emagiC CMS.Net v1.3

asp:review

emagiC CMS.Net v1.3

Build Web Sites, Intranets, and Portals

By Anand Narayanaswamy

emagiC CMS.Net is a 100% .NET Framework 2.0-based CMS forbuilding Web sites, intranets, and portals. It combines the best of contentmanagement with site and portal management.

Over the last several years there has been a huge increasein ASP-based CMS applications. CMS applications simplify the work of end usersby giving them all the essential tools required for building a robust Web site.End-users are always on the lookout for a lightweight product that can provideall the functionalities involved with Web site development. Currently, CMSvendors are moving toward the ASP.NET technology; emagiC CMS.Net is one of thefirst systems built completely on the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.

emagiC CMS.Net supports SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 (includingits Express edition), and MSDE as a back-end database. An evaluation version ofthe product can be downloaded from the Emagine Web site (http://www.emagiccms.com). Aftercompleting the registration form an e-mail with download instructions for theproduct and the documentation will be automatically delivered to your inbox.

The evaluation copy is fully functional and ships with ademonstration Web site with sample data (see Figure 1). To install the productyou must extract the files to a drive on your hard disk. You also need tocreate a new Web site with the demo host header names emagiccmsdemo and emagiccmsdemoadmin using IIS. The first name is used to browse to the demonstration Web site; thesecond is used to browse to the administration interface, which will look likeFigure 2. For your browser to recognize the demo host header names, you mustadd them to the local host s file of your computer inside the system32driversetcfolder. This step is not needed in a real production environment where the hostheader names will be replaced by the licensed domain names of your Web site.

Figure 1: The fully functional evaluationcopy.

Figure 2: The administrationinterface.

I tested the product on a Windows Server 2003 system with.NET Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition. I found that thedefault Windows 2003 security settings prohibit you from properly running theadministration part of the application. I resolved the issue by adding thespecific URL to the trusted zone using Internet Explorer. This product isexclusively designed to work with Windows 2003 and it may not work properlywith other operating systems. I found it very difficult to configure theapplication with Windows XP professional. Once the product is properlyinstalled, even novice users can modify the Web site using its user-friendlyadministration interface.

For better performance I recommend you isolate theapplication into a separate pool. The product uses the ASP.NET State service to manage sessionstate, so this service should be configured to start automatically when bootingthe server. Also, SQL Server is supported for session state management. Theevaluation version comes with a demonstration SQL Server database file. You mustrestore this file using either SQL Server 2000 or 2005 before attempting to runthe application.

The product takes advantage of the rich features of .NET Framework2.0. The portal framework ships with a fully documented API to manipulate thecontent of the CMS. This enables users to deploy the application for both small-and large-scale projects. The product only supports Internet Explorer to accessthe administration interface. However, Web sites developed using the productcan be accessed using any browser.

An important point to note is that for each type ofcontent there is a module to manage it. The product ships with such standardmodules as side menu, sitemap, image gallery, document gallery, and mail form.You can also add advanced optional modules, such as structured content based onthe XForms standard and XML feed. You can also build your own modules and plugthem into the application. emagiC CMS.Net can be used in several projectenvironments, such as for building extranet sites, intranet sites, and portalsites. An interesting feature of this product is that you can seamlesslyintegrate third-party applications with the content management system throughsimple inheritance from the classes shipped with the product.

Other features of the product include a WYSIWYG editor,virtual staging, content versioning, link control, content life cycle,distributed editing, scalable architecture, community creation, scheduledcontent delivery, support for multiple languages, task lists, statistics,support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and much more. You can find moreinformation regarding all the features included with the product at http://www.emagiccms.com/emagiC_xforms/overview.asp?pageId=534&cat=2.

The administration interface has been divided into severalareas. On the left-hand side you ll find the navigation trees for pagemanagement (Sitemap), content management (Dataparts), and general managementtasks, such as documents, images, modules, skins, stylesheets, users, andcommunity configuration. The right side displays the content. Administratorscan directly edit the content using the built-in WYSIWYG editor (see Figure 3),which will load when you click on the Edit link on the smart tag. Each contentcontainer contains a smart tag at the extreme right side, which you can use tomodify the content. You can also preview the page using the View option. Youcan also edit the content directly from the right-side pane by selecting thespecific menu item. The built-in text editor comes with support for majorfonts, symbols, styles, and much more. Moreover, the editor provides supportfor multiple languages.

Figure 3: Edit the content using thebuilt-in WYSIWYG editor.

The documentation for emagiC CMS.Net can be downloadedfrom the URL you receive after initial registration. It has been split into twoparts: a General User Manual (aimed at non-technical end-users) and a TechnicalManual (aimed at Web development companies). The technical manual provides allthe required information for product installation. The vendor providesexcellent support through e-mail and live chat and all technical queries areanswered within one working day. I was really amazed by the speed of theirsupport department. The vendor assisted me through live chat by givingstep-by-step instructions when I faced some issues during the installation ofthe product, which helped me fix all the problems within a few minutes. You canalso post queries to their discussion forum, which they maintain on their Web site,as well as refer to the online knowledge base at any time (in case you requiresupport during non-business hours).

No doubt, if used properly, emagiC CMS.Net can yield richdividends for your requirements as it contains rich features. I suggest yourefer to the product documentation to explore all the details. This product isone of the first of its kind to be released after the release of .NET Framework2.0, and I hope version 2 adds more features to this great product. (At thetime of this writing, the vendor was slated to release version 2 of thisproduct by the end of March 2006.)

Anand Narayanaswamy,a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), works as an independentconsultant and runs NetAns Technologies (http://www.netans.com),which provides Web hosting services based in Trivandrum, India. Anand also worksas a technical editor lead for ASPAlliance.com. He runs Learnxpress.com (http://www.learnxpress.com),Dotnetalbum.com (http://www.dotnetalbum.com),and Csharpfaq.com (http://www.csharpfaq.com).Find out more about him at http://www.visualanand.netor e-mail him at mailto:[email protected].

Rating:

Web Site: http://www.emagiccms.com

Price: Plansstart at US$1,915