but this is an important part, because i don't want them to say "we can't do this :("
May be i am asking for too many things, but i just hope general help so i can go further with them.
Use your brothers interests. If one brother likes Football, have him put together a fan site for his favorite team. Another brother likes fishing, well, you get the point.
There are two main benefits with picking topics this way:
They are already subject matter experts and can concentrate on learning the technology instead of the subject and the technology.
Hopefully they pick something they are passionate about and this will add to their desire to learn the technologies.
A good way to learn how to work with ASP.NET is to take a web template and start making it into a functional website.
For example, if you download this template you can see that it's a pretty straight forward business style site. Home, Projects, Services, Downloads, About and Contact are the main sections. The template also has a some additional buttons and links. These are all pretty good places to start learning how to create a site.
First thing, create a masterpage from this template. This is where you'll learn how to tear apart someones HTML and where to start placing content Templates and to start thinking about what can be a user control or reused (main menus, footers, sidebars controls etc.)
Next steps would be do go ahead and flesh out the folder structure of the site and dive in making the those default pages for each section. A learner will quickly see how a site is created from a master page and learn the little quirks of images and stylesheets and how to get around those as you dive through folder structures.
Now it's your choice. Pick a section and start having them dive into it. Products would give you a way to use a database, querystrings, forms, etc. How to pull data, how to display it and how to save it. Downloads would be a place where you could learn how to manage content for a user. What little admin tools a site would need to manage it. Services and About can be CMS driven pages. Once again data driven, but still different from the Products section. The contact forms would give them the option of leaning about using Email from inside of a .net application.
Now once you get your learner working on this, they might actually end up with a pretty usable site/product that they could actually sell or reuse in a 'for real' project. Take your time teaching them, go slow on each section and I'm sure you'll get some good input back from your learner.
Hope this helps you.
E-Commerce is a great solution, as other people have suggested. Or a portfolio web site would be even easier. Also, a picture sharing web site might work out well for them (family members could log in and upload, too?)
I would also add you should use the visual (design) mode in visual studio for the best effect. And then show the HTML it generates after the page is run/compiled. That way you cover for the people who are more visual learners and get into the code later. But I'm sure you were already going to do that :)
How about a sample time entry app.
User logs in to key his time for the week.
Admin user can approve time.
Reports can be made for summaries, approval, etc.. to give programmer exposure to reports.
Login / Roles is always important to understand
Time Entry gives you database interaction.
A simple informational website for a business or store. This should include a contact us form. That should be good practice.
A simple e-commerce application is a good project, as it exposes the students to a number of issues:
Security
Database integration
Transactions
Session management
Design and usability
If your interests are in TV shows or movies or something similar that one can collect on DVDs, building a simple CRUD web app to update a database should be a fairly simple application that will cover some basics like DB design and manipulation, AJAX if you want to send the requests without a full postback, and is something rather common in enterprise applications so it may be very useful.
The year the DVD came out, who wrote and directed what is on the discs, genre of the material, length, stars, extras on the DVD and many other things could go into the DB if one wanted to set up a library like system for an add-on that could be interesting in some ways.