The C1 CMS Superman

He was the main driving force behind the first ever Orckestra Hackathon. He has published more than 10 add-ons for C1 CMS and recently he made C1 CMS available on the developer friendly NuGet. We are of course talking about @burningice or Pauli Østerø as he goes by in his daily life.

Pauli first came across a CMS from Orckestra while working for a web agency in Greenland back in 2006 when Orckestra was a closed source company and C1 CMS just a distant dream. It was first in 2010 when C1 CMS was released as an open source CMS that he started using it. 

»It’s for the most parts a well architected system which is easily extensible. It’s possible to alter or even replace most of the implementations and it’s easy and feels natural to add new functionality. It scales well and has a strong programming model  which is important for programmers who prefer sitting in Visual Studio and have a code-first approach to their work«, said Pauli.

The first add-ons

As Pauli worked with C1 CMS he started to think of ways he could improve the system by making its own custom add-ons which he then decided to share with C1 CMS-community.

»I could have kept those add-ons to myself instead of sharing them, but that would go against the mission of Open Source«, said Pauli.

At the same time he caught the attention of the C1 CMS core team, which offered him a job as a web developer in Composite's sister company Acto.

The Contrib project

As the number of custom build add-ons grew Pauli choose to start the C1 CMSContrib project which made it easy for C1 CMS developers to install his add-ons and contribute with their own ideas and creations.

»At first it was an all-or-nothing package, but I later did split it into smaller components which made it easier for people to pick what they needed«.

Some of the add-ons from the Contrib project, such as Razor Functions and ASP.NET Master Page support, even ended up as C1 CMS starter sites.

Masterpages favorit

Pauli's favorite creation is the MasterPages which according to him took many hours to code and implement in C1 CMS.

»The code maybe seem short and simple when you look at it, but it has taken a lot of reverse engineering, debugging through the source code and countless of sleepless nights. But this kind of detective work is on the other hand also something I enjoy very much, so it has been fun«.

More openess

Keeping in spirit with his own Contrib project Pauli hopes that C1 CMS will be more open in the future, and include better integration with standard asp.net features and workflows.

»It makes it easier to attract new developers if the programming environment and metaphors are similar to what they are used to already. I would also like to see C1 CMS moving further in direction of development in the open. Not hiding away behind corporate firewalls, but be more transparent in decision making, code sharing and contributions«.

You can follow Pauli on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIN and Facebook. And if you have gotten the urge to develop add-ons yourself go to our documentation area for a introduction to the package creator.