Re: ASP dot Net CMS

This is a valid concern, but I don't see how we get through the real 
issues without just starting another religious war.  I have always been 
skeptical of Microsoft, inventing the phrase "if you're not actively 
against them, you're implicitly with them".  Before picking the CMS with 
which I now work I evaluated platforms, primarily J2EE vs. .NET.  One 
interesting point was how frank, accurate and open the .NET resources 
were about strengths and limitations.  Many of the Java resources were 
bitter, inaccurate and biased.  To a large extent perspective on this 
issue depends on who one listens to.  The rumblings I hear indicate that 
Microsoft sold more server licenses last year than all Unix vendors 
combined, that a default Windows Server 2003 installation is more secure 
than a typical Linux installation, and that .NET is a very viable, 
flexible and high-performance enterprise development platform.  One 
problem seems to be the lack of success stories in the market compared 
to more established platforms.  I also prefer .NET's documentation and 
XML "auto"-documentation features.  If you've ever had to call Microsoft 
for support (not from a home user perspective, but from an enterprise), 
it's a totally different and positive experience.  I remember one CMS 
vendor telling me the machine was bluescreening because of OS and 
hardware issue, and Microsoft telling me "if you uninstall [that CMS] 
from that server it will stop bluescreening".  Sure enough, the bug was 
with the CMS, but it took months for that vendor to deal with it.

I think with .NET Microsoft really got something right and it makes 
sense to capitalize on their huge research and development budget, 
especially in the hopes that Mono on Linux really takes off (this should 
probably be a backdoor strategy for all .NET CMS vendors).  Like it or 
not, Microsoft and .NET are here to stay and apparently picking up CMS 
market share as next generation CMS technology goes mainstream.  I've 
done large CMS projects with .NET, Perl and Java and I can say without a 
doubt that for me, .NET with Visual Studio allows almost an order of 
magnitude greater productivity than the other platforms, and more 
reliable systems.  For me it is easier to write new code in C# than port 
existing C# code to Java because of simple missing constructs like 
foreach.  I think J2EE containers tend to lead to vendor lock-in much 
like .NET, and I have done enough Perl to know it's not a good candidate 
for highly-integrated enterprise solutions.  PHP and Python may be 
better candidates, but my experience leads me to believe the open source 
CMS products take a lot more heavy lifting and specialized skills.  Not 
all of us are building systems managed by teams of developers - many 
projects are actually delivering on the promise of CMS by putting 
control in the hands of the business users.  I think the other tools are 
less suited for achieving these goals.  Like most new CMS products, .NET 
was built from the ground up around XML - I don't know about Python, but 
in Java and Perl XML is not nearly as easy.

Mat Griffin wrote:

>
>
> Why are there so many blinkered people relying upon Microsoft 
> products? Trying looking a bit further than just MS.
>
>
>     I think there is a problem with the term CMS - many people
>     developing sites today with .NET are looking for integrated,
>     extensible, content-centric or content-enabled web application
>     infrastructure, not typical templating systems that simply
>     generate static files which may end with aspx.
>
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     cms mailing list
>     [email protected]
>     _Subscription controls:
>     _http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms
>     _Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr],
>     [contentmanagers], [cmpros]
>     _http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html
>     _
>
>
>