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May 24, 2010 11:38 AM
Product Review: Kentico CMS 5
A feature-rich CMS for ASP.NET website creators
Dev Pro
InstantDoc ID #125288
Longtime readers of DevProConnections and its predecessors may know that I've been following the evolution of Kentico's content management system (CMS) product for several years. Kentico has continually upgraded its CMS to further simplify the creation of websites for ASP.NET developers, and the recent iteration of the product reviewed here—Kentico CMS 5—is no exception. (Note: As this article was going to press, Kentico released version 5.5 of its CMS. Read more about Kentico CMS 5.5 here.)
Kentico CMS 5 ships with many enhancements new to the product since the previous version, which I reviewed here. As with previous versions, you download the product from Kentico's website, and the installation process is the same. The installer ships with the ability to handle User Access Control (UAC) on Windows 7 and Windows Vista.
If you want to try the product before buying, you can test-drive it with the help of the virtual lab service, where the entire Kentico CMS 5 application is installed on Kentico servers and includes four sample sites for corporate, e-commerce, social networking, and personal usage.
New Features
A core feature of Kentico CMS 5 is the implementation of widgets, shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Sample widgets in Kentico CMS 5
The CMS not only allows you to personalize specific parts of the page but also enables you to set every web part as a widget. The product ships with separate widgets for administrators, content editors, and website visitors and also makes it easy for you to drag and drop widgets between widget zones. You can also set permissions so that the widgets can be used in group, editor, and user zones, as Figure 2 shows.
Figure 2: Managing widgets in Kentico CMS 5
Kentico CMS 5 lets administrators and content editors upload media files of more than 2GB with support for HD playback. The media library interface sports a new look and feel with an improved user experience. The menu controls have column list settings in their properties, which can reduce the amount of processed data. The file uploader included with the product can inherit allowed file extensions from settings, and the flash web part supports additional flash parameters.