Fast site creation with .NET Forge CMS and Web Platform Installer, part 1

More recently, 1C-Bitrix announced the release of a new content management system called .NET Forge CMS , which is presented in two editions, including in the form of a free community version. This system has powerful tools for creating modern fast, functional sites for commercial and other activities on the Internet.



Other advantages of the new CMS include the following: ASP.NET platform, templates for an online store, corporate website, blog, community website, visual editor, Hermitage interface, website advertising management system, ratings, polls, galleries, forums, blogs , proactive protection against threats and hacking attempts, morphological search and built-in update system.

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I am pleased to announce that .NET Forge CMS has become available for a quick unattended installation through the Web Platform Installer, among many other content management systems. This means that installing and configuring your own site has become much easier and is now available to any user.



The following describes how to use the Web Platform Installer in the shortest possible time to deploy and configure a completely ready own corporate website.

Installation

To install the .NET Forge CMS automatically, you must have the Web Platform Installer installed. The recently released final version is available for download at the following link . Here you can choose the localization of the product (14 languages ​​available) and the version that corresponds to your operating system: 32-bit or 64-bit. There is another way to download the latest version of WebPI - this is the official product page available at http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx . On this page you can get a little more information about the product and download the current version for your version of the operating system.



After the Web Platform Installer is installed on your computer, click on the following link to the template page of the .NET Forge CMS web application in the gallery. Here you can find a description of the project, leave feedback and get information from a friend (Figure 1).





Fig.1. The .NET Forge CMS page in the web application gallery



Launch the .NET Forge CMS template using the “Download” button on the bottom of the page. The project template will automatically run in the Web Platform Installer and will be ready for installation (Figure 2).





Fig. 2. Project template ready for installation



Click the “Install” button and in the appeared window with the list of components to be installed and the license text, click the “I Accept” button. The automatic download and installation of content management system components will begin. After some time, you will be prompted to specify the settings for placing the site on your computer (Figure 3).





Fig.3. Window with input of site parameters



You can leave these parameters unchanged and click “Continue”. After a few seconds, you will receive a window with a suggestion to enter the initial settings of the content management system for working with the database (Figure 4).





Fig. 4. Enter database parameters



After entering the data, click “Continue”. After a few seconds, you will receive a notification that the content management system has been successfully installed (Figure 5).





Fig. 5. Confirmation of successful installation. NET Forge CMS



The whole work took a few minutes.

Launch

To go to the already installed .NET Forge CMS content management package, you can click on the suggested link. Following this, you will see the primary configuration of the site to work (Figure 6).





Fig.6. Initial configuration of the .NET Forge CMS website



Thanks to installation via the Web Platform Installer, initial configuration does not require much effort, you are required to agree to the license agreement and, if you wish, register on the site. After that, you will be prompted to enter the site administrator settings and enter optional data for the mail server (Figure 7).





Fig.7. Enter administrator and mail server settings



Clicking on will take you to the page for selecting a template for your site (Figure 8).





Fig.8. Choosing a site template and its theme



Choose what your site will be: a personal site, a corporate site with a profile in the service sector, a corporate site with a profile in production or a community site. After that, set the theme for the solution and enter some parameters of the site, such as the company logo. After a few seconds, your corporate website is ready for use and content (Figure 9).





Fig.9. Ready to work corporate website

Conclusion

The company “1C-Bitrix” introduced to developers a great new powerful product for creating functional sites. .NET Forge CMS has a lot of advantages and rich functionality. And the free community version of this content management system makes it available to all levels of developers. Remaining free, this version does not lose in functionality and allows you to create websites based on both ready-made templates and your own code.



Availability. NET Forge CMS through the installation of Web Platform Installer makes working with this CMS even easier and faster. It’s enough to spend just a few minutes of time to start working with an already ready site!



In future articles in this series, I will try to tell you more about how to set up and develop websites using the .NET Forge CMS content management system.