Orchard is an open source CMS web application that will allow you to create any website, page based or blog. We have been seeing many CMS in the market lately, this is a Microsoft open source solution that is intended be part of the Codeplex foundation.

Orchard have been build using ASP.NET MVC instead of ASP.NET Web forms, no a surprise there when Microsoft has been pushing their open source MVC as the way to create ASP.NET applications. 

You can find the Orchard Project here.

The features coming out in Orchard.

Even that now the Orchard Project is still very young, I can see potential, all the features they are going to add overlaps with the area of DNN, Word press and Graffiti.

I have been running Graffiti CMS for many years and I was looking in moving to Word press for the reach features, the main problem is that Word press runs in pho and mySQL. That blog engine has been growing in adopters by the masses leaving behind other blog engines in .NET. Is that why Microsoft created the Orchard project?

However if Orchard Project moves at the speed they have been moving, I can see running my blog soon with Orchard, leaving behind the fateful Graffiti CMS that now that became open source I feel I’ll be jumping ships before they can release the expected 2.0 version.

My experience downloading the source code for Orchard on February 18th.

Its important to note the date on a open source solution as the changes are happening everyday.

First screen just after compiling it and running the Orchard web app you’ll find that will ask you the customization of the CMS. All the configuration happens on the web application, you do not have to make any changes to the web.config.

Allow you to decide at start up about what database you want to store the application data. Your options are SQL Lite, SQL Server or SQL Express.

The results looks like a new ASP.NET MVC simple application. I’m sure the first thing you want to do is to change the theme.

Problem changing themes in the latest release. Some images are still missing in the theme, I believe they are fixing that problem right now, so most probably that is being resolve when you read this post.

Adding a new blog instead of pages, so in Orchard, you can just add pages to the engine or blogs. The Orchard theme looks really good.

Do not delete the Home page that comes in Orchard, you should be able to do it, but looks like your app won’t work at all if you do that.

Workaround, create a new page before deleting the home page and make it the main page.

So what is Orchard project missing? Well right now, many things really, still the project is pretty young and looks like there are many wished features that need to be added. The foundation has been set.

I don’t recommend to start using it just now for anything customer facing, great tool to download and learn the insides and outs or to learn ASP.NET MVC.

List of Things that there are a must for me.

• A mobile theme; I would like to specify the theme when an iPhone, blackberry or other mobile device reads my blog.
• Set Orchard on blog mode so I can personalize the Home page to show my blog posts.
• Widgets; a way to add widgets and if I want write widgets to display on my blog.
• Import and Export from other blog engines easily.

Cheers

Al