YetaWF is a brand new open source product licensed under GPL 3 that  assumes multiple personalities as a web framework, a CMS and an Admin panel.

Primarily, at its core it is a framework for building ASP.NET MVC applications. For this role it includes all the relevant goodies, like the  System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace, which allows for decorating the data model's class members with attributes that specify validation or display rules on them; the UIHint attribute, which allows for rendering properties under custom display templates; and Templated Helpers for building the UI based on the annotated model.

Secondly, it has been built with modularity in mind and offers out of the box predefined packages comprising many useful utility modules, such as RSA Cryptography for creating public/private keys, a ZIP file creator based on the DotNetZip library, an email sender, YetaWF.Core.SendEmail, and many more. Extensibility is guaranteed by plugging in further packages/modules, and there's also the ability to generate custom modules through BREAD (Browse, Read, Edit, Add, Delete) and the use of Visual Studio templates.

As a further example, the YetaWF.Identity Package contains everything necessary for implementing authentication services, such as authenticating based on name or email addresses, or using Google, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft accounts with help from the package's  External Login Provider Settings module. On the other hand, YetaWF.Core.Support.SendSMS contains all the functionality necessary for sending SMS's by hooking up to an SMS gateway provider.

As far as the layout, UI and appearance goes, YetaWF draws heavily on Jquery UI and Bootstrap to offer a range of predefined templates. As an example, there is Date which renders the model's Date property localized using the user's selected timezone and date formatting. There are also Drop Down List, File Upload, and Password controls as well as Grid, which displays the model formatted as a grid. 

If these weren't enough, custom templates as well as skins can be generated. Each individual page uses a skin which can be defined using the Page Settings while a site wide default skin is defined using Site Settings.

Thirdly and CMS wise, new pages can be created and added through the Control Panel when in Site Edit Mode.The pages are divided into panes (defined by the skin) where you can add new modules, or existing modules that are common across multiple pages, in which case changes in the module affect them all.

All these cover the back-end as well as the front-end developer's needs. The needs of the other user, those of the Administrator, are satisfied through a Control Panel that takes care of all the admin tasks like automated backups, scheduled tasks, logging and visitor activity tracking, user registration, language and localization to user and role authorizations.

YetaWF's first ever release, 1.0.1, was at the beginning of July 2016. Six weeks later it was followed  by 1.0.4, which added support for RecaptchaV2 and integrated the SMS API for sending SMS/emails through 3rd party providers like Twilio or Nexmo. The latest version, released on August 25, is 1.0.5 and it brings two-step authentication.

Although only recently released through GitHub as an open source project, YetaWF can be considered mature having been in development since 2010 and used for building numerous sites in production, like Softel's company's site or LinksWithPics, both owned by the project's creator Mike van der Meulen.

As a Microsoft-only solution, installation is a breeze due to the installer which sets up the environment for working with IIS. Of course it goes without saying that a Windows powered desktop, a copy of Visual Studio version 2013 are required together with the NET 4.6 runtime.

As far as deployment goes, there are detailed instructions for both Shared or Private hosting as well as how to enable DB support with SQL Server.

The bottom line is that YetaWF offers a stable and comprehensive solution to Microsoft-only orgranizations looking to develop, deploy and support average sized web sites in a clean, organized and rapid way.

More Information

YetaWF main page

YetaWF documentation

YetaWF on GitHub

Demo site

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