Should I move my solution to Orchard CMS or add everything manually?

Question

At the moment I am building a big project using:

• ASP.Net MVC 4

• jQuery (With some extra libraries)

• Castle ActiveRecord (based on NHibernate)

• Implemented users and roles using .Net Membership Provider

I built almost all the website, but some very relevant parts are missing still and I noticed that this CMS supports ASP.Net MVC and NHibernate, and have almost all the features that I need already implemented. The features that I still need to implement are:

• Internal Search Engine

• Comments

• Version of content

• Chat betwwen users

• Users Profiles Page (Something like a very basic social network)

• Forum

• SEO

I don't know if is harder to use the CMS or if is better to add the features one by one manually. I am worried about the time I spend learning and adapting to Orchard is the same time I would spent adding this features manually. Basically, the question is:

Should I move my solution to Orchard CMS or add everything manually ?

Answer 1

You can't just move your solution to Orchard, you could but i won't recommend it. Orchard is still MVC 3 at the base and that way most should work if you just move your solution including the database etc. But if you ask me, spending time to add the features manually is the way u should go.

In the Orchard Galery you can find existing many modules

Internal Search Engine
Lucene (Fully functional - Writen by the Orchard Team)

Comments
Already exists in the Orchard Core Module

Version of content
Already exists in the Orchard Framework functionalty

Users Profiles Page
Profile (Fully functional? Or at least good enough as example)

SEO
Several modules

Only 2 features u will have to write yourself

Chat between users I can't find any example code for this, but I know Piotr Szmyd has tested SignalR inside a Orchard Module which, I think, will be usefull for a Chat module. Demo is here.

Forum
Nicholas Mayne made a start of a forum module which can be used as example or starting point, maybe you can help him extent it? Currently it's sort of a pre-alpha version :(

Answer 2

+1 to rfcdejon's answer. I ported my current project to Orchard after at 50-60% complete. I wish I had done it sooner due to the learning curve and time to integrate all the stuff I had already written, but overall it was the right choice.

If you have significant data already set up you should account for the extra time it will take to port that into Orchard. But if you are making an app from scratch with very little existing data that would make the switch to Orchard easier. Orchard is a great choice for anyone looking for a .NET CMS that supports MVC.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Features you've already built will have to be converted into Orchard content types/parts in order to take advantage of things that come out of the box with Orchard, like search, comments, versioning, etc.
• Orchard has its own users/roles system, so you might have to do some work to find a module for what you're already using, or override Orchard's user/membership system yourself.
• Your entire app will have to become an Orchard app, and your existing MVC stuff will have to convert into an Orchard module. Existing data access code will have to be wrapped inside a using (new TransactionScope(TransactionScopeOption.Suppress)) {...}
• Forums project has started but isn't done, so you will either be banking that it will finish in time for you to use it, or that you will be able to help get it working.