Rainbow project

The Rainbow project is an open source initiative to build a comprehensive content management system using Microsoft's ASP.NET and C# technologies.

Rainbow, available today in 29 languages, allows content authoring to be safely delegated to role-based team members who need little or no knowlege of HTML.

Rainbow optionally supports a two-step approval-publish process. 75 plug-in modules are now included in the standard release, including support for an e-store, XML news feeds, Flash, Maps, Newsletter, Surveys, Forums, Document Management, Custom Lists, and more.

It's also fairly easy to build your own custom modules using the guidelines provided on the Developer Documentation page.

Features:

End User Features

More than 45 pre-built modules
Rainbow includes many free pre-built modules that cover a wide range of common web site functionality. Compare Rainbow's breadth of modules to the limited functionality in IBuySpy or other open source projects and you'll understand why users are switching to Rainbow.

Search

Most of the built-in Rainbow modules are integrated with Rainbow's free-text search module. Rainbow Search allows you to search for content in a class of modules (e.g. all news articles), or across all modules. The search framework is role/permission sensitive, automatically filtering the search results to only show content from modules the current user is authorized to view

HTML WYSIWYG Editing

Many modules use of Rainbow's built-in WYSIWYG editors to allow users with no knowledge of HTML to produce well formatted content. The site administrator can choose from several different HTML editors. All modules can use the same editor, or individual modules can be assigned to a different editor.

Administrative Features

Optionally force new content to be approved before publishing
Many of the modules that come with Rainbow support a 2-step publishing process. Content approval can be enabled or disabled for each individual module.

When workflow is enabled the user first creates content and the content is stored in special staging tables in the database. After the new content is approved the data items are automatically migrated to the production tables.

Use one of the 15 predefined languages, or define your own

Rainbow is built on a flexible architecture that includes custom ‘internationalized’ web controls and other classes that make localizing Rainbow to a particular language, culture, and region relatively simple. An auto-learning translation function simplifies future translations.

Rainbow is currently available in 15 different languages. Included is a set of tools for managing translations in the database.

Customize a sites layout and appearance

Each portal site can have a custom skin (layout), including the site header, body layout, menu style, footer, style sheet (css), logo and more. The default 3-pane design can be customized in the site’s .css style sheet. Icons and other graphical elements can be easily replaced.

The layout of modules on each page is defined on the "admin this" page and the layout is stored in the database.

A collection of standard themes is provided with Rainbow. Each module can use either the sites default theme, or an alternate theme to highlight their appearance. Themes can be public or private. The location of the main Themes directory can be changed from within the configuration file

Flexible and fine grained user and role management

Control the ability for users in a specific role to view, edit, add, or delete content either by individual module or by page. Use either Windows authentication (username/password in Active Directory or NT SAM) or web Forms authentication (username/password stored in SQL Server).

Assign individual users to roles (e.g. admin, editor, publisher, power users, developer, etc.) for site content management in Windows Forms mode, or use predefined Windows NT/AD groups as your roles. Special permissions are also available for Workflow Support

Support for “short” and “full” user registration options. Pre-defined roles for “Authenticated Users” and “Unauthenticated Users” allow you to easily restrict the visibility of individual modules and pages to users that are logged on to the site.

Bulk Email Admin Module based on Roles with “black list” feature included.

Architectural Features

Modern n-tier architecture

Rainbow C# classes extend standard ASP.NET objects providing a consistent method for developing custom pages and custom controls. For example, a lot of the drudgery needed to create a custom module in IBuySpy is replaced by Rainbow core objects that inherit from ASP.NET's Page.

All pages are constructed from dynamically-loaded user controls. Server controls provide clean code/html content separation

Uses ADO.NET data access with Microsoft SQL Server stored procedures. Includes a tool to automatically create the stored procedures and C# data access layer for new modules

Configurable caching of portal page regions and portal settings provides excellent scalability.

Supports a wide range of clients

Rainbow supports Internet Explorer v.5.0 and later and Netscape v4.7 and later. Rainbow also supports mobile devices through WAP/WML. Most modules allow for customized (abbreviated) content to be delivered to mobile modules.