Umbraco vs Sitefinity [closed]

Question

I am getting a large website developed. The develop has asked me which do I prefer either sitefinity or umbraco. The site will be similar to wikipedia where users can come and edit pages without having to login. I would like to ask your opionions on these two csm systems and which one would you recommend for content website with a community feel and wiki features. Thanks

Answer 1

I disagree with @IrishChieftain's answer and would most certainly go with Umbraco!

I've built a number of websites in Umbraco (and have got my certification) and I have to say I absolutely love it!

XSLT is very easy to learn unless you come across some really complex functionality. But even then, you can resort to ASP.NET if you don't want to learn XSLT.

Answer 2

If it's a non-commercial (charity?) site, you may be able to obtain the community version of Sitefinity for free if you display their logo in the footer. Sitefinity has a lot to offer, including an ORM.

Umbraco on the other hand has, for me personally, an unhealthy reliance on XSLT to customize the content. That was the main reason I didn't go with it.

I would go for Sitefinity or N2 for this.

Answer 3

Contrary to what others have suggested, I find the use of XSLT in Umbraco advantageous on numerous levels. In particular the time it takes to make changes and see their results is very quick. Just create transform and put a macro in your page and you can see the results. You get access to all the site data as necessary directly in the transform. Also, the fact that you are just working in HTML within the XSL transform means that it would be easy for a non .NET web developer to make changes too. I've found that although this is a .NET based CMS there is little reason to perform anything in code so you only really have to have open the CMS and your favourite text editor (I'd suggest using a text editor and accessing static files this way (through FTP or whatever if you're not logged in to the machine the CMS is on) rather than through the CMS interface.