Questions on Recycle Bin, E-Commerce, Custom Content Types v

Hi, my institution is looking for a CMS which offers:

1) a Recycle Bin
2) E-Commerce capability - to manage sellable content (pages/downloadable files accessible either by micropayment, or subscription, or both), plus sellable goods and services
3) Custom Content Types - and the ability to create and extend these via the CMS GUI
4) Code managed outside the CMS - to store masterpages, CSS etc in Subversion, allow multiple developers to collaborate on coding and design and enable them to keep using their favourite IDE's
5) Taxonomy - including the ability to import/export taxonomies

I've looked through the forums and documentation around the forthcoming Sitefinity 4 release and have some questions around features, release dates and my general understanding of a couple of issues:

1) Recycle Bin - no sign of this on the roadmap, is a release date planned?
2) E-Commerce - again no sign of this on the roadmap, is a release date planned?
3) Custom Content Types via the UI - likewise no sign of this on the roadmap, though seems this will be a core 4.0 feature - is a release date planned for the 4.0 release, and if so, when?
4) Is Visual Studio needed by everyone? Can Visual Studio, Dreamweaver etc. co-exist happily?
5) Is taxonomy import/export available (e.g. from/to CSV, tab delimited or XML format)?

Thanks for any input.

Hello Scottish Agricultural,

Thank you for contacting us. Straight to the questions:

1. We do not have yet a plan for such feature, but may include it in some of the releases coming after the official one. How critical is this feature for the project?
2. E-Commerce feature will come sometime in 2011, most probably
3. Custom types are supported and will be fully showcased with the official release. 
4. Yes, they can co-exist. We support them.
5. It is not available yet, but API for taxonomy is present, so this can be coded.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Regards,
Georgi
the Telerik team

Hi Georgi - a recycle bin is something we would really like to see. Our current CMS doesn't offer this, but we also use SharePoint within my institution and users find its recycle bin extremely useful. Hoping this can be looked at for future release and thanks for taking the time to provide answers to these questions - very heplful.

Now that the RC is released when will we have the ability to create custom content types via the UI?  How about adding metafields via the UI? 

Hi Shawn,

1. Custom content items - we will provide this option for the official release

2. Adding metafileds - please check this post Creating Dynamic Type

Sincerely yours,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

So if I want to add an image as a field to Events I have to use the dynamic type API?  I assumed this functionality would be part of the Content Type builder and Sitefinity would call the API for me. 

I would hoping I could use the UI to add an image field to Events, specify the Field Control (www.sitefinity.com/.../controls-field-controls.html) to use, and modify the widget template to have the new field show up.

Hello Shawn,

We will have support for custom fields in modules and pages. Currently the only way to have custom dynamic fields is working programmatically (Creating Dynamic Type )

Kind regards,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Sitefinity 4.0 is looking great.  However, there are a few items missing that would push Sitefinity to one of the best Enterprise Web Content Management Systems on the market.  I've picked out key features from other CMS products that make them stand out from the rest.  I'm curious if any of these items are on the roadmap for 4.0.

Multi-site Management - It would be key to be able to manage multiple websites from a central system. In our organization we have web production specialists that manage all of our websites that share common items such as themes, content, etc. and it's a pain to have them log into different sites to manage them. 

End User Personalization - The ability to use analytics to display targeted content based on known information about the user such as location, browsing history, demographic info, etc.  For example, a user browses my site and based on their browsing history, Sitefinity starts making inferences about the user, such as position in company, demographics, location, etc. and displays content that is most applicable to them.  This is a core feature of Sitecore that makes it stand out from the rest. 

Multi-device Support - The ability to generate mobile sites and different renderings of pages based on device used to access it.

Hello Shawn,

Multi-site Management - It would be key to be able to manage multiple websites from a central system. In our organization we have web production specialists that manage all of our websites that share common items such as themes, content, etc. and it's a pain to have them log into different sites to manage them