Here’s what I have: Custom-made C# CMS where the content is stored in a

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Asked: May 13, 20262026-05-13T23:05:32+00:00 2026-05-13T23:05:32+00:00

Here’s what I have: Custom-made C# CMS where the content is stored in a

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Here’s what I have:

Custom-made C# CMS where the content is stored in a database in XML, and XSLT is applied to format the page content.

Here’s my task:

Design new front-end site and upgrade to ASP.NET 4.0 (via ASP.NET 2.0 first) in the process. Accessibility and standards compliance are factors.

Here’s my problem:

Comprehensive set of existing page and control classes with much dependency on XSLT for the rendering – will want to re-code much of this and also keep the existing DB schema.

**** Here’s my question:**

Can anyone suggest a simple way to create my own set of “page layout” classes to use CSS instead of XSLT for all layout? Right now, the content is coming back as XML in a DataSet and applied to literal controls – it’s a mess and I want to find a way to work against the existing XML content in the DB. Any suggestions?

UPDATE 1

Starting to think that Template Controls may be even more bother than XSLT for this…

UPDATE 2

Here is the structure of the existing XML. It’s a huge site so performance will come into it when we start looking at custom controls. My goal is to have maximum control via CSS and clean markup.

<page>
    <section>
        <heading></heading>
        <content></content>
    </Section>

    <section>
        <heading></heading>
        <content></content>
    </Section>
    ...
</page>