How easy is it to setup a CMS on appharbor

Question

I'm looking for a CMS for use with Appharbor, the issue I've seen with other CMS's is that they store content in the file system which may get deleted between deployments and does not work across multiple nodes (so maybe everything would be stored in the database).

Does anyone have an experience setting up a CMS on Appharbor?

Currently I'm using Umbraco a bit so it anyone has been able to set that up those details would also be helpful.

Other cms's that might work would be Orchard or Composite C1.

Answer 1

Here are some guides that might help you out:

1. Umbraco 5 Alpha on AppHarbor (if you want to stick with Umbraco)
2. Running Composite C1 on Azure (switch out blob storage for AWS S3 which will work better on AppHarbor)
3. Our guide on Orchard on AppHarbor (the same principles and workflows will apply to Composite C1).

Answer 2

Composite C1 abstracts all its access to files through its own C1FileSystem, meaning that it can run fine on systems that requires files to be stored in ie. blobstorage or database.

AFAIK there has only been written two implementations though, one for normal filesystem and one for Azure. But it should be easy to see how the Azure implementation is made and do a similar for AppHarbor.

Look at the Composite.Plugins.IO.IOProviders.LocalIOProvider.LocalIOProvider interface to get a feeling of the kind of job that needs to be done to run on AppHarbor. Its not that bad really.

Answer 3

Just did it (after few days, approximately 8-10 hrs) and without modifying LocalIOProvider.

Really, the team is thankful to Composite C1 team for such a great CMS and Appharbor team for giving us platform and ability to test it (and use it) for free.

Sample: Demo Composite C1 site

HowTo:

1. Converted Composite C1 (3.2) WebSite to WebApp - seems that AppHarbor prefers WebApps
2. Removed references to Razor.dlls (there were some conflicts with versions)
3. Had problems with Directory rights (during startup of CC1), but after few days (had to work) this error magically disappeared!
4. Deployed and it works

More extensive how-to will be written soon!