I'm investigating the suitability of Umbraco for a project I'm currently working on. I will try to explain what we're trying to do as clearly as possible, but please ask to clarify when it looks Greek to you.
This will be a rather elongated and slightly tedious post, so please accept my apologies in advance.
I have spent a substantial amount of time reading (reading not glancing!) through the forum posts dealing with the subject, but I have not found something that covers my project enough.
The project has a somewhat flexible timescale, so if there will be something in U5 final, but not currently in U4, then we would be happy to wait for U5 for it. In other words please take U4 and U5 into account when thinking about what is possible.
The aim of the project is to create a framework to host branded views of the same business logic. What do I mean by this?
Assume we have a common concept, e.g. selling tyres. There are many companies/brands that sell tyres. Even though the business logic layer will be >80% identical, the presentation layer might only be 50% identical. Even so, the presentation layer will still have common elements that can and should be shared by those brands that have them. The differentiation is introduced in the way they are laid out as well as the order in which they have to be filled in. Other points of difference, could include validation (e.g. required by one brand, but not another), labels, etc. Some CSS and some JS will have to be different from one brand to the other. Every brand will need to have their own error pages (500, 404, etc). Every brand's content (i.e. the actual C in CMS) will need to be managed independently by the respective account managers. If a brand chooses to go with our vanilla implementation, we should be able to just run it without having to duplicate anything, but use their colours in CSS (and potentially custom code in JS). This is a requirement because if vanilla changes, I should not have to manually propagate those changes to all the brands that have gone for vanilla.
I hope you get the idea of what I'm trying to do from the above. If not, please ask and I can elaborate further!
So, the question is if the above can be done in Umbraco as well as how much "hacking" would be required to make this work?
From what I've read so far, it would seem the answer is that it would be possible, however it would require an inordinate amount of hacking.
Thank you for reading so far and even moreso if you are considering replying!
I think this can be done with U4. I understand exaclty what you are talking about and I dont think it would require a great deal of hacking (extending yes!).
If you wanted the user signup process whereby the choose their own layout from a selection and then maybe change colours/logos/Jquery features etc then yes you would need to extend what Umbraco can do and write your own code to handle this.
However it might make sense in your scenario to build a "Master" verison of the site which includes all the functionality which sits ready to be copied and tweaked as per each customer requirements. Creating a new site from the master would take minutes if you had packged it up.
I dont think Umbraco is 100% suited to your business model, but it can be done will a little manual (but automated) work which would probably give your greater control.
I forgot to mention that there will no need for the sites to have users (i.e. no login/register functionality). The only users in Umbraco will be the content managers.
As for the Master version that you proposed please refer to the section regarding copy/pasting/duplicating/replicating. It will defeat the point of what we're trying to do if we have to create separate copies.
It does indeed seem that U is not the right fit for what we're trying to do.
Investigating specific scenario for multiple sites
Hello,
I'm investigating the suitability of Umbraco for a project I'm currently working on. I will try to explain what we're trying to do as clearly as possible, but please ask to clarify when it looks Greek to you.
This will be a rather elongated and slightly tedious post, so please accept my apologies in advance.
I have spent a substantial amount of time reading (reading not glancing!) through the forum posts dealing with the subject, but I have not found something that covers my project enough.
The project has a somewhat flexible timescale, so if there will be something in U5 final, but not currently in U4, then we would be happy to wait for U5 for it. In other words please take U4 and U5 into account when thinking about what is possible.
The aim of the project is to create a framework to host branded views of the same business logic. What do I mean by this?
Assume we have a common concept, e.g. selling tyres. There are many companies/brands that sell tyres. Even though the business logic layer will be >80% identical, the presentation layer might only be 50% identical. Even so, the presentation layer will still have common elements that can and should be shared by those brands that have them. The differentiation is introduced in the way they are laid out as well as the order in which they have to be filled in. Other points of difference, could include validation (e.g. required by one brand, but not another), labels, etc. Some CSS and some JS will have to be different from one brand to the other. Every brand will need to have their own error pages (500, 404, etc). Every brand's content (i.e. the actual C in CMS) will need to be managed independently by the respective account managers. If a brand chooses to go with our vanilla implementation, we should be able to just run it without having to duplicate anything, but use their colours in CSS (and potentially custom code in JS). This is a requirement because if vanilla changes, I should not have to manually propagate those changes to all the brands that have gone for vanilla.
I hope you get the idea of what I'm trying to do from the above. If not, please ask and I can elaborate further!
So, the question is if the above can be done in Umbraco as well as how much "hacking" would be required to make this work?
From what I've read so far, it would seem the answer is that it would be possible, however it would require an inordinate amount of hacking.
Thank you for reading so far and even moreso if you are considering replying!
Kind regards,
Steven
I think this can be done with U4. I understand exaclty what you are talking about and I dont think it would require a great deal of hacking (extending yes!).
If you wanted the user signup process whereby the choose their own layout from a selection and then maybe change colours/logos/Jquery features etc then yes you would need to extend what Umbraco can do and write your own code to handle this.
However it might make sense in your scenario to build a "Master" verison of the site which includes all the functionality which sits ready to be copied and tweaked as per each customer requirements. Creating a new site from the master would take minutes if you had packged it up.
I dont think Umbraco is 100% suited to your business model, but it can be done will a little manual (but automated) work which would probably give your greater control.
Hope this helps.
S
Hi Stephen,
Thank you for your reply.
I forgot to mention that there will no need for the sites to have users (i.e. no login/register functionality). The only users in Umbraco will be the content managers.
As for the Master version that you proposed please refer to the section regarding copy/pasting/duplicating/replicating. It will defeat the point of what we're trying to do if we have to create separate copies.
It does indeed seem that U is not the right fit for what we're trying to do.
Kind regards,
Steven
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