Introduction to ECF 5.0 Content Management System
 
The Content Management System is probably the most exciting new feature in the ECF 5.0. Even
though some content management functionality existed in previous versions of the ECF, it was
never a full-blown content management system.

Product History
Internally, we have been developing our CMS for the past two years and have successfully
launched a number of sites on it already.  So even though this will be our first public release, it
is already a well-tested, mature product.

Major Features
The CMS will completely control the look and feel of the front-end website. All links, menus,
virtual pages, URL rewriting, among other features are now controlled by the CMS. The CMS
allows for extensibility through the use of customer CMS Controls. It has been similarities
with other products (SharePoint, DotNetNuke and so on), but there is one major
difference. The architecture was designed with maximum flexibility in mind. For example, the
ECF CMS Controls do not have to be inherited from any specific class. There is no need to
implement any specific interfaces or any specific methods. All you need is an User Control and
a .config file to act as a CMS Control and it automatically appears in the CMS interactive
toolbar. This allows for easy integration of web and widget-like controls into the ECF.

Another feature of the CMS is the new menu paradigm. The menu in our previous version was
driven by the structure of the catalog, which is intuitive but has its limitations. The new
CMS provides a way to create a completely independent menu structure that can link to various
pages. You can even create an unlimited number of menus (top, bottom, left and so on). Each
menu can also have a different structure based on language. That allows sites to have
completely separate menu structures for different sites while sharing some or all of the
content.

ECF 4.x and 3.x had a concept of virtual pages and categories.  The new CMS returned to a
similar concept of folders and pages. You can now create a complete folder structure with
pages for each site. It does not have to be dependent on either menus or catalogs. The
folder acts as a container for different pages while a page acts as a container for
different controls. There is more to it than this, but I'll leave it at that for now.

One of the most important features of any CMS system is an approval process. You might not
want anyone to post content to the live site without approval. This is accomplished
through a new workflow and page state concept, both of which are customizable. You can,
for instance, define the “Draft > Review > Live” type of workflow for all your pages.
Regular users may only be given the ability to change the state of a page from Draft to
Review while an administrator may be the one who can approve and publish those changes to the live
site. The new CMS system tracks all different versions and revisions for all documents
and pages and allows rollback to previous versions at any time.

Conclusion
This is just an overview of the CMS coming out in ECF 5.0 and we will be providing more
documentation on some of the specifics at a later time. As you can see, it is very
feature-rich portion of the framework.