Advice needed: the most fitting web development solution for me

Question

Recently I've been asked to develop a small web site/application.

The site should have some code behind it as in any web application, and the client also needs CMS editing capabilities. He is familiar with Joomla, so he wants the same experience.

I have vast experience in writing ASP.NET (C#), and almost no experience in PHP.

From where I see it, I have a few options:

• Build an application based on a ASP.NET CMS - I don't know which CMS to choose
• Build an application based on a PHP CMS (i.e. Joomla) - The development time will be much longer since I'll have to learn PHP
• Build everything in ASP.NET and add basic CMS capabilities myself - There's a chance the client will be less happy with that

So I'd be happy to hear any suggestions regarding the path I should choose.

Thank you,

Don

Answer 1

If you're considering an ASP.NET CMS, I'd recommend you look at Sitefinity. It's built by Telerik (well known control developer) and is pretty robust. I've been developing with it for about 4 years and very happy with the product. They have a community edition which is free, with very minimal limitations in place (you can only have one CMS user login for editing, must have a small 'powered by' logo in your footer, etc.).

The other great thing about Sitefinity is that it is built on top of ASP.NET best practice and principles (master pages, themes, provider model, etc.)

Answer 2

I'd take a look at Grafitti or Umbraco :-)