CMS vNext

Mark tips some info about MCMS vNext and it's integration with SharePoint. Goes along some of the stuff I've heard. There is one HUGE thing I am begging the folks in Redmond for as it pertains to MCMS vNext & SharePoint vNext (which I have heard and I'm assuming is a single consolidated product or a suite of products):

MCMS is built providing you the components to build a MCMS-enabled site. They give you a few OOTB placeholders and a console. You could build a site, a fully functioning MCMS site, with everything they give you. You can also tap into their event model, create your own placeholders, and extend the console. But basically, you have a TON of control in building the site... they just give you the tools. Sites no longer can be determined if they are managed by MCMS... there are ways (like the GUID links to resource gallery items, etc.), but for the most part, visually it's just another website.

SharePoint takes a completely different approach. They give you plenty of site templates & site definitions and that's essentially what you use to build your site. Yes, you can customize CSS files and the actual site definitions, but it's very complicated and incredibly time consuming to strip away the SharePoint look-and-feel and replace it with a purely customized one. Site definitions contain a mix of sealed user controls, web bots (I am still shocked these were used), and incredibly complicated CSS files (think one has well over 1000 lines of styles. Oh, and who knows that when you roll out a new service pack, if the site definitions will be over-written. In SharePoint vNext, I sure hope I see a product that provides a bunch of templates out of the box, but componentizes the rest of the pieces (navigation, search, etc) for a better developer experience.

Update 1/10 9AM : Spencer Harbar (MCMS MVP) and the one behind the MCMSFAQ.com magic, has some good feedback on this issue on his site here. Thanks for pointing this out Angus.

Update 1/11 6AM : From Patrick Gaul of proAxent solutions inc.... more feedback posted on Mark's blog.

posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 6:34 AM

Feedback

# re: CMS vNext 8/8/2006 10:51 AM Anabhra

All,

I have seen a few demos of MOS 2007 and the ECM feature offered by it. It looks good and has lot of new and nice features. Also, I have heard how a custom placeholder maps to a WSS field control.

My MCMS site was developed in asp.net 1.1 and had quite a bit of code behind logic on many templates. Eg. it had a summary and detail pages/templates, wherein the summary template would query the detail template and surface content.

My question now is how do I do this in MOS 2007? The sharepoint designer is like a front page utility where you can setup the page layout and design time controls. What about the code behind? Do i need to develop my site then in VS.NET 2.0 with references to sharepoint libraries and then migrate it as a WSS site on to sharepoint 2007 server?

thanks,
anabhra

# re: CMS vNext 8/13/2006 10:52 PM AC [MVP MCMS]

Anabhra- Look at the new Web Parts in MOSS called the Summary Links Web Part & TOC Web Part to provide the rollup functionality your current summary/detail implementation contains.

As for building logic into your Page Layouts. SharePoint Designer is going to be the primary IDE for building page layouts. What you’d do is build components within VS2005 and then include those into your Page Layout pages. If your Page Layout needs to have a code-behind, you’d build that in a separate DLL and deploy that DLL to the site’s /BIN directory. This is how you’d write handlers for the page Load event.

# re: CMS vNext 12/1/2007 6:34 AM aparna

Hi,

can any one tell me how to migrate mcms site in asp.net1.1 to moss 2007

thanks,
aparna

# re: CMS vNext 12/1/2007 7:49 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Aparna-
See: http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/Speaking.aspx#20060418

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