Looking for a good ASP.net CMS which works well with bespoke systems

.NET
1

Hi all,

Bit of a toughie this one me thinks…

I’ve got a new asp.net website which I’m very close to launching.

At the moment I’ve got a lot of DB driven grid and record views and forms as the core functionality of the site is very bespoke in it’s nature.

Added to that I currently have 70-80 pages of content (which are currently fairly static apart from some master pages for headers, footers, menus etc.

My boss would also like a CMS to control the content going forward. The site will initially launch with the content as static pages as described above.

But I’m going to have to go back and put a CMS on all the content. This presents a few choices as far as I can see:

1.) Bespoke CMS
Pros: Full flexibility over what control I give the customer. Seamless integration with the existing bespoke site I’ve already created
Cons: Time/Effort to build. Ongoing support requirements.

2.) Off the Shelf/Open Source CMS
Pros: Lower support requirements, more features, power etc. etc.
Cons: Challenges integrating with bespoke system already built (big things like session integration, menu integration from CMS on bespoke pages)

I’d really like to avoid scenario 1 if possible due to time/cost constraints.

My question is has anyone successfully implemented an off the shelf/open source CMS with existing custom bespoke functionality and if so, which one worked well?

Thanks in advance!

2

Core Website Management should be able to launch with your static pages alongside the cms that you can migrate to in the future.

It is written in .net of course and may be worth investigating: Core Website Management

3

Have you thought about a third alternative?

IMO, the best solution would be to use a CMS for the whole thing, including the bespoke core funtionality. Then you could use the content from the bespoke functionality in the templates fro the normal content pages. And as a big bonus, you could edit the bespoke section data in the CMS interface as well. The only requirement would be to use a CMS that can store a data model that is powerful enough for your needs.

4

I’d run with orchard these days – seems to be the officially backed MVC open source solution.

5

I’m not familiar with bespoke, but I played around with Umbraco once, and it seemed decent… not sure what the plugin directory looks like these days.

6

Bespoke isn’t a brand of CMS, it is a sort of system – means custom or made to order rather than off the shelf.

7

Gotcha… heard the term before… it’s a Brit thing?