I have only seen very general comments on this and would appreciate more detail.
Scenario: an existing news website uses content in a relational MySQL database with a basic custom-made CMS for editing text only. I would like to retain this and not migrate content to Umbraco, but use other Umbraco features.
For example, is it possible for an editor to edit the *text* of an article using the current CMS/DB (wrapped in a user control), but then associate a file (image, say) through Umbraco?
I realise the solution lies in a web service and a macro, but would like more advice.
Create a custom backoffice application which users log into the CMS and it comes up similar to the way that Content and Media would come up. This would then require you to create some custom editor forms and implement a tree which will be used to find your content. This will allow you very fine-grade control over the editor experience and how the content is managed
Use something like DEWD (http://dewd.codeplex.com/) to write SQL queries which expose data into the Umbraco backoffice and allow for editing using an Umbraco-like UI. This can be simple to set up but could become complex depending on how your other CMS database looks
Create a custom DataType which loads data from your old CMS into the Umbraco content editor UI, to be edited within the scope of an Umbraco page. This would result in only a single editor story as it would be just like editing a real page in Umbraco, but could be tricky to map your old CMS 'pages' to an Umbraco-owned page
That said you will save yourself a lot of effort in the long run if you import the content into Umbraco rather than trying to maintain two separate systems of data.
I did this recently although it was migrating from one cms to Umbraco the old cms was sql server so the principles i am outlining are relevant to your question see http://thecogworks.co.uk/blog/2010/11/5/migrating-to-umbraco-via-cms-import as slace's suggestion i did it with CMSImport which rocks big time!!
Integrating Umbraco and a different CMS/DB
I have only seen very general comments on this and would appreciate more detail.
Scenario: an existing news website uses content in a relational MySQL database with a basic custom-made CMS for editing text only. I would like to retain this and not migrate content to Umbraco, but use other Umbraco features.
For example, is it possible for an editor to edit the *text* of an article using the current CMS/DB (wrapped in a user control), but then associate a file (image, say) through Umbraco?
I realise the solution lies in a web service and a macro, but would like more advice.
Thanks.
You can do it a few ways:
That said you will save yourself a lot of effort in the long run if you import the content into Umbraco rather than trying to maintain two separate systems of data.
Thanks, that's very helpful. Any tips on migrating data from another DB to Umbraco?
I'd suggest using the CMSImport tool: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/cmsimport
It's commercial but very much worth the price
Eyal,
I did this recently although it was migrating from one cms to Umbraco the old cms was sql server so the principles i am outlining are relevant to your question see http://thecogworks.co.uk/blog/2010/11/5/migrating-to-umbraco-via-cms-import as slace's suggestion i did it with CMSImport which rocks big time!!
Regards
Ismail
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