The problem was simple: I had no idea what to build.

For a few days I kept thinking about possible ideas but nothing really inspired me. Then something unexpected happened.

A Childhood Memory That Sparked the Idea

About three years ago, while reorganizing some old childhood games, I started digging through small surprise boxes from Mulino Bianco snacks.

Among those forgotten objects, I found a small horse figurine and a dice that I used when I was a kid to simulate races on a small improvised track with other toy horses.

At that moment, an idea clicked.

I decided to combine my passion for programming with my love for horse racing, and build a horse racing management game.

That’s how Horse Racing was born.

The Development Stack: .NET 8, C# and JavaScript

The game was developed using the following technologies:

• .NET 8
• C#
• JavaScript
• SQL Server as the data source

At the time, AI tools were not as widespread as they are today, so the entire development process was done the old-fashioned way: designing systems, experimenting with algorithms and gradually building the gameplay.

And honestly, it was a lot of fun.

The First Game Features

I started with the core elements typical of any management simulation game.

Buying Your First Horse

The game begins with purchasing your first horse, which represents the starting point for building your own racing stable.

From there, everything grows: training, race preparation and improving performance.

Race Preparation

Before each race, the player can:

• prepare the horse
• analyze the competitors
• place bets on potential winners
• choose the best jockey

All of this adds tension and strategy before the race begins.

The Race Simulation

When the starter signals the beginning of the race, the action starts.

I always imagine the scene as if it were a real race:

• horses galloping at full speed
• jockeys fighting for position
• dust rising from the track
• sudden overtakes
• side camera views
• exciting photo finishes

Winning races rewards players with virtual credits, which can then be used to improve stables and buy better horses.

It’s important to note that there are no real money bets or winnings. All credits are purely virtual, just like in a classic management simulation game.

Designing an Algorithm for Unpredictable Races

One of the most interesting challenges was designing an algorithm capable of making races unpredictable.

I wanted to avoid races that always ended the same way and create a system that felt more realistic and dynamic.

To achieve this, several variables influence the race outcome, such as:

• horse skill level
• jockey ranking
• race conditions
• random unexpected events

This ensures that each race can produce different results, even with the same competitors.

Features Added Over Time

While developing the game, I kept adding new mechanics to make it deeper and more engaging.

Stable Management

Players can:

• buy multiple horses
• sell horses
• increase horse skills and market value
• train horses to improve performance

Competitions and Championships

The game includes different types of races:

• single races
• league championships
• knockout tournaments

Statistics and Records

To add depth and longevity, the game tracks:

• race record times
• individual horse statistics
• performance trends over time

Virtual Betting System

Before each race, players can place bets on potential winners, always using virtual credits.

Additional Game Features

As development progressed, the project grew with many additional features:

• race zoom during gameplay
• full race replay system
• fast simulation for less important races
• time progression system
• scheduled race events
• customizable jockey uniforms
• jockey rankings that influence race performance
• injuries during races

Step by step, the project evolved into a complete horse racing management game.

What Is Still Missing

Despite all the work done so far, the game is not completely finished yet.

For example, 3D animations are still missing. Unfortunately, I haven’t learned how to create them yet.

Maybe AI will help me with that someday.

Future Ideas for Horse Racing

I’m already thinking about several new features that could make the game even more interesting:

• online multiplayer mode
• horse breeding mechanics
• foal and stallion development
• improved race simulation
• additional management features

At the moment Horse Racing is not yet publicly available online, but the goal is to finish it and release it to players.

A Project Built for Passion

This project started simply because I wanted to:

• return to developing with .NET
• build something fun
• transform a childhood memory into a real game

And honestly, I had a great time building it.

Now I can’t wait to finish the game and publish it, so I can receive feedback, ideas and suggestions from players and developers.

The journey of Horse Racing is not over yet.
In many ways, it has only just begun.

L'articolo Horse Racing: The Management Game I Built with .NET proviene da Giovanni Anfuso.

When talking about CMS platforms in the .NET ecosystem, people often think of tools designed primarily to build websites. Orchard Core, however, was created with a different idea in mind: not just to manage content, but to serve as a foundation for building web software.

Orchard Core is an open-source project built on ASP.NET Core and represents a complete modern rewrite of the original Orchard CMS. The key difference is that it is not just a CMS: it is first and foremost a modular multi-tenant framework on top of which the content management system is built.

In practice, it can be used in two ways:

• as a traditional CMS
• as an application platform for building software products

This completely changes how it should be interpreted: it is not a direct competitor to classic website-focused CMS platforms, but a tool designed for projects meant to grow over time.

A CMS Designed as a Platform

The philosophy behind Orchard Core is simple: start minimal and add only what is needed.

Every feature is an activatable module. The result is a system that never becomes inherently heavy, because the application includes only the components actually in use.

This approach leads to two important consequences:

The first is technical: the codebase remains clean, maintainable, and upgradable even after years.

The second is architectural: the CMS becomes the foundation for complex applications, not just editorial websites.

Not surprisingly, the framework is also designed to build modular SaaS software, where multiple teams can develop different parts of the same product and reuse them across projects.

Multi-Tenant: The Feature That Changes Everything

The real core of Orchard Core is its native multi-tenancy.

With a single installation, it is possible to manage multiple completely separate sites: databases, users, themes, and configurations remain isolated. This is not simulated multisite functionality, but truly independent environments sharing only the engine.

This makes it particularly suitable for:

• SaaS platforms
• multi-brand corporate portals
• white-label solutions
• agencies managing many clients

In cloud environments, it is possible to host thousands of sites on a single infrastructure while maintaining full data isolation.

Performance and Modern Architecture

One of the main goals of the rewrite was speed.
The CMS was designed to leverage the ASP.NET Core pipeline and a data management approach different from traditional CMS platforms.

Although it uses relational databases, it adopts a document abstraction layer (YesSql) that allows content to be treated as documents, improving performance in typical CMS operations.

The result behaves much more like a web application than a traditional dynamic website.

Headless, Decoupled, or Traditional

One of Orchard Core’s most interesting qualities is architectural freedom.
It can be used in different ways without changing platforms:

• full website with themes and templates
• content backend for custom frontends
• headless CMS via GraphQL or REST APIs

In other words, it adapts to the project instead of forcing the project to adapt to the CMS.

Security

From a security perspective, Orchard Core inherits ASP.NET Core protections and adds highly granular permission management.

Each role can have specific access to content, administrative sections, and features. External authentication, approval workflows, and tenant isolation are supported.

This structure makes it suitable for enterprise and public-sector environments, where access management is often the critical factor.

Scalability and Cloud

Orchard Core was designed with scalability in mind from the very beginning, not added later.

It runs smoothly in Docker containers, cloud environments, and distributed architectures. Native multi-tenancy makes it easy to transform into the engine behind a software product.

It is therefore more accurate to compare it to an application platform with an integrated CMS rather than a simple editorial tool.

Scalability is one of the main reasons to choose Orchard Core:

• native multi-tenancy
• Docker container deployment
• cloud-ready architecture
• hosting thousands of sites in parallel
• per-client data isolation

Database and Flexible Data Management

It supports:

• SQL Server
• MySQL / MariaDB
• PostgreSQL
• SQLite

It uses a document-oriented abstraction layer (YesSql) on top of relational databases — an approach that improves performance in modern CMS environments.

In practice, it is designed more for platforms than for individual websites.

When It Makes Sense to Choose It

Orchard Core becomes particularly interesting when a project has these characteristics:

• it needs to grow over time
• it includes separate clients or environments
• it is intended to become a commercial product
• it requires integration with other systems
• it uses an enterprise .NET stack

SaaS and Platforms

• software delivered as a service
• customized customer portals
• white-label applications

Enterprise and Intranet

• document management
• approval workflows
• corporate portals

Headless CMS

• content backend for mobile apps
• React/Vue/Angular frontends
• custom ecommerce solutions

Multi-site

• brand networks
• publishing groups
• franchises

On the other hand, it is often oversized for small informational websites or simple blogs, where its real strengths would remain underutilized.

Community and Ecosystem

The community is not massive but highly technical and development-oriented.
The project is active, regularly updated, and maintained by experienced ASP.NET developers.

The documentation is extensive and geared more toward application developers than purely editorial users — another indication of its true nature.

Final Personal Considerations

Orchard Core is not an open-source CMS that can be evaluated at a glance: it appears to be a content management tool, but in reality it is an application platform that includes a CMS.

It is designed for complex web software, multi-client portals, and SaaS solutions. In these scenarios, it offers enormous advantages in terms of maintenance, scalability, and project organization.

If your goal is simply to publish content quickly, simpler solutions exist.
If instead you are building a system meant to last for years, it is likely exactly the kind of foundation worth starting from.

L'articolo Orchard Core: the Modular and Multi-Tenant .NET CMS for Scalable Applications proviene da Giovanni Anfuso.

In recent years, the CMS ecosystem has seen the emergence of solutions focused on performance, flexibility, and the ability to integrate with external services. Umbraco is one of them: an open-source Content Management System based on Microsoft .NET, designed to offer maximum extensibility, full content control, and an intuitive interface for both editors and developers.

What Is Umbraco CMS

Umbraco is a CMS built on the ASP.NET Core platform that enables the creation of websites, corporate portals, and digital applications with a high degree of customization. Unlike more “closed” CMS platforms, it relies on modern architectures and supports both traditional usage and headless approaches for multi-channel content delivery.

Key Features

Intuitive and Easy-to-Use Interface
Umbraco provides a simple yet powerful management panel: even non-technical users can create and update content easily thanks to visual tools and a drag-and-drop editor.

Maximum Flexibility and Customization
Its open structure allows every element of a website to be modeled: custom templates, tailored document types, and specific extensions for any project requirement.

Extensibility and API Integrations
Thanks to its API-first architecture, Umbraco integrates easily with CRMs, marketing tools, e-commerce platforms, and external services such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, or automation tools.

SEO and Performance
It supports advanced SEO practices: optimized URLs, metadata control (title, description, canonical), XML sitemaps, and robots management without the need for external plugins. Additionally, technologies such as caching and CDN compatibility improve page loading times.

Security and Access Control
Umbraco implements robust security measures, including regular updates, TLS/SSL support, multi-factor authentication, and granular user role management.

Multilingual and Multi-Site Management
Native support for multilingual and multi-site content makes it ideal for international projects or organizations managing multiple brands or domains from a single installation.

Why Choose Umbraco

Umbraco is appreciated for its balance between simplicity and advanced capabilities. It offers a solid framework for developers and an accessible environment for content editors, enabling projects ranging from corporate websites and informational portals to complex digital platforms.

Additionally, an active developer community and a rich package ecosystem allow the CMS to be continuously extended and updated while maintaining high performance and up-to-date security.

When to Use It

Umbraco is ideal if you want:

• full control over code and architecture
• custom integrations
• long-term scalability
• support for enterprise or multilingual projects

It is not generally the simplest “plug-and-play” solution for those looking for a zero-configuration CMS, but it excels when project customization and flexibility are the top priorities.

L'articolo Umbraco: the .NET CMS, Features, Advantages, and Use Cases proviene da Giovanni Anfuso.

Microsoft has officially released XAML Studio as an open-source project, an advanced tool for XAML user interface prototyping, now available on GitHub under the .NET Foundation. This move represents an important step toward a more collaborative and flexible development ecosystem for the .NET community.

Originally created in 2017 as an internal project during a hackathon, XAML Studio was designed to modernize legacy tools from the WPF era. Today, the project has evolved into a complete standalone application aimed at enabling rapid UI prototyping for WinUI and UWP.

XAML Studio 2.0: main updates

The new XAML Studio 2.0 version, currently available as pre-release source code, introduces several improvements and new features. Building the project requires Visual Studio 2022 and the Windows SDK.

Among the most relevant updates:

• New UI design based on Fluent UI principles
• Improved integration with WinUI 3
• Real-time live XAML rendering
• Monaco-based code editor
• Live data context for testing bindings
• Property inspector and properties explorer
• Updated control library from Community Toolkit and WinUI

These features make XAML Studio a powerful tool for experimenting with layouts and interfaces without needing to create an entire project from scratch.

An open-source project ready to grow

Although XAML Studio 2.0 is still under development and includes some bugs and incomplete features, opening the source code represents a major opportunity for the community. Developers can directly contribute to the project, report issues, and propose new features.

Additionally, the open-source approach opens the door to potential integrations with alternative platforms such as Avalonia and Uno Platform, further expanding the tool’s possible use cases.

Why XAML Studio matters for developers

The release of XAML Studio under the MIT license confirms Microsoft’s commitment to promoting collaborative and modern development practices. Thanks to its integration within the .NET Foundation, the tool provides a fast feedback loop for designing XAML interfaces, eliminating the complexity and overhead of traditional project scaffolding.

For .NET developers, designers, and product teams, XAML Studio positions itself as a strategic resource to accelerate UI development workflows for both current and future applications.

L'articolo Microsoft Releases XAML Studio as Open Source: A New Boost for .NET UI Prototyping proviene da Giovanni Anfuso.