This topic provides you with an overview of modules in Sitefinity and guides you through the common steps when creating a module.

The article contains the following sections:

• What is a module?

• Build-in modules

• Custom modules

• Registering a module

Modules are small, independent applications that provide Sitefinity with specialized functionalities. They represent backend component, from which a user can create, delete or modify certain type of content items (content types). These content items can have different data fields, or implement comments for example. Sitefinity comes with several built-in modules, such as News, Events and Blogs, that provide user interface as well as API for these tasks. Sitefinity can be extended through new, custom modules, as well as extended by modification of existing ones.

For more information about the modules API in Sitefinity and how to use it see Modules.

Sitefinity comes with several built-in modules. Here is a list:

• Blogs module

  It allows you to manage one or more blogs on a site including a range of features such as support for comments.

• Documents and Files module

  It provides users with the ability to manage files stored in libraries.

• Events module

  It provides users with the ability to schedule and announce events or happenings through their web site.

• Forms module

  Its purpose is to create forms like Contact us for example.

• Images module

  It provides users with the ability to manage images stored in libraries.

• Lists module

  It allows users to create lists such as FAQ.

• News module

  It allows you to add and display news stories to your Sitefinity site.

• Newsletters module

  It provides the ability of Sitefinity users to create and send newsletters to subscriber groups.

• Videos module

  It provides users with the ability to manage videos stored in libraries.

To view all build-in modules go to Sitefinity’s backend (http://<yoursite>/sitefinity) and click the Content button.

You can extend Sitefinity with new modules.

If, while developing your website, you need features that Sitefinity does not provide out of the box, you can build a new module. We recommend to do this in case that these features consist partially of admin side user interface and partially of public side user interface. The Blogs module is an example of such module - on the admin side it provides user interface for creating blogs, writing posts and other authoring capabilities. On the public side, it provides controls for displaying posts, displaying the list of all bloggers and so on.

If you need to implement features that need user interface only on the public side, you should implement a User Control or Custom Control. Fore more information, see Working with controls.

Many of the build-in modules are content-based modules. Content-based modules are based on ContentModuleBase and reuse much of the functionality available there. There are many features that are implemented directly when inheriting ContentModuleBase so that they can be reused across all modules based on it. Since Sitefinity is a Content Management System, most of the modules you build need the same or similar features provided by ContentModuleBase. We recommend building content-based modules, unless you have specific reasons not to do so.

For more information, see Creating Custom Modules.