DotNetNuke, Umbraco or Orchard

Question

First off please have patience for this long winded post. I wanted to get all the pertinent information (as I see it) out to you.

I have a decision to make and would like your input. I have recently taken on the task of taking over my daughter's skating club's website. They have a custom site written in asp pages and don't have anyone to support it. I want to move their site to a CMS system so it doesn't take a developer to maintain or make changes to it. We also want to add some custom pieces to it like a registration form for the club and some other custom pieces around marking down scores and viewing stats and such.

I am a .Net developer and have been developing in SharePoint for some time, but don't feel that SharePoint is a very good fit for them. Our current web host is GoDaddy. I don't yet have the details of the contract with them yet so can't comment on the service we have with them.

I have been looking at three CMS's at the moment. DotNetNuke, Umbraco, and Orchard. All are good and all have pros and cons as far as I can see. I am currently leaning towards DotNetNuke for the following reasons:

• Umbraco appears to be a "create from scratch" system with no templates to apply (I apologize if this is incorrect, but it is based on the information I received). I am not a guy to develop the visual aspects of a site, so would rely heavily on templates and such.
• Orchard sounds like it might be a good fit, however I have never developed in MVC before. Most of my .NET has been straight ASPX. I am not opposed to learning MVC and have had it on my list for a while, but I don't know if I have the time to learn and port over the current site.
• Orchard also appears to be a bit heavy for a normal user (explaining content types and such). I want something others can take up when I pass on the responsibility.

So I am wondering what you all think. Even with learning MVC would Orchard be the best platform for us based on the information I have provided? Should I stay with DotNetNuke as my choice? I would like to mention that I did consider Sitefinity and would have had it at the top of my list, except we are a non-profit and don't necassarily have the budget for a paid CMS.

Thanks again and I look forward to your thoughts.

Solution 1

Well, the ultimate choice will vary on your business need. They all do the same thing, but how they achieve the goal is quite different.

• Umbraco - It utilizes the Model, View, Controller (MVC) methodology. This obviously presents an assortment of benefits. However, the methodology to build a product can be quite extensive and even the layout to modify data can be quite cumbersome.

• DotNetNuke - Uses a more familiar technology, Web-Forms. This has an assortment of benefits that go a long with it. Including a market, documentation, permission, and ease.

I've never used Orchard so I can't comment- but I can comment on the other two. To show you how I came to my conclusion to use which Content Management System hopefully it will point you in the best direction.

My project that I worked on required a lot of non-technical people to utilize our new product. It has a lot of functionality and features that were required; the biggest however was ensuring the following:

1. Ease
2. Intuitive
3. Control
4. Speed

Those were our four primary categories. I'll attempt to outline what each area means-

One of the largest pitfall of a Content Management System is that they tend to do more then you require. So the question becomes which product will bend while maintaining my core goals be. For that reason our company chose DotNetNuke because by nature DotNetNuke isn't a Content Management System it is a very powerful Framework.

What this particular product does is focus on a lot of key aspects so a developer doesn't have to waste a lot of time in maintaining but rather in developing.

• Ease - A non-technical user is able to view a page; then edit the content in place on that page. Which allows you to incorporate a What you see, is what you get mentality. For the non-developer they get the all familiar Email or Word Editor.

• Intuitive - In DotNetNuke 7 they've modified the menu structure for editing. You can actually disable other users to make it actually show less, do less, and still maintain the highest level of control. The user won't get lost in editing the page.

• Control - Now this is what is nice, you can regulate each and every control for your user. So you can allow certain content to be regulated and other data not to be.

• Speed - It has a market, so you can implement other developer modules. But it also includes a lot of documentation- it may appear cumbersome at first but is quite easy to pick up. Which makes the initial start time relatively painless.

But what do all of those mean to you?

Simple, it means you can develop a beautiful elegant page quite quickly. But since you can restrict several tiers of access you can ensure the page content can be edited by someone other then you- But it won't jeopardize any of your development / content. As you control whom and what is modified.

If your familiar with Microsoft .Net then it will be quite easy to learn; I'm sure other products can accomplish those same goals. But DotNetNuke did it easier which met our goals. It allowed us to not worry about excessive issues or support to enter our company; as the user understood it in such a way that issues don't arise.

That is why we chose DotNetNuke it will boil down to your preference. My experience with the product, community, and marketplace have made me love this product and not chose another. As I can leverage the Core API when needed; so Development, Maintenance, Administration became a breeze for whatever my imagination may produce. But should a developer ever not be present the site and it's quality will not hinder when I leave.

Solution 2

I work with all three and would tell you to use DotNetNuke over the other 2. The primary reason is that if you are developer, Orchard and Umbraco are fine... but you may or may not be the final or future content manager in the future of the club and want to be able to hand the site off to someone. DotNetNuke has the larger community and would be easier for the future admins to learn as well as get support for.

DNN will give you the development options you want, but give the content editors the easier system to work work... and keep you from having to support the site if you ever move on.

Solution 3

There is a selection of starter kits available in the package repository on the community website and also a few of them can be applied directly during installation of Umbraco. Also in the package repository you will find a wide selection of other packages which you can use on your site to enhance and add additional functionality.

It is true that Umbraco does not come pre-installed with "themes" as such like some other CMS's but this is the beauty of Umbraco, you have a clean slate to work from if you choose. It enforces no requirements on your markup or styling so there is absolutely nothing to stop you using a free or purchased template from any one of the template libraries online such as Creative Market, Template Monster etc etc.

Umbraco has an incredibly friendly, helpful and active community on both the forums and Twitter.

Solution 4

don't forget that Sitefinity does have a free community edition: http://www.sitefinity.com/try-now/free-asp-net-cms

it does have limitations, but for simple sites like this it might be just what you need, plus if they ever get a budget someday they could upgrade to the Small Business Edition by just buying a license and get more features and less limitations on the content and page limits.

worth a look.

otherwise, in my opinion your choice depends on who is going to be maintaining the site. If that is you and you'll always be in charge, pick whatever platform works best for you as a developer.

If on the other hand you have to make it drop-dead easy, pick the platform that is best for end users, that based on your knowledge of the user, would require the least amount of training (Sitefinity CE has my vote on that one!)

I hope this is helpful!

Solution 5

I would highly recommend going with DotNetNuke for the sheer reason that the community and available modules for the platform far surpasses any of the other options.

If you want to do MVC style development, you can with DNN using the WebAPI approach for services, but if you don't want to, you can skip that altogether.

The amount of Free and Paid extensions for DNN grows on a daily basis, available in the Store or Forge. You can also search both of these locations right from within the product itself.

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