ASP.NET CMS Built with Visual Web Developer Express Edition
VWD-CMS was built with VWD but is intended to power any ASP.NET 2.0 website regardless of the
development environment that you are using.
It's important to note, however, that you do not need to install
Visual Web Developer to use VWD-CMS. VWD is a client side application that you can
install on your PC at work or at home. VWD-CMS is a server side CMS that will need to
be installed (copied to) your web server. You can also install VWD-CMS on your PC and
do the majority of your work locally, then just FTP the newly updated files to your web server.
If you are not a programmer, or not planning to do extensive programming on your site,
you can simply install VWD-CMS on your web server and do all of the content maintenance on the server
and you may never need to install Visual Web Developer.
If you do decide to install Visual Web Developer on your PC and VWD-CMS on your web server,
remember that content changes are now potentially happening in two places and this brings up
synchronization issues. By setting up some processes to track and manage changes to the content,
you can keep this under control. Also, remember it is a good idea to back up the files on your
production website periodically and especially before deploying new content or code changes.
Building a Content Management System
Building a content management system that everyone can use and has all of the
features that everyone needs is an insurmountable task for a small development
company. In fact, it has proven to be an unattainable challenge even for the
biggest software companies. This would explain why there are so many content
management systems out there - people are not satified with the products that
are available so they build their own custom CMS. This also explains why there is
no clear-cut leader in the CMS business - each CMS has advantages and benefits,
but they also tend to impose limitations on what developers can do.
If you are running a small business, you most likely don't want to dump loads
of cash and time into building a content management system for your site. Small
businesses need to get their sites online and start seeing some return on
investment quickly. Small businesses need a content management system that will
allow them to rapidly create a site and maintain it with a minimum amount of effort and
staff. Small businesses need VWD-CMS.
When I started planning VWD-CMS, it was intended to be a bare-bones,
no frills, super-simple CMS for ASP.NET. I have built several custom content
management systems in the past two years, and have learned how complicated
the systems can get and how small design decisions can lead to major constraints
on the customization of the site. What I wanted to accomplish with VWD-CMS is
to create a system that makes it easy to organize and manage your site without
impacting your ability to expand the site and functionality in a natural way and
using all of the power available in the .NET Framework and ASP.NET.
VWD-CMS is a File Based Content Management System
The solution that I came up with is a file based content
managment system that does not rely on SQL Server or MySQL to store
information. I chose this direction because I wanted to be able to offer
a simple CMS solution that is easy to install, manage, backup, and restore - by
eliminating the need for a database server, many of the installation and configuration
steps are also eliminated. Future releases of VWD-CMS may include an option to choose
between a file storage system and SQL Server Express Edition.
Simple Backup and Deployment
One major advantage of a file based CMS is that all of the content and code in your
VWD-CMS website is stored in one place - in
the root directory and its subdirectories. If you want to make a backup
of your site, just copy the whole root directory and save it somewhere.
This also makes deployment really easy too. Suppose you are developing a totally
new version of your site on your PC. Once you have finished the development
and testing, all you need to do is copy it out to the web server using FTP.
Saves Money
Because VWD-CMS uses plain text and XML files to store information, there is
no need to install SQL Server or MySQL unless your website collects and
processes a lot of user generated data. Users of VWD-CMS do not need to
pay extra money for a database server unless they really need one. Realistically, most website
owners will want to have user registration and login capabilities which is based on
the ASP.NET Membership features and requires SQL Server. Additionally, the VWD-CMS
Members and Forums components use SQL server to store data. The bottom line is that SQL Server is
an integral part of any truely dynamic website, but if you are simply building a
very basic site, you are not required to have a database server in order to use VWD-CMS.
Advanced Features Come at a Price
The more advanced a CMS is, the more likely it is that some part of the system will
break or constrain and limit a developer. For this reason, to keep the system simple,
stable, and reliable, I have not attempted to provide too much custom functionality.
The upside of having a very simple and flexible CMS is that you are unlikely to
run into a situation where you cannot build a custom web page and write code
to do whatever you want because the content management system does not
limit your ability to customize and get creative. Using the content editing tools
provided with VWD-CMS will enable you to build basic web pages without having
to write any HTML or ASP.NET code. If you are new web page design and want
to build more sophisticated web pages, read the section below to learn more about
creating pages with HTML and CSS.
Learn HTML and CSS to Build More Sophisticated Pages
Novice website administrators and copy writers may find that WYSIWYG editors help
them create pages quickly without having to be a technical expert. I have created some
tutorials to help you learn learn a few
things about HTML and CSS if you find that the WYSIWYG editor does not provide a feature
that you need to build your web pages. Additionally, if you want to
create a new page template using ASP.NET Master Pages, you will need to learn
the basics about ASP.NET. To make
learning basic HTML, CSS, and ASP.NET Master pages, and to help you get your website
online more quickly, I provide a sample site with VWD-CMS that has examples
of how to do it.
Web Page Design Tutorials
HTML Tags
You can build just about every page on this site if you know the following HTML tags:
H1, H2, H3, P, A, IMG, OL, UL, LI, BR, DIV, TABLE, TR, TD. That is a total of 14 HTML tags
that you should learn to be able to write just about any web page. To read about each
of these tags, how they are used, and see some examples, read this article:
Learning Basic HTML.
CSS Styles
CSS Styles make formatting your content much easier because you can define the
styles in a separate stylesheet file and use it from many different web pages. Here are the
basic CSS styles that will allow you to start making attractive and presentable web pages:
To learn the CSS syntax and see some examples, read this article:
Learning Basic CSS.
ASP.NET Master Pages
Learning some basic HTML and CSS is not very difficult, but learning ASP.NET is a different story. Despite
this fact, if you really want to build a custom Master Page for your VWD-CMS website you can look at
the examples that we have provided and read the following article to learn more about
ASP.NET Master Pages.