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I have achieved a beginner skills in mvc3 and now want to try next level. I want to create a super simple CMS that has following features:

  • Support extensible skinning, i.e. start with some default dynamic skin and when change database setting for skin name, it should work with the new skin / theme
  • Dynamic pages loaded from database
  • partial view I think that can show available pages from database

Can somebody point me on how to get started? I tried to look into source code of orchard, and couple of other popular cms in mvc3 but because of lots of code, I am not just getting it properly to get started with.

Thanks in advance.

skaffman
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Prashant Lakhlani
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  • You could take a look at the existing opensource asp.net mvc cms's listed here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/656455/building-a-cms-in-asp-net-mvc and don't forget Orchard: http://www.orchardproject.net/ – Peter Jun 30 '11 at 12:07
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    if you look at the last two lines of the question, if already did that, the code is too complected, and honestly I'm not too good with MVC to understand that. thanks for a quick reply – Prashant Lakhlani Jun 30 '11 at 12:12
  • probably need to read a bit more and try less complicated things first and then work up to this levle – Daniel Powell Jun 30 '11 at 12:50
  • @lakhlani.. sorry I must've skipped these lines when reading your question. – Peter Jun 30 '11 at 15:00

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Don't worry about what other people are doing at the moment..

If this is just a learning exercise then you should look at what you want to do and then look at how to achieve that...

So your reqs are:

Extensible skinning (like themes in say WP?) Dynamic pages An admin area to manage pages

I guess the first thing is to get your areas setup if you want to do it that way.. (add an area for the admin section).

see here -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee671793.aspx

or

here -> http://mvccoderouting.codeplex.com/ -> this way could mean no need to set up areas... more detail on the page.

For the dynamic pages you are probably going to do something with routing a default controller.

do you reference the pages by id in the url... or do you have a key that makes up part of the url? that's one design choice you will have to make.

David McLean
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  • Thanks for the reply I'm now playing with the amazing mvc code routing thing. But I want to keep this discussion going, i think I will need a default controller with a single action having a param for page name and and other url params. so next thing is how to setup skin, please share any idea / links if possible. Thanks very much – Prashant Lakhlani Jun 30 '11 at 16:15
  • No problem, if you find any responses helpful please make an effort to give credit where credits due.. say with an up vote. as this has been closed we should discuss else where... post a comment over here... http://programmerdave.com/mvc-cms-how-would-you-go-about-it/ and we can discuss more.. – David McLean Jul 01 '11 at 08:48