If you’re looking for a cms in asp.net, you should consider DotNetNuke or if your looking for a blog CMs, you should consider Subtext

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by norbertB

I have had a bit of pain using blog engines like expression engine to make more static type sites, you end up working around a whole lot of features that you don’t really need, and hacking things together for the things that you do. If your client is just your average small business type, they don’t always relate to blogging terminology or concepts. They just want to update their interweb thingy, with something that works much like everything else they use on their computer.

Writing your own is certainly a large learning experience, and Hofstadter’s Law will kick in like you wouldn’t believe.

In the realm of asp.net, have heard very good things about graffiti, but not used it, was generally impressed by umbraco, have done a few sites with that, you get total control over the output, the ui is great, and clients understand it very easily.

I tried dotnetnuke a few years ago, but found that I had to work very hard to control the output, which (at the time anyway) was deeply rooted in the webforms paradigm, with all the markup horror that entails, although it does offer a huge number of addin modules, and has a massive user base.

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by seanb

I would avoid Wordpress as a CMS in a professional environment. As stated earlier, it’s a great blogging platform, but doesn’t generally offer the robustness that most professional environments require. I’m a fan of Concrete5 so far as I’ve seen, although you may have to get into a little code to better control some of the formatting errors I’ve seen.

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by lush

Well many of these answers are fine, but if you are talking ASP.Net, then you really should look at DotNetNuke. It is far and away the most popular .Net CMS with thousands of available modules and skins and one of the most active communities on .Net.

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by Joe Brinkman

I thought about using Drupal, then I was frustrated with how difficult it was to “bend” it to everything I needed. Them someone mentioned ExpressionEngine. It was a solid choice.

You can make a simple blog page with EE, or setup a forum, document library, photogallery, setup custom forms for users to enter info to be stored.

The possibilities are endless. I would recommend EE, because I thought about developing my own custom CMS until I stumbled upon this.

Check out some of the tutorials, it will show you how to load content from the database to the template, just by using tags like: {title} and {body}: http://expressionengine.com/tutorials/

It is made in PHP, but with this, it takes the coding out of development.

After the initial learning curve, it’s all down hill. Good luck!

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by Brad

Graffiti from Telligent is marketed as a CMS. I use it as a blog engine, and it is tightly linked to the structure/concepts of a blog: chronological list of articles, articles are called posts, comments…

But their blog/site has shown some sites that use Graffiti but are far from looking like blogs.

http://graffiticms.com/

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by postback

I would go with Graffiti. You have full control over html, and it can be regular blogging platform and CMS.

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by Hrvoje

Plone
django
joomla
.. and I’m sure lots of others, too 🙂

I personally like Plone, and use it for some things. I also use Wordpress, and I do manual content management (depending on the site).

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by warren

Wordpress is NO CMS.

Wordpress is a very good blog platform, but it’s by no means a CMS – although it can be used as one and the latest versions facilitate that.

Rolling your own is imo a very bad idea. There are plenty of CMS frameworks and tools out there, just try them.

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by Tigraine

Another option, if you do want to sit back and not waste too much time: Concrete5. It’s PHP based and quite new but it’s quite a nice layout and it’s really natural for new CMS users. You can go from a paper-based sitemap and PSD to a full site structure, ready for data entry, within a day, two at a push.

It’s quite heavy though. Give their demo a look in.

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by Oli

I think WordPress is perfectly suited for a CMS.

NOTE: This answer was originally posted at StackOverflow.com by Ryan Rodemoyer