Introduction

Unlike PHP, ASP.NET Core Developers don’t have many options available when It comes to choosing a powerful

Content Management System (CMS) for developing Applications. After searching & testing, In this Article, I’m going to list down some of the great Content Management Systems (CMS) for ASP.NET

No Doubt, that .NET is the most powerful & versatile framework. It already provides us with some great tools for rapid development like Entity Framework but having a CMS can save more time while developing an Application.

Before Sharing a list of Top Open Source Content Management System (CMS) developed on ASP.NET Core , we should decide whether we need a CMS or Not?

Why Content Management System (CMS)?

Developing from scratch is considers as a good idea in most of the cases. So, before start developing your application you must answer these very simple questions.

  1. You don’t like to Code so much?
  2. Are you going to develop an E-commerce website, Blog, a management system or an admin panel like app where most of the functionalities are simple CRUD Operations?
  3. Do you want your web application to be SEO Friendly but don’t have SEO knowledge?
  4. Do you want non-technical users to publish content to your website regularly?

If you have positive answers to the above questions then you need a CMS for the rapid development of your dotnet core application.

There’re two commonly used CMS Architectures i.e. Headless & Decoupled CMS. So, you should also know the difference before comparing Top Content Management Systems.

Headless vs Decoupled CMS

This single image describes the difference between Headless vs Decoupled CMS very clearly.

Image Credit: https://www.coredna.com/blogs/headless-vs-decoupled-cms
Image Credit: https://www.coredna.com/blogs/headless-vs-decoupled-cms

Now It’s time to list down some top Content Management Systems (CMS) available for .Net Core Developers.

Top Content Management Systems (CMS)


Orchard Core

Orchard Core is an open source, modular, multi-tenant application framework and CMS for ASP.NET Core. This is actually Microsoft’s venture into the planet of open source development. After the release of Dotnet Core, Orchard was redesigned using .Net Core.

Orchard Core
Orchard Core

Features:

Modular: Every feature is a separate NuGet package as a separate module. So, we just need to get what we are needed for our development.

Documentation: Nice documentation makes easy to work with orchard.

Docker Support: Deploy anywhere regardless the platform with container support.

Flexible Content Management: Reusable content fields. Role based user management also available.

Multi-Tenant: Reusable website templates. We can manage multiple sites with a single Installation.

Headless & Decoupled: Offers both Headless CMS or Decoupled architecture.

Cofoundry

Cofoundry is an extensible and flexible .NET Core CMS & application framework focusing on code first development.

Cofoundry
Cofoundry

Features:

Custom Entities: Define entities in code and get apis and CRUD management.

Roles & Permissions: Configurable roles and permissions enforced at the api level.

Documentation: Detailed documentation is also available to setup Cofoundry in minutes.

Docker Support: Deploy anywhere regardless the platform with container support.

Cloud Ready: Implementations for Azure services via a plugin.

Email: Email templating framework & plugins for emails sending.

Simple & user friendly: Simple & user friendly UI is also a plus.

Squidex

Squidex is an open source headless CMS and content management. It provides a rich API with OData filter & Swagger definitions.

Squidex
Squidex

Features:

Docker Support: Deploy anywhere regardless the platform with container support.

Multiple Users: Invite users & assign them roles.

Cloud Version: Saas version available at https://cloud.squidex.io.

Editor: Powerful editors to manage the content in multiple ways. It also creates Audit log and history when you change your content.

Swagger Supported: It creates a swagger document when we create a schemas.

Excellent documentation: It is open source with really nice documentation.

Blogifier

If you want to develop a Blog using ASP.NET, Blogifier is here. It’s a lightweight, simple, open source blog written in .NET Core having all best blogging features as a highly customizable & extendable Application.

Blogifier
Blogifier

Conclusion

Content Management Systems help developers in rapid development with lots of benefits like third-party themes, plugins & extensions. Open Source technologies also minimize project Cost with better Security, Scalability & flexibility. I have only listed down four Content Management Systems, there are many more with great features. There’s also some .Net CMS with large community support having a plan to move from .Net Framework to .Net Core in future like Umbraco, EPiserver and Sitecore. Comment If you have any suggestion that you think must be included in the above list or let me know If you find this article helpful.

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