Allow existing ASP.NET website to use Umbraco functionality
Hi,
First off apologies if the information I am requesting exists somewhere, but I am struggling to find it! I have 2-3 days to evaluate this product. Our company has a requirement to add CMS functionality to an existing ASP.NET MCV2 application.
So far I have installed the Umbraco CMS via Microsoft WebMatrix and have ported across our existing website. So in the website lists it contains Umbraco and our site. I would like several sections of our site to have CMS functionality, so general users can edit pages via Umbraco rather than the cumbersome current process. So my question is.................................. Where do I start in order allow some pages to be edited via Umbraco yet keep all of our existing functionality. I am really struggling to find decent documentation and my time is quite limited.
I'll probably get shot but, without knowing the full functionality of your app, it sounds like Umbraco is not the right product for your situation. imho.
Umbraco tends to be the backbone of a content heavy website, not used to manage content in an existing app.
Having said that you could may be able to use Umbraco to manage the content and then modify your mvc views to use the Umbraco API to pull in content.
It depends on the exact requirements a bit though.
Sorry it isn't more constructive.
If you want to get a better idea of a typical Umbraco build, have a look at www.Umbraco.tv
I think you'll need to expand on how the CMS side will interact with the MVC app, or are you trying to replace parts of the app with CMS functionality?
Personally if I had 2-3 days I would spend some a little more time to post all the information you can on what you're trying to achieve and what the previous MVC app does and how it will intergrate.
The more information you provide the better help you'll recieve!
Our current MVC2 app, is primarily a content based website (it does have some areas of functionality but not that relevant to main issue). Currently our small number of content editors have to go through a very painful process, of creating/editing aspx files using dreamweaver, then updating the web.sitemap, using subversion tool to commit the content, waiting for the build to run, checking on a test server, then running a separate stand alone application to publish to the production web server..... It's not great for non-techincal people, so the idea was to have a simple CMS in which the editors could simply goto a url and create/edit content. I have managed to do some prototypes with other open source CMS (drupal/joomla/wordpress) - however it would be nice if we could keep the asp.net technology.
I wanted to know where to start, or is it not really suitable for this purpose. If you had an existing basic MCV site which had say one page - how would you go about integrating with Umbraco?
Sounds like you're looking to rewrite alot of the MVC app as alot of the functionality sounds like it can be replaced with a CMS, so I'd say Umbraco is ideal for this.
With regards to 'integrating' the MVC app, without knowing exactly how it works it's hard to say, however Umbraco allows you to add custom sections within the admin system which can be used to integrate existing apps whilst keeping the same look and feel, for this it doesn't matter what technology is used as these pages run outside of Umbraco.
If the CMS and the existing MVC needed to talk to each other then there are plently of ways to achieve this.
I would say Umbraco would be a very strong contender for your app. The next version of Umbraco (5) which is not out for a while is completly rewritten using MVC.
If it were an MVC2 app with only 1 page, I would throw it away and start over using Umbraco :-)
On a serious note, I'm a bit confused: you mention that you did some prototyping with other open source CMS. Does this mean you are looking to integrate your application with a CMS, or have you already decided your application needs to be fully migrated to a CMS? That's a big difference!
If you're looking to integrate parts of your application into the CMS, how would you do it with Joomla or Wordpress? Integration with Umbraco should not be much different.
If you're looking to migrate your application: Umbraco is your best friend. Seeing your application currently does not have many functionality embedded, the easiest solution is probably to start creating content in Umbraco, and add functionality later (much of the code you already written is in the same language so that should not be an issue at all).
hi - regarding testing with Joomla etc, MVC2 scrapped, redone from scratch converting to php and ensured all relevant plugins offered similar(ish) functionality (Drupal won out in that battle...). I think I'll have a play with Umbraco taking the option of building from scratch.
Allow existing ASP.NET website to use Umbraco functionality
Hi,
First off apologies if the information I am requesting exists somewhere, but I am struggling to find it! I have 2-3 days to evaluate this product. Our company has a requirement to add CMS functionality to an existing ASP.NET MCV2 application.
So far I have installed the Umbraco CMS via Microsoft WebMatrix and have ported across our existing website. So in the website lists it contains Umbraco and our site. I would like several sections of our site to have CMS functionality, so general users can edit pages via Umbraco rather than the cumbersome current process. So my question is.................................. Where do I start in order allow some pages to be edited via Umbraco yet keep all of our existing functionality. I am really struggling to find decent documentation and my time is quite limited.
Many thanks!
Hi Darren,
I'll probably get shot but, without knowing the full functionality of your app, it sounds like Umbraco is not the right product for your situation. imho.
Umbraco tends to be the backbone of a content heavy website, not used to manage content in an existing app.
Having said that you could may be able to use Umbraco to manage the content and then modify your mvc views to use the Umbraco API to pull in content.
It depends on the exact requirements a bit though.
Sorry it isn't more constructive.
If you want to get a better idea of a typical Umbraco build, have a look at www.Umbraco.tv
Jay
Hey Darren.
Welcome to the forum!
I think you'll need to expand on how the CMS side will interact with the MVC app, or are you trying to replace parts of the app with CMS functionality?
Personally if I had 2-3 days I would spend some a little more time to post all the information you can on what you're trying to achieve and what the previous MVC app does and how it will intergrate.
The more information you provide the better help you'll recieve!
Regards
Rich
Thanks for the responses guys.
Our current MVC2 app, is primarily a content based website (it does have some areas of functionality but not that relevant to main issue). Currently our small number of content editors have to go through a very painful process, of creating/editing aspx files using dreamweaver, then updating the web.sitemap, using subversion tool to commit the content, waiting for the build to run, checking on a test server, then running a separate stand alone application to publish to the production web server..... It's not great for non-techincal people, so the idea was to have a simple CMS in which the editors could simply goto a url and create/edit content. I have managed to do some prototypes with other open source CMS (drupal/joomla/wordpress) - however it would be nice if we could keep the asp.net technology.
I wanted to know where to start, or is it not really suitable for this purpose. If you had an existing basic MCV site which had say one page - how would you go about integrating with Umbraco?
Thanks again
Hey Darren,
Sounds like you're looking to rewrite alot of the MVC app as alot of the functionality sounds like it can be replaced with a CMS, so I'd say Umbraco is ideal for this.
With regards to 'integrating' the MVC app, without knowing exactly how it works it's hard to say, however Umbraco allows you to add custom sections within the admin system which can be used to integrate existing apps whilst keeping the same look and feel, for this it doesn't matter what technology is used as these pages run outside of Umbraco.
If the CMS and the existing MVC needed to talk to each other then there are plently of ways to achieve this.
I would say Umbraco would be a very strong contender for your app. The next version of Umbraco (5) which is not out for a while is completly rewritten using MVC.
Rich
If it were an MVC2 app with only 1 page, I would throw it away and start over using Umbraco :-)
On a serious note, I'm a bit confused: you mention that you did some prototyping with other open source CMS. Does this mean you are looking to integrate your application with a CMS, or have you already decided your application needs to be fully migrated to a CMS? That's a big difference!
If you're looking to integrate parts of your application into the CMS, how would you do it with Joomla or Wordpress? Integration with Umbraco should not be much different.
If you're looking to migrate your application: Umbraco is your best friend. Seeing your application currently does not have many functionality embedded, the easiest solution is probably to start creating content in Umbraco, and add functionality later (much of the code you already written is in the same language so that should not be an issue at all).
hi - regarding testing with Joomla etc, MVC2 scrapped, redone from scratch converting to php and ensured all relevant plugins offered similar(ish) functionality (Drupal won out in that battle...). I think I'll have a play with Umbraco taking the option of building from scratch.
Thanks for the responses
Hi,
It sounds like a sensible decision, not only for this project but for future projects where you will have an understanding of various cms' and mvc2.
Jay
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