MVC developer starter kit

Ready to build amazing 'xperiences? This starter kit covers everything you need to know about developing websites in Kentico Xperience. Grab a coffee and find out how things work.

Discover Xperience

MVC replaces Portal Engine

Since version 8, Kentico has supported two different development models, Portal Engine and MVC. The MVC, or Model-View-Controller, offers more flexibility and support for modern technologies, and it is replacing Portal Engine based on the legacy ASP.NET Web Forms. Kentico Xperience 13 will support the MVC development model on .NET MVC and .NET Core.

Are you new to ASP.NET MVC?

Get started with Microsoft's guide to MVC design pattern and separation of concerns
Take the ASP.NET MVC 5 Fundamentals course on Pluralsight, which covers all the fundamentals
Create your first ASP.NET MVC 5 application in a tutorial from Microsoft
Is Dependency Injection new to you? Learn it in Getting started with Dependency Injection on Pluralsight. Or deep dive into the Dependency Injection in C# and .NET with the Autofac Library course on Udemy

Are you migrating a Portal Engine website to MVC?

Use the MVC Transition guide
Get the basics from the MVC frequently asked questions
Read Matt Nield’s blog post about migrating from Portal Engine
Hear how a partner planned their transition to MVC
Check out how an agency boosted performance with a new website built in MVC
Follow the steps to transform a Map widget for an MVC site
Read this article to convert a Portal Engine Widget to an MVC Widget
Get inspired by other MVC related blog posts
Migrate basic objects, such as custom tables, media libraries, or custom classes, with the Import/Export feature
The Import Toolkit will save you time when importing data from external SQL databases, CSV, and XML files

Get familiar with MVC.

Explore must-have features in the Xperience brochure
Start by installing Xperience on your local machine. The Dancing Goat MVC sample site will give you an idea of setting up an Xperience project. You can use it for reference while investigating the features mentioned on this page.
The Getting started with Kentico Xperience video will walk you through setting up your computer, the database, and installing the application.
A Kentico Xperience MVC website runs the live site(s) and the administration applications separately and connects them through a database. Read the documentation for a detailed explanation of the MVC development model.
Learn more about the Xperience digital marketing features in the Resource hub for marketers

Learn about supported .NET frameworks.

Kentico 12 and previous versions only support the full .NET Framework
Xperience 13 will support both .NET Framework 4.8 and .NET Core 3.1. .NET Core will be recommended for the front-end application.
20 things developers should know about Xperience 13
Be aware of the features no longer supported in Kentico Xperience

Developing websites in MVC

Before you start developing your first Xperience website, follow our online training courses and learn best practices and recommended approaches.

The Developer tutorial will help you grasp the absolute basics of MVC. You will learn how Xperience stores website content and how you can display it on a live site.

The Xperience MVC for developers course will teach you the most important things about implementing a front-end application
- The Essentials module explains the basics of creating a new application
- The Builders module shows you how to use Page Builder and Form Builder
- The Identity module helps you implement user management
Xperience customization for developers will teach you how to customize the administration application’s built-in features and create your functionality
Finally, go through Kentico Advantage. The project guide covers key concepts and best practices you need to know to navigate the process of building a project on Kentico Xperience. Kentico Advantage presents real-world scenarios to help you with planning, developing, deploying, and maintaining Kentico Xperience.

Short on training time?

If you don't have time to go through the training courses, we suggest you start with the developer tutorial and then investigate resources that introduce advanced features, such as Page Builder and Form Builder.

Page Builder features.

Page Builder’s MVC widgets and sections allow website administrators to edit page content and layouts in a WYSIWYG style. Find out what building pages with the Page Builder looks like this short video.

Building a page with MVC widgets

Check out how easy it is to create a landing page using MVC Widgets in Kentico.

Creating pages with editable areas

To allow website admins to use MVC widgets, your pages (their Razor views) need to have the page builder registered and contain areas for the widgets.

See how editable areas are implemented in the Dancing Goat MVC sample project in the Home’s Index.cshtml and HomeController.cs files.

Learn how to create pages with editable areas

Page Builder sections

Editors can use sections to define the layout of editable areas within pages—or use them to build entire pages.

See how the sections feature is implemented in the Dancing Goat MVC sample project in the LandingPageSingleColumn.cshtml and SingleColumnSection.cshtml files.

See what the development of Page Builder looks like

Page Builder widgets

MVC widgets are reusable page components through which editors add content to the website.

See the two approaches to coding MVC widgets as well as various widget samples in the Dancing Goat MVC project, e.g., a simple Testimonial widget in the TestimonialWidget.cshtml file registered through PageBuilderComponentRegister.cs, or a more complex _HeroImageWidget.cshtml view with a dedicated HeroImageWidgetController.cs controller.

Learn about developing MVC widgets

Creating an MVC Widget Showcase

Want to learn more about building MVC widgets? Then don’t miss this three-part series that shows you how to create a simple MVC website in our blog.

Create an MVC widget showcase

Three-part series on Page Builder

Get inspired by Kentico’s MVP Sean G. Wright's three-part series about an MVC widget that dynamically changes Razor views based on configuration, ideas on where you can enable Page Builder, and rendering forms without the Form widget.

Page Builder three-part series

Page Builder dos and don'ts

Read Kentico’s MVP Brian McKeiver’s excellent tips for building an Xperience website with Page builder in the dos and don’ts article.

Page Builder dos and don'ts

MVC page templates

With page templates, editors can create pages with a different layout without developers.

See how the templates are implemented in the _Article.cshtml and ArticlePageTemplateController.cs and the _ArticleWithSidebar.cshtml and ArticleWithSidebarPageTemplate
Controller.cs files in the Dancing Goat MVC sample project.

Learn more about MVC page templates

Form Builder features

Editors on Xperience websites can use Form Builder to create online forms. Learn more about the feature and how you can create custom form components in the Xperience documentation.

Check out how Form Builder is implemented in the Dancing Goat MVC site:

The Contacts page shows how to display the Contacts form. The page is implemented in the Index.cshtml file (with _Address.cshtml and _SocialLinks.cshtml partial views) and the ContactsController.cs file.

Custom form component in the ContactGroupSelector.cshtml / ContactGroupSelectorComponent.csfile.

Check out Form Builder

Dancing Goat MVC sample site

It’s already been mentioned, but here is the Dancing Goat MVC site again: it comes out-of-the-box with Xperience, and it will help you see the individual elements from above in the context of the whole site.

You’ll also see how it implements other features like digital marketing and commerce. Diving deep into the sample site is definitely worth your time!

Install the Dancing Goat MVC sample site

MVC components.

The Xperience MVC components GitHub repository contains ready to use Page Builder components.
The Xperience Component Starter GitHub repository helps you start developing your MVC page builder components. It contains an MVC application with a sample widget, an inline editor, a form component, and a section.

Other resources

You’ve gone through the absolute essentials, and you should now have a basic understanding of what it’s like to develop an MVC website on Kentico Xperience. These resources will help you on your development journey:

Xperience Documentation
API Examples
API Reference
Xperience DevNet - articles, questions and answers, documentation, and other useful developer resources
Xperience Marketplace - downloadable third-party components and modules