If you are a web developer, open-source projects can help not only expand your practical knowledge but build solutions and services for yourself and your clients. These software provide hands-on opportunities to implement existing approaches, patterns, and software engineering techniques that can be applied to projects further down the road.

Since it is vital to securely create solutions that may be easily scaled, we will consider projects that are built on ASP.NET technology. It is a framework for building innovative cloud-based web applications using .NET that can be used for development and deployment on various operating systems.

Open-source projects on ASP.NET and .NET

Four open-source projects that would let you work with various architecture and code techniques have been compiled by our team.

1. nopCommerce

nopCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform that is free and stands as the most powerful shopping cart built on ASP.NET Core in the world. Fully customizable, stable, secure, and extensible, nopCommerce provides a variety of built-in enterprise eCommerce features that may help you to develop a project of any complexity.

To help you get quickly and effectively acclimated with its architecture, main design, system requirements, installation steps, and other aspects of setup, there is comprehensive documentation that covers every aspect of an online store development of any kind and size.

Furthermore, the nopCommerce team has introduced a training course for developers that may give you a significant boost to start building eCommerce solutions, even enterprise-level ones, for the existing and new nopCommerce clients.

Technologies associated with nopCommerce:

• Redis, is an in-memory data store that allows developers to store, access, and use data in applications by writing complex code with fewer and simpler lines;
• LINQ to DB, a Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) library for database access that provides a light and fast layer between your database and your Plain Old CLR Objects (POCO);
• NUnit, an open-source testing framework, which is made for all .NET languages;
• Moq is a user-friendly mocking framework that is built for .NET.

nopCommerce’s GitHub statistics:

• Latest release: 4.50.3;
• Starred by 7,392;
• 5,401 closed issues;
• Languages: C# - 58.5%, HTML - 15.6%, JavaScript - 11.6%, TSQL - 10.1%, Less - 2.2%, CSS - 2.0%.

2. OrchardCore

OrchardCore is a modular ASP.NET Core application framework and CMS, which is additionally open-source and multi-tenant. If you are a developer looking to build SaaS applications, you are likely to be more interested in the modular framework. It is important to distinguish between the framework and the CMS, as the latter is best for building administrable websites. Developers will typically use the CMS for building modules to enhance their sites.

The OrchardCore documentation and its README file on GitHub might assist you in developing a web CMS by outlining the architectural decisions that were made to address the specific issue of obtaining both flexibility and a positive user experience.

Technologies associated with OrchardCore:

• Docker, a software platform that virtualizes the operating system (OS) of the computer on which it is installed and running, streamlining the process of building, running, managing, and distributing applications;
• Redis;
• SignalR is an ASP.NET software package that enables JavaScript server-side code to instantly transfer content to associated web clients.

OrchardCore’s GitHub statistics:

• Latest release: 1.4.0;
• Starred by 6,040;
• 4,468 closed issues;
• Languages: C# - 51.8%, CSS - 20.6%, JavaScript - 15.7%, HTML - 9.5%, SCSS - 1.4%, Pug - 0.4%, Other - 0.6%.

3. eShopOnWeb

eShopOnWeb is a sample application powered by Microsoft, but it can serve as a starting point for developers who might feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the previously mentioned projects. Layered architecture with a monolithic deployment pattern is demonstrated in this project, which focuses on container-based application architecture.

There is no certain documentation file or website page. However, you may find all helpful information from the README file on its repository. It has necessary links to other useful articles and videos that may assist you.

Technologies associated with eShopOnWeb:

• Docker;
• MediatR;
• JWT Tokens, is an open standard that defines a compact and self-contained way for securely transmitting information between parties.

eShopOnWeb’s GitHub statistics:

• Latest release: one and only release;
• Starred by 7,808;
• 296 closed issues;
• Languages: C# - 72.5%, HTML - 20%, CSS - 3.3%, SCSS - 3%, Dockerfile - 1.2%

4. Miniblog.Core

Miniblog.Core is a full-featured blog software. Simple but modern, Miniblog.Core is a performance-focused ASP.NET Core engine for blogging, earning a 100/100 score on Google PageSpeed Insights on both desktop and mobile. As an open-source platform, it can be adapted to work with other .NET Core framework versions, as well.

You may notice that there isn't a lot of documentation when you look at the GitHub repository that houses Miniblog. However, you can install a template so you can build it using Visual Studio by following the steps in the readme file, but be careful because this won't give you the most recent version. You can also check out its features by visiting a link to an example site created with Miniblog and published on Azure.

Miniblog.Core’s GitHub statistics:

• Latest release: one and only release;
• Starred by 1,297;
• 43 closed issues;
• Languages: JavaScript - 39.4%, C# - 35.6%, HTML - 12.0%, SCSS - 8.8%, CSS - 4.2%.

Start Your Own eCommerce Project

What are you waiting for? When it comes to developing solutions and expanding your knowledge with practical experience, there is no time like the present. Now that you have four potential projects to choose from, it’s up to you to carve out time to dedicate to self-development.

If you want to start an eCommerce career, you can start exploring the world's most popular shopping cart that is built on ASP.NET Core — nopCommerce. Download the powerful open-source eCommerce software based on .NET.