Today it was the time I waited for. Almost as on christmas I was glad that as I entered the page of "Sitecore Xpress", there was no longer the teaser saying "Coming to a server near you...", but a nice looking download page. For sure I logged in instantly and downloaded it. Small 250MB, which needed less than 10 minutes on their way to my desktop ... the license code on the other hand took his time ... I got it at 4pm - But the waiting was worth it. Now I can finally play around with it on VISTA...

The commercial Sitecore (recently called "Sitecore red") had some problems with IIS on Vista ... But I think that will be also fixed on the next version, which I await shortly.

In any way - it's nice to simply ignore the small error message on the beginning (saying the IIS would not run) and just start installing it and - who would have believed - after some minutes - a browser window opened, the page appeared and it simply works. This is how it looks on my screen: 

That cheered my heart.

But what the hell is Sitecore? Sitecore is a highly developed CMS - the best I've ever seen. You almost have the like on your own desktop, if you're welcomed directly after the login with the following screen:

(Yes - that's a screenshot of the current version) ... so just don't wonder if the windows need a little bit longer on the first opening... .Net has to compile the libraries for the first run.

As you can see on the screenshot, the interface looks almost like an Windows-desktop ... and also the "Content Editor" corresponds to the layout of the Windows-Explorer. As a Windows user you shouldn't have any problems to find your way through the system:

So if you would gladly try that CMS, which is normally for commercial use only and which is also used in enterprise solutions: Download Sitecore Xpress in any case! It's free and you won't ever have the same kind of fun with any other CMS ;-).

Links

Sitecore Website

Sitecore Xpress Website (DOWNLOAD)

German Sitecore Solution Partner "netzkern GmbH"