Graffiti: The .NET-Friendly CMS

gracechen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:54:17 +0000

Microsoft is making its presence felt in the ongoing development of the web. Its proprietary technologies are being increasingly used to create everything from blogs and e-commerce sites to dynamic business applications and large corporate portals. One development tool that has Microsoft written all over is a little software package known as Graffiti.

What is Graffiti?

Graffiti is a simply built CMS used to create and manage various types of websites. In this instance, the CMS abbreviation stands for content made simple. Some refer to Graffiti as a blogging platform, even though it offers features and functionality that you commonly find in more robust content management systems. To put it simple, Graffiti offers the power to create a blog or perform basic web content management. It’s all about what you need the software to do.

Core Technologies

Graffiti is built on the ASP.NET 2.0 framework. The package is very Microsoft friendly as it supports databases that include MS SQL, MS Access and VistaDB. A major advantage of its database configuration is that it allows you to easily switch to any of the supported databases without making adjustments to the code itself. Being scripted in ASP.NET makes Graffiti incredibly easy to install. Simply copy the code into the IIS virtual directory, tweak a few system settings and you’re done.

Content Management

Graffiti is a simple CMS. Therefore, it does have some administrative features, but they are not as extensive as what you would find in other systems. Nevertheless, there are a number of useful features that allow you to easily manage your site and content items.

Site Settings - This lets you set site wide default settings for your website title, tagline, metadata, header and Feedburner links among other elements.

Comments - This lets you set site wide settings for your comments based on criteria such as the Askiment ID, the time period an entry can be commented on and who is allowed to comment on what post. Even if comments are allowed on a site wide basis, they can still be disabled for specific content entries.

Plugins - Allows you to view, enable and disable the extensions currently incorporated into your site.

Packages – In the world of Graffitti, packages are a collection of components such as plugins, themes, widgets and alert filters. This setting allows you to manage these elements from a centralized area.

Utilities – This represents a toolkit that allows you to manage your site in various ways. You can rebuild pages, view log files and access a web-based file browser.

License – Allows you to view and manage the licenses for your relative software.

Keep An Eye on Graffiti

According to Telligent, the software’s developer, Graffiti will undergo major improvements in the very near future. The company plans to leverage cloud storage as well as a more advanced spam filtering solution. Look for this CMS to become more extendable as it is made to support a wider variety of themes, widgets and plugins from the developer community. If you want an easy to use platform that favors the Microsoft .NET stack, Graffiti could be the solution.

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Graffiti: The .NET-Friendly CMS