.Net Cms News & Articles

If the success of a content management system is directly related to how much its creators talk it up, then IDConstructor v4.1 is going to be a real winner.

While the hosted version is already commercially available, beta-testing on the downloadable version is almost complete and it should be ready soon.

Designed to be entirely scalable, this web content management system (Web CMS) enables users to build websites that are dynamic and full-featured with the ease-of-use of Microsoft Word.

In fact, IDConstructor says that if you can manipulate Word, you can build websites using v4.1. But it's never quite that simple, now is it.

Not all products are built with loads of venture capital in the coffers. Many are grown slowly and painstakingly over a number of years. A labor of love? Maybe. Some unseen driving force pushing them? Most likely.

During the work for our recent Umbraco CMS Review we stumbled upon the story of how this product came to be. It struck us as notable and inspirational, so we thought we'd share it more broadly.

In this article we bring you the history of the Umbraco Web CMS, from a .NET toolkit used as part of founder Niels Hartvig's consulting business to being one of the most popular .NET open source web content management systems in the market.

Umbraco is one of only a few open source web content management systems built on Microsoft's .NET technology stack. This CMS is no "out the box" solution. To the contrary, it's a content management system for .NET web developers. And while it's relatively straightforward to use, one must first deal with a steep learning curve.

We took a close look at the latest version of Umbraco (v4.01) and here's what we found.

Usually, when you see terms like "open source," you think Linux and the languages such as PHP, Python and Perl that tend to dominate the open source landscape. However, projects like Subtext (news, site) prove that assumption wrong.

It's official. Just as they promised, Umbraco has released version 4.0 of their ASP.NET Web Content Management System.

After 18 months of hard work, here's the highlights you can expect from v4:

• Developers: Support for ASP.NET Master Pages, Membership & Role Providers, AJAX, any .NET language. Event Model, Documented API and full source code available
• Designers: Built on W3C Standards, Accessibility Section  508 compliant, a template engine yet complete design freedom and support for RIA-powered websites based on Flash or Silverlight.
• End Users: New, easy to use interface, MS Word integration, Media Library, Content Versioning and Scheduling, Notifications and Tracking, built-in translation management, multi-lingual and supports all major browsers.

Remember, the upgrade is supposed to be painless, unless you have a few features implemented such as the XSLT helper method RenderTemplate(), UltraSimpleMailer / Newsletter and 3rd party datatypes.

And for those German-speaking fans, there is now a sister site to Umbraco.org: Umbraco.de which contains a mirror of the important parts of the Umbraco.org site.

You can get the new release on codeplex now.

The excitement is building in the Umbraco camp as they get days closer to releasing version 4 of their open source .Net-based Web Content Management System.

It has been a while since their last full version was released - June of 2007 to be exact. That one involved the move to the .Net 2.0 framework and a number of new features and enhancements.

You can get the latest release candidate, v4 RC3 now. This candidate release fixed some problems with the last release related to deleting files and macros via the context menu. Other enhancements include:

• The internal search engine was upgraded to Lucene 2.0 search
• The Membership Provider is now 100% compatible with Umbraco content and members for security trimming
• Word is compatible with Umbraco Content Channels
• Content Channels now support the tagging control

So you can head over and get the latest candidate release, or you can hold off just a little while longer and start preparing for the final release of v4 which is expected to come any day now according to the Umbraco website.

They are suggesting you start preparing for the upgrade and are providing some pointers to get you going. There is an automated upgrade wizard that will convert your existing installation (v3.0.5 or greater) to v4. This will make the upgrade easy - unless you're using the following functionality:

• The XSLT helper method RenderTemplate()
• UltraSimpleMailer / Newsletter
• 3rd party datatype

Have a read of their upgrade process or just spend time perusing the Umbraco version 4 section of the site to see all the new things that will be available.

Is that a ripple of excitement we just saw run across your face?

Quantum Art has augmented their leadership team with Joe Barrett joining as the new President and CEO. The San Francisco-based web content management systems provider is gearing up for a strong 2009 and says they are now poised to move into the next stage of their growth, despite volatile -- or we might say severly depressing -- economic conditions. It is nice to stumble upon the odd pocket of optimism now isn't it.

Quantum Art's product, QP7, is a .NET content management platform (see review) that sports attractive qualities both for non-technical content managers and technical .NET developers. Read on for more details.

Emagine has updated their flagship Web CMS product with new features, new integration modules, and MS Vista support. EmagiC CMS.Net v4.0 is the company’s core software offering, historically positioned as a website and portal management tool, with version 4.0 the company has also started describing the product as a .NET application framework and calls it a stepping stone for e-Government initiatives.

Quantum Art’s QP7 platform has never been your typical commercial Web CMS. Architecturally, it came in the door as a platform meant to be shaped and molded to fit the client’s content business model. Aesthetically, it provided a better than average back office UI with an elegant design.

These things are still true. What’s changed is that now it comes in the door, and yes its the front door, for free, gratis, gratuit.

San Francisco-based Quantum Art updates their QP7 Web CMS platform and makes better friends with Visual Studio, adding a RAD module for content application development.

New York-based Quantum Art produces the QP7 content application server. QP7 is geared towards web content management, but aims to break away from the page-based metaphor and provide a framework for developing content centric web applications utilizing QP7 content objects.

San Francisco-based Quantum Art, a provider of content management solutions, delivers their latest product, the QP7.Framework, a content application server.

QP7 Enterprise is notable for its ability to enable business users to easily produce functional web components.