Question

I want to use some ASP.NET based CMS for creating my website and don’t know which to choose…

I begin it in Sitefinity, but with it very hard to manage code as you want… And it generates ASP.NET WebForms code…

Now I heard about Orchard, which is CMS developed by some Microsoft employers, and is ASP.NET MVC 3 based…
Now I have some questions about that

1. What advantages have Sitefinity against Orchard?

2. Is there any issues and bugs with using Orchard? Is it comfortable
   to use?

If you have any other suggestions about using other CMS, I will be pleased)))

Answer 1

full disclosure: I work for telerik, the company that makes Sitefinity, but these opinions are based on my own experiences with both platforms.

as is often the case, it really depends on a) your needs b) your environment and c) your abilities

Sitefinity is uses asp.net webforms so indeed that is the paradigm behind its pages and controls. This has the advantage that if you are experience with ASP.NET, you’ve already got a lot of the skills needed to customize and extend Sitefinity. Templates are simply master pages, widgets are simply ascx user controls, and themes are standard asp.net themes.

Orchard follows a parallel of this approach, but as you said, in the MVC world. It makes use of views, layouts, controllers, and other mvc patterns as its foundation. If you’re strong with asp.net MVC, it can be a pretty solid platform.

As Mystere Man pointed out, it is relatively new CMS, and I might add seems to be mostly community based. When trying to figure things out in a project I was working on, I felt like I was at the mercy of whatever developer created that one component of the platform and whenver he or she had time to respond.

On the other hand, one of the many advantages of going with Sitefinity is the excellent support you get from Telerik, as well as an active community forum.

Sitefinity is also ramping up its release schedule, with major point releases coming three times a year as well as service packs in between to improve performance and constantly add new features, always based on feedback from customers.

Ultimately, it is always going to come down to your own experience and what is a best fit for all people involved. A site can have any number of involved people, from developers to designers to content writers and of course your visitors. Try each product and think about how each role will interact with the system, and see which feature set best aligns with your needs on all fronts.

hope this was helpful!