I've spent a lot of time over the last little while looking at the various CMS systems available for the Windows platform and I have to say, it's a rather sad state of affairs if you want a Windows / ASP based CMS.

First, let me explain why I'm looking for an ASP based CMS. My background is primarily focused on Windows and other Microsoft based technologies. Now, I'm not saying that I won't use stuff from other companies. I ran OS2 (2, 2.1, and 3 - Warp) and I've run various versions of Linux, developed using Fortran, Pascal, C, and others. However, I learned a long time ago, that focusing on Microsoft based technologies would mean my skill set was available to the broadest audience. My point is not that any one is better than the other. Just that it makes sense to focus your skills on the broadest platform. So when it comes to picking a technology for my site, it makes sense to pick something that I'm familiar with in case I find the desire or need to roll up my sleeves and dive in to fix or add on something.

So, with that out of the way, lets talk about the tools available on the market.  There's a number of CMS tools, but only a few that are catching on or have caught on.  To start, there's Community Server from telligent, Dot Net Nuke from the Dot Net Nuke Corporation, Graffiti also from telligent, SiteFinity from Telerik, BlogEngine.net, and probably a couple more, but these are the main ones.  Of course, there's no perfect system - every product is going to have its own pro's and con's. It really comes down to what system offers you the most advantages with the least number of negatives.  I'll list each of these systems and where the limitations are from my perspective. 

I'll start with Community Server, after all it's the biggest system on the ASP side of things.  CS originally had a free and enterprise version, and as I recall, the enterprise offering was pretty affordable.  Something in the $299 - $599 range. All in all, a well priced package that offered lots of flexibility for anyone looking to build a community based on Microsoft technology. The product has evolved over the years and it now offers an excellent feature set that can be hard to match in other systems.  On the negative side, it can be slow and bloated at times, especially if you're looking to start out with a simple blog or forums (That's where their Graffiti product comes in to play, more on that later). The "Express" or free version of CS shakes down as follows: 1 Community with the CS badge showing on all pages, not for commercial use, support for Ads but limited to revenue less than $500 per month, and a maximum of 15 Blogs and 15 Forums. 

If you're launching a small personal site, then none of these should be a big deal.  However, if you're launching a community site and have plans on growing the site, then there are serious limitations here.  The biggest issues are the commercial use and the ad revenue restriction.  Once your site has grown to any significant size, you're going to have to purchase a valid CS license. Ok, so that's no big deal, your site is growing and you now need to buy a full CS license - most people would welcome that.  So let's check out the price of CS. There are 3 versions to pick from, Pro, Intranet, and Enterprise and the prices are $3,000, $50 per user/minimum of 200 users, and $20,000 per server - ouch! To be fair, most of the time you're going to look at the Pro product as it's has less of the enterprise features like Exchange and AD support and those aren't really needed in the online community sites. But $3,000? From free to $3,000?  That's a pretty big jump if you ask me. I'm not against buying software - in fact, I'm in the business of selling software, that's my day job.  What I don't like, is the idea that my site or community has reached a level of popularity and now all of a sudden it's going to cost me $3K to stay within a valid license. That alone has killed CS for me.  I want the ability for my site to grow without a ridiculous fee tagged on to it.

On to the next application - Since I've already talked about telligent, I might as well continue and mention their Graffiti tool. Once again, telligent shows that they can create a powerful application that's easy to use at an affordable price - free.  But once again, they label it with restrictions that worry me. The free edition is limited non-commercial use and just 3 content publishers, so that means me and two others.  Once I have a 4th person that wants to post content I need to buy a retail version. So what's the retail cost? Well, it's not as bad as CS.  This time you can get a Single Site Edition for 10 or 25 content publishers for $399/$799 respectively or a Server Edition for 10 or 25 for $5,000/$7,500.

Now, the $399 package could work for most sites for a long time. But to be honest, I've already got a bad taste in my mouth from the prices and limitations that telligent has placed on these products and I'm concerned about things changing in the future. So I've pretty much written off Graffiti.

Next on the list is Dot Net Nuke. There's no issues with price when it comes to DNN because it's free as free can be. Of course, free means that nobody is getting paid to develop and work on the project.  So everyone is a volunteer and working on their spare time.  Which is great, I like that people believe in a product so much that they can give their time to better it.  Thanks to the price, there's no risk of having to pay more if my site happens to become popular. So where's the problem? Well, the lack of a full time development team means that the features and functionality are less than what you find on other applications. Let's take a quick look at the blogging module; Friendly URLs or SEO optimized URLs - Nope, Tags for posts - Nope, Categories for posts - Nope, Quick to load - Nope, Support for avatars and blog ratings - Nope and Nope. The list goes on for a while, so I'll stop here instead of boring you with all the ugly details.  It's a great platform that offers a lot of power and customization features, but it's seriously missing some major features.

So, that brings us to SiteFinity from Telerik. SiteFinity is a smaller up and coming CMS tool.  It offers 2 versions a free community version and a $899 Standard edition.  I can't comment on the features or overall usability of the product because I never actually got installed. Why not? Well, to install SiteFinity, you need to publish it to your server or hosting company through Visual Studio.  Now, there is a free version of Visual Studio, so everyone has access to the tools that are needed to do this. However, I'm not sure that everyone wants to go through the process.  For me, I just want to upload it and be done.  I don't see the need to build the project and publish it using VS.  That, to me, sounds like a unpolished product.  I should be able to manage and update the site without having to open my development tools and republish the site.

And now we get to BlogEngine.net - a relatively new addition to the scene. BlogEngine.Net is free and offers some nice features, but much like SiteFinity, it also has some serious drawbacks.  The biggest is the simple fact that there is no way to install this in a hosted environment. The install procedure requires that you run a SQL script against your database. I don't know many hosting providers that grant access to run SQL scripts directly against the database.  If BlogEngine could get itself an installer routine - much like SiteFinity needs, then they could really expand their market. 

After a lot of searching, I finally found a solution that offers everything I'm looking for.  It's free - 100% free with no hidden costs if my site happens to grow and ads start to pay off. It's also fast to load, offers Tags, Categories, SEO optimized URLs, quick and easy install, and generally easy to use.  The only thing it's missing is that it's not ASP based.  That's right, in the end it's come down to WordPress, the PHP based CMS tool that is taking the online communities by storm.  After seeing all the features that are missing from other products, it's no wonder that WordPress is as popular as it is.

I know everyone won't agree with what my thoughts and comments on the various platforms, but if there is anything you can take away from this - be sure you understand your customer and their needs as well as what the competition has to offer. I hope that this can be different in the future.

The final word from all this: Stay tunned for a special announcement on a new site from yours truly - coming real soon.