Recommendations for creating a new website with "application"-like features in .NET
I am a member of a non-profit organization that has asked me to help them redo their website.

However, they don't simply want content and design changes, they also want features that require some back end programming.  For example, the organization has "classes" with limited slots available that folks must sign up for in advance.  When people sign up for the classes, there is additional documentation they must provide in order to be able to attend the class.

They have several requests in this genre that they want added to the site.

If it was just a simple redesign of their existing content, I would just recommend they use something like Wordpress or any other standard CMS to update their look.  But since they also want these additional features, I am not certain how to proceed.

I have not yet had an opportunity to program an MVC site, so I thought I would use this as an opportunity to learn MVC.  At the same time, I don't want to reinvent the wheel.  So I was considering a CMS such as Orchard, that used MVC but was apparently quite extensible.

Does using Orchard make sense for this scenario?  If not, why not?  Are there any other recommendations for a CMS?  I was looking at Umbraco too since it seems their latest release is using MVC, but then I read that it is a little bit buggy and missing some features that their older version had in it.  So then I wasn't sure if that would be the right way to go.

In the end, I'm not even sure if I should be going with a CMS at all!  I wonder if I would learn MVC better if I just did an app from the ground up.  In that case, I was considering using a CMS for the web content, and then programming the "application" portion as a separate web application that was linked off their main site (perhaps register.mysite.com).

I'm just looking for recommendations and guidance.  How would you proceed if you were in my shoes?

My day job is a developer at a large organization. I mainly program business web applications using .NET.  But we haven't had any MVC apps come my way yet, so my MVC skills are essentially non-existent.  I want to learn MVC, but I also want to get something back to the non-profit in a decent time.

....  so ya... there it is...
Recommendations for creating a new website with "application"-like features in .NET
===

I am a member of a non-profit organization that has asked me to help them redo their website.

However, they don't simply want content and design changes, they also want features that require some back end programming.  For example, the organization has "classes" with limited slots available that folks must sign up for in advance.  When people sign up for the classes, there is additional documentation they must provide in order to be able to attend the class.

They have several requests in this genre that they want added to the site.

If it was just a simple redesign of their existing content, I would just recommend they use something like Wordpress or any other standard CMS to update their look.  But since they also want these additional features, I am not certain how to proceed.

I have not yet had an opportunity to program an MVC site, so I thought I would use this as an opportunity to learn MVC.  At the same time, I don't want to reinvent the wheel.  So I was considering a CMS such as Orchard, that used MVC but was apparently quite extensible.

Does using Orchard make sense for this scenario?  If not, why not?  Are there any other recommendations for a CMS?  I was looking at Umbraco too since it seems their latest release is using MVC, but then I read that it is a little bit buggy and missing some features that their older version had in it.  So then I wasn't sure if that would be the right way to go.

In the end, I'm not even sure if I should be going with a CMS at all!  I wonder if I would learn MVC better if I just did an app from the ground up.  In that case, I was considering using a CMS for the web content, and then programming the "application" portion as a separate web application that was linked off their main site (perhaps register.mysite.com).

I'm just looking for recommendations and guidance.  How would you proceed if you were in my shoes?

My day job is a developer at a large organization. I mainly program business web applications using .NET.  But we haven't had any MVC apps come my way yet, so my MVC skills are essentially non-existent.  I want to learn MVC, but I also want to get something back to the non-profit in a decent time.

....  so ya... there it is...