18Mar/080
Do I like to work with EPiServer CMS 5?
After working with EPiServer CMS 5 in two projects I already have some thoughts about it. In those two projects I was involved both as developer and technical architect so I have split my comments into two parts.
As developer:
It took some time to get used to:
- read-only PageData object instances (you can ready about it here)
- new VPP
- new way of managing datafactory - it takes some time to get used to write EPiServer.DataFactory.Instance instead EPiServer.Global.EPDataFactory
Of course there are few nice new things like for example new filter: FilterForVisitor
As technical architect:
I really like:
- improved performance (nice test here)
- new way of defining site configuration in web.config
- installing new modules with EPiServer Manager
- new handling of custom property types
- permanent links - this one is really cool
and I had some problems with:
- searching on developer forums for information if different behavior is due to changes introduced in CMS 5 or bug (after some time I have found link to issue tracker with list of the bugs)
- searching for examples how some things should be done in CMS 5 - for example how to get path to page folder (found on developers forum, not on EPiServer Knowledge Center)
In general we had problems with:
- still too few information in SDK
- poor intellisense in VS - no description of methods, properties...
- no episerver enterprise section - very useful (and often used in 4.6x) but not present in CMS 5
- quite a lot of bugs, for example:
- FriendlyURL caching - fixed in SP1
- simple address and external link
To summarize - I really liked working with new EPiServer and kind of hoping that in my next project we will be using CMS 5. Of course there are still things to improve - can't wait to see how CMS 5 will be developing.