Asp.net News & Articles

While upgrades to Bitrix’s (news, site) PHP-based Web CMS Site Manager are common enough, there have been fewer upgrades to its ASP.NET version, which was introduced in late 2009. This week though, Bitrix has released a new version as v5.5, which comes with new quick-start solutions as well as performance improvements and improvements to its ORM modules.

Sitecore (news, site) has announced the production release of version 6.4 of their web content management system (CMS). The recent release ousts support for Internet Explorer (IE) 6 and adds notable usability enhancements. However, the most impressive thing about the release might be that user feedback drove every single enhancement. Sitecore has embraced Web 2.0 principles of user engagement and responsiveness in its platform and business practices.

Telerik (news, site) has officially launched the latest version of its web content management system, Sitefinity, today. With a completely redesigned architecture, there are a number of improvements, not the least of which include advanced workflow and new e-Commerce capabilities.

This week at LeWeb, Web CMS vendor Kentico (news, site) announced that it will be releasing CMS 5.5 R2 in the middle of next week. This latest update comes with support for both SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Azure.

The latest release of Sitefinity Web CMS (news, site) -- 4.0. beta -- adds productivity and ease of use improvements, plus an SDK as part of a ground-up rebuild of the ASP.NET CMS.

While it’s rarely recommended that one build themselves their own content management system from scratch, there are times when it can be a good learning experience. It’s even better when what you build is actually worth building. Such is the case with Pro ASP.NET 4 CMS, a new platform developed by Alan Harris.

The tools for Microsoft web developers are getting better and better these days, we've seen that with the SharePoint 2010 tools for Visual Studio 2010. But Microsoft is now also coming out with a new web server to support all ASP.NET developers: IIS Express.

Everyone understands the value of a readable URL. But many web applications and websites still output complex ones that no one, even a search engine can understand. Microsoft now makes it easier to map those complex URLs to simpler ones.

All kinds of good stuff coming out of Microsoft these days. Among them is the final release of ASP.NET MVC 2 and the Release Candidate for Silverlight 4.

With all websites increasingly under attack, Bitrix (news, site) ups the defences with a new security system for its users.

Welcome to the February installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next month.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.

More news from Kentico (news, site). This time it’s not a new release, but a new version for its Partner Program that will give its 900 partners added support for the development of better, if not bigger, Kentico ASP.NET websites.

While announcements about extending  partner programs come a dime-a-dozen, this one is slightly different in that Kentico has divided its partners into three different levels of partners and provided a new portal where they can interact.

Basically, partners will from here on be divided into three different categories: Partner, Certified Partner and Gold Certified Partner. The portal provides support for business and web development with the services offered depending on level of partnership.

As it stands 69 of Kentico's partners have attained Gold Certification, 122 have achieved Certified, with the rest classified as partners. Presumably, the more you use Kentico products, the more likely it is you will be elevated.

The fact that 35% of the Partners are in the US indicates how well and successfully the Czech-based web content management provider has been in the US, and is only topped by the number of European partners at 39%. Interesting to see if this figure changes by this time next year.
 

It was only yesterday that we gave you the goods on the new open source content management project named Orchard (news, site). But we didn't know everything we wanted to know. So we reached out to Bertrand Le Roy, Program Manager for the Orchard project. Here's what he told us.

So the truth is, Orchard is not Microsoft's newest dive into the world the open source content management. At least not officially. When the project is run by a group of Microsoft employees, you can't help but wonder what, if any, role Microsoft might have behind the scenes.

Word about the new ASP.NET based open source Web CMS appeared only last week and now the details have arrived on CodePlex.

For those of you who run a Microsoft web environment built on IIS (Internet Information Server), but still would like to run some open source applications and/or websites, there's good news for you.

Helicon Tech, a provider of web server enhancement tools, has released an Apache emulator for IIS 7. Called Helicon APE, it implements .htaccess configurations within the IIS web server. This includes almost all of the major Apache modules (35+ to be exact).

The Helicon APE offers modification-free transition of Apache websites to IIS, simple configuration of PHP and Apache compatible URL rewriting syntax.

Helicon APE
 

The Helicon APE is installed on IIS 7 as a managed module, but can also work for other versions of IIS that support ASP.NET when installed as an ASP.NET module.

APE costs start at US$ 25 for a website and US$ 95 for a server license. There's also a free version for up to 3 websites on a single server.

Now this one isn't from Microsoft, but is another step towards interoperability between Microsoft and open source. There are likely many who would love to have this product.