No doubt you’ve heard of SharePoint these days; whether you are involved in organization providing MOSS consulting services or organization implementing MOSS as a part of their information management solution.
Many are familiar with MOSS features and capabilities in intranet scenarios. When it comes to using MOSS as an Internet CMS it may not be so common. Especially, when your client base consists of small and medium business; as most of us know what MOSS means in terms of licensing for public site scenario. Many medium business owners consider it a luxury they can’t afford at the time.
It’s not easy to offer any content management system to a client who uses SharePoint for their intranet. You’re just used to certain things in MOSS that you “can’t live without”.
As a part of a recent case study I prepared for one of the clients – I would like to share a CMS solution by Telerik that most closely resembles high end CMS capabilities. What makes this solution particularly attaractive to small and medium businesses due to its flexible integration and expansion using .NET tools.
This article lists most of the content management features of MOSS and compares them with Telerik’s Sitefinity. I think this is a great resource if you’re trying to make a non biased comparison and see benefits of using Sitefinity for your public site.
|
Content Management Feature |
Included in MOSS |
Included in Sitefinity |
|
Content Versioning – pages and other content versions are stored and history of updates is tracked |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Document and Image Libraries – contributors upload images and document which are presented for public users for viewing |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Publishing workflow – contributors add or modify content and workflow is started that allows approvers and site owners to approve and publish the content to a live site |
Yes |
Yes |
|
History and Roll back capabilities – contributors with appropriate right will have an ability to view history of updates and roll back older versions |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Page design customizations – ability to customize page look and feel |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Master page availability – ability to create a design |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Site templates – available predefined site structure that a customer can customize |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Custom controls – ability to enable users and contributors to add custom bits of functionality developed on demand |
Yes2 |
Yes2 |
|
Custom Pages – ability to develop custom pages with custom functionality executable by the visitor |
Yes2 |
Yes2 |
|
Custom Workflows – ability to accommodate custom workflows |
Yes2 |
Yes2 |
|
Availability of add-ons and components – out of the box availability of various features: poll, event list, news list, links list, document libraries, image libraries, forum, site map, blogs, breadcrumbs, calendar, RSS |
Yes |
Yes |
|
SSL support |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Automatic SSL Redirect – Individual pages can be selected to use SSL administrator or site owner user interface |
No |
Yes |
|
Manage Permissions – ability for a site administrator or owner to manage which roles have access to which page or group of pages |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Authentication Management – set of tools that allow an administrator or site owner to define a set of users and their permissions as well as delete or edit user information. |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Active Directory Integration – Ability to link user information store within content management system to an Active Directory |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Search – ability to index content within a site and enable visitors to query the index and see results of their query |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Searching MS Office and OCR’ed PDF documents – ability to search content within MS Office documents and PDF documents that store their content as text (not image) |
Yes1 |
Yes2 |
|
Mobile Device Support – pages and functionality are supported on various mobile devices |
Yes |
Yes3 |
|
Alerts – site visitors may chose to be notified by auto generated email when new content is published |
Yes |
Yes2 |
|
Content Deployment – in the environment with high approval and revision requirements the content is prepared on the authoring and then scheduled to be transferred to a publishing (available to internet users) server |
Yes |
No |
|
Chart support – allows users and site owners to add charts to the site |
Yes1 |
Yes3 |
|
Integration with MS SQL Reporting Services – site owners may choose to link SQL Reports to the live site with the appropriate permission context |
Yes1 |
Yes3 |
|
Creating/Saving Templates – allows site owners to create templates and later on restore the appropriate template including content associated with a custom template |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Integration with third party RAD components – ability to utilize Rapid Application Development components and features developed by third party |
Yes1 |
Yes1 |
|
MS SQL Database support |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Oracle Database and MySQL Database Support |
No |
Yes |
|
Browser support: Internet Explorer 6+ |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Browser support: Firefox1.5+, Safari 1.2+ |
Yes3 |
Yes |
1 – denotes that feature is available with additional configuration
2 – denotes that feature is available by using custom development extensions
3 – Limited support, results vary, 3rd party components required
After chatting with SItefinity guys today I found out that Content Deployment, Search of OCR’ed PDF’s, and Alerts will be supported in version 4 or shortly after. RIght now sitefinity is in version 3.6 so – things are moving really fast.
Yaroslav Pentsarskyy
Content Deployment, Search of OCR’ed PDF’s, and Alerts (notifications) IS already supported in version 4.0 – but of Kentico CMS
This is pretty good CMS on a quick look … too bad there is no online demo so I can try things out without wasting my time on “demo requests” and registrations.
@admin
Thanks so much for the comparison Yaroslav. We wanted Sitefinity CMS to empower developers to affordable get a lot done. I’m glad you’re finding it to be a good fit for your project.
Telerik is also a big believer in open demos, open forums and open trials. Download the software, take your time and try it out.
Gabe, you guys make great products … Sitefinity, ASP.NET Controls, AJAX Controls, and recently Silverlight controls are just few I had a pleasure working with.