We are excited to announce a new direction for Exponent CMS, and we are very interested to hear your feedback (see link at the end of this post).. We will quickly be transitioning Exponent into Microsoft's .NET Framework. The LAMP stack has served us well over the years but we believe this decision will benefit Exponent in the long run. It was fun while it lasted, but let’s face it: Microsoft isn't going anywhere. We wholeheartedly believe that unless we join forces with such formidable opponent, Exponent may continue to be just another CMS in a sea of PHP code.

The Competition
When stepping back and objectively looking at the Open Source CMS landscape, its painfully obvious that the PHP market is oversaturated. With vastly fewer .NET Open Source CMS' to compete with, we anticipate Exponent’s adoption will quickly and drastically increase.

The New Market
It is an unfortunate truth that the mainstream often uses PHP for smaller sites and .NET for enterprise level applications. We, as well as many in the community, agree that Exponent has long been an enterprise level content management system. This transition to .NET will bring the non-technical businessman’s perception in line with the reality of Exponent’s enterprise level capabilities, allowing us to penetrate new business markets, increasing Exponent’s overall adoption.

Next Steps
The first step will be to utilize a feature of .NET called COM Interop. COM Interop lets you create a COM wrapper around your .NET components. The .NET component remains a .NET component, but it uses the CLR and is built using the .NET framework. However, it is built in such a way that Windows thinks it's a COM component and makes it available to all calling COM clients. In this way, you can make a .NET component available to PHP via the same COM features of PHP. You can read more about this technology at the Peachpit article PHP and .NET. Once Exponent is working in its existing from in the .NET framework we will begin to rewrite the Exponent’s framework in native .NET classes. The eventual result will be Exponent fully implemented in .NET natively.

Thank You Contributors
Thanks to all who have dedicated time and resources to the project. It's our hope that you'll continue to assist along the transition, potentially donating not only time, but money to help cover the increased cost of hosting and licensing. If you are interested in contributing, join the new cause and support the new Exponent.NET!

Be sure to pop over to the forum and give us your feedback.

April Fools