An ASP .NET based CMS is a rare thing and Kentico CMS is not only based on ASP .NET the latest version supports Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. If you want to develop custom sites using .NET it is worth knowing about.

ASP .NET is a good set of tools for building web sites and web applications, but do you want to start from scratch every time? Kentico CMS is a pre-built web site framework that allows end users to customise and manage the day-to-day running of a web site.

As it is based on ASP .NET you can also use your knowledge of the framework to customise and extend it at a deeper level. It provides a good jumping off point for almost any type of web application you care to think of. It also allows you to implement the core generic features of a web site for a client and allow them to generate and manage the content without your intervention.

The latest version 5.5 supports development using Visual Studio 2010 and it is fully .NET 4.0 compatible.  There is a documented API,  over 200 web parts and even access to source code via a licence. End users can work with the site using a browser-based WYSIWYG editor.

• Support for creating mobile websites
• Facebook Connect and OpenID authentication
• Creation of RSS feeds from any content using web parts
• Template scopes for different site sections
• Improved paging in the administration interface
• Support for Bing and Yahoo maps
• Out-of-the-box integration with Sharepoint Server
• MetaWeblogAPI interface that enables the use of editors like Windows Live Writer or MS Word to write your blog posts.

... plus performance improvements through code and database optimizations.

It is clear that you get a great deal of functionality out of the box allowing you to concentrate on developing the custom features that make the web site special.

Kentico CMS costs from $999 for the Small Business edition and there's also a free edition for up to 1000 pages and up to100 site members which has no time limitation and can be used even for commercial purposes.

You can download a 30-day trial version or try out sample sites in Kentico's Virtual Lab without needing to install anything. 

<ASIN:0735627401>

<ASIN:1430225114>

<ASIN:0672333058>

<ASIN:1430225297>

<ASIN:0470505451>

<ASIN:1430228865>

<ASIN:0470643188>