Open source .NET CMS, Oxite

There are numerous open source CMS platforms out there, wordpress being one of the most recognizable (hosting this blog).  But when it comes to .NET the choice is more limited.  Microsoft’s channel 9 community platform started its life from the telligent Community Server codebase.  Since then that team has built a new Blog/CMS platform Oxite which powers MIX online.

The project targets ASP.NET MVC developers and leverages LINQ to SQL for persistence, but hides the implementation behind a clean repository interface.  There is not end-user installation so without VSTS you will need to attach the database and config a login.  Boasting ‘standards compliant’ features such as RSS and Trackback capabilities, it makes good use of modern features such as extension methods to keep the front end clean.  Although still not out of beta, the ASP.NET MVC is proving popular, and powers some high traffic sites such as stackoverflow.com.

Microsoft’s other CMS platform sharepoint is getting behind CMIS. The content management integration services (CMIS) specificiation leverages SOAP, REST and Atom to enable communication with and between ECM systems. Although Roy Fielding isn’t impressed by the initiative, in a Web 2.0 environment a languague neutral API is almost as important as the website – so it should bring for some good vendor competition.  Alfresco in particular has recently released beta support for CMIS on its java-based platform.

Also worth a look the .NET CMS Umbraco and the popular Radiant CMS built on rails.

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