Member Avatar for thiswayup

Hi All

I'm looking to start a community website that we can begin small but build more stuff onto it at a later point. So I'm looking for some kind of Blog/forum/cms system so if it could fulfill most of the following criteria that would be great:

- News/Blog posting system
- Reliable template system (Drupal's system is actually very good)
- Integrated Forums
- User access control
- Good platform for API/hook in programs
- Active development and community backing
- Built on C# with either mysql/SQL server backend (pref SQL server)

Not asking for much I know :) But any help would be greatly appreciated. After a quick browse round I came up with DotNetNuke, Umbraco and sitefinity. Any ideas on these or more?
Thanks in advance

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Ken Sharpe

Dani AI

Generated

Three practical paths work well for a community site that needs to grow: a mature portal with lots of ready-made modules, a modern .NET Core CMS that’s easy to extend, or a lightweight/content-first engine you bolt additional services onto. For a project that starts small and expands, the two most important checks are how clean and documented the extension points are (APIs/hooks) and how straightforward the upgrade path is when you move between .NET versions.

Quick platform notes to help narrow choices:

  • Umbraco (umbraco.com) — strong content model and templating with a large package ecosystem and community resources.
  • DNN Platform (github.com/dnnsoftware/Dnn.Platform) — mature portal architecture and many community modules; good when you want portal-style features out of the box.
  • Sitefinity (progress.com/sitefinity) — vendor-backed product with polished APIs and enterprise support (commercial licensing).
  • Orchard Core (github.com/OrchardCMS/OrchardCore) — modular, .NET Core-first and worth evaluating if future-proofing on modern .NET is a priority.

A short proof-of-concept checklist that proves a candidate quickly:

  1. Install locally against SQL Server and time the initial setup.
  2. Create a blog/news content type and a public page template.
  3. Add a forum (native module or pair with a .NET forum engine) and exercise single-sign-on and role mapping.
  4. Implement a small custom extension (search, attendance/RSVP, or a webhook/API endpoint) to test real-world API quality.
  5. Review project activity (GitHub commits/issues), support options, and upgrade notes for .NET compatibility.

Tie this back to the thread: ’s experience building a custom control is exactly the kind of POC you should run to validate extensibility, and ’s tip about community reputation is useful—look at recent activity and sample sites before committing.

Recommended Answers

All 7 Replies

Member Avatar for Ramy Mahrous

sitefinity it's great it fullfills your requirements.

Member Avatar for thiswayup

Have you used it? Do you have a site using it?

Member Avatar for Ramy Mahrous

I worked by it sometime but I don't know if the team released site or not, you can googlize the sites developed by!

Member Avatar for thiswayup

what was your experience working with it? It looks good. What type of setup did you have?
Did you get the full version or the community version?

I worked by it sometime but I don't know if the team released site or not, you can googlize the sites developed by!

Member Avatar for Ramy Mahrous

I didn't get the full version, I was creating search control, you can say I was enhancing some features but I didn't use it as a user!

Member Avatar for thiswayup

I didn't get the full version, I was creating search control, you can say I was enhancing some features but I didn't use it as a user!

I am thinking of extending the basic functionality. The community site I am thinking of building is basically a group of people who play nintendo DS in pubs/bars. I am thinking of building similar system into sitefinity to organise people in attendence. From a programmers perspective is the documentation and API's any good?

Member Avatar for Ken Sharpe

I have heard good things from developers who have tried Umbraco, but I have not tried it myself.

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