multi site cms

clearz

I'm used to working with single site CMS (Content Management Systems)

What i need is a multi site CMS, that will handle up to 5 websites within a manufacturing company group.

Is there any such "off the shelf" or Open Source packages?

DJB

www.expressionengine.com can handle that.

stevenmu

Off the shelf (but not open source) there's Windows Sharepoint Services and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server. The former is free if you're running Windows Server 2003 and probably has all the features you'll find in any other free/open source CMS. The latter is not free but is packed with loads of advanced features, every bit as easy for the end user, but a little trickier to install and configure right (but still very easy for basic configuration). It's very much aimed at the enterprise.

Both can handle multiple sites, you'd generally create one main site and hang the others off it.

What other features would you be looking for ?

clearz

Hi,
The overall structure of the group is 4 industrial manufacturing companies with 1 parent company. So there would need to be 4 similar sites and a parent site.


The most common aspect amongst the 4 companies are their products. They share common products, so they would need a product and order management systems because eventually they want to sell wholesale online. For the moment they just want to display their products on their websites (product specs, pictures, pdf brocures for products etc)

So all products for all 4 websites should be stored in 1 database - cuts out alot of redundancy.

Each site would have to have a unique template but keep common elements across the board of sites.

Ok, I have more info but just not here with me at the moment. Hope this helps.

I've seen expressionengine before and know one of the guys who works on it. I didn't like it when I took a quick look at the demo. It was not very intuitive. CMS Made Simple is good for small websites - but I don't think it could handle 5 sites!

JohnK

Have you had a look at DotNetNuke? http://www.dotnetnuke.com/
I've never actually used it myself but there are loads of plugins that'll do pretty much anything you could possibly want and its all free.

stevenmu

clearz wrote:

Hi,
The overall structure of the group is 4 industrial manufacturing companies with 1 parent company. So there would need to be 4 similar sites and a parent site.


The most common aspect amongst the 4 companies are their products. They share common products, so they would need a product and order management systems because eventually they want to sell wholesale online. For the moment they just want to display their products on their websites (product specs, pictures, pdf brocures for products etc)

So all products for all 4 websites should be stored in 1 database - cuts out alot of redundancy.

Each site would have to have a unique template but keep common elements across the board of sites.

Ok, I have more info but just not here with me at the moment. Hope this helps.

I've seen expressionengine before and know one of the guys who works on it. I didn't like it when I took a quick look at the demo. It was not very intuitive. CMS Made Simple is good for small websites - but I don't think it could handle 5 sites!

Ah, I'd been thinking you meant just an intranet kind of situation. Sharepoint probably isn't that suitable to this case. Microsofts Commerce Server 2007 sounds like it would suit perfectly though, it will maintain one common store of data (product catalogs, user profiles etc), and you can run multiple web sites on top of this, each accessing it's own subset of the data, or the same data or whatever way you want to configure it. It will generate all the pages required for product listings, searching, shopping cart, ordering, user profiles etc. Basically everything you need for a commerce site, or multiple commerce sites. It's very very customisable aswell. I've no idea what's involved in terms of license costs.

OSCommerce is free and may do a lot of the same but I don't really know anything about it.

I've only played with dotnetnuke it a little, but it seems like a great CMS, there may be commerce modules available that will do what you want too.

cousin_borat

stevenmu wrote:

Ah, I'd been thinking you meant just an intranet kind of situation. Sharepoint probably isn't that suitable to this case. Microsofts Commerce Server 2007 sounds like it would suit perfectly though, it will maintain one common store of data (product catalogs, user profiles etc), and you can run multiple web sites on top of this, each accessing it's own subset of the data, or the same data or whatever way you want to configure it. It will generate all the pages required for product listings, searching, shopping cart, ordering, user profiles etc. Basically everything you need for a commerce site, or multiple commerce sites. It's very very customisable aswell. I've no idea what's involved in terms of license costs.

OSCommerce is free and may do a lot of the same but I don't really know anything about it.

I've only played with dotnetnuke it a little, but it seems like a great CMS, there may be commerce modules available that will do what you want too.

Are there hosting solutions for Commerce Server 2007? The $20,000 price tag for the product alone + SQL Server + 2003 Server + Server would be prohibitive for most Small companies I'd imagine

PixelTrawler

Been evaluating dotnetnuke a lot recently and from your first post, it will do the job.

Its quite decent at running multiple sites, or subsites, with a different skin per page if you wanted to go down to that level.

Theres a fair bit to skinning it and getting it standards compliant takes work.
Still download the latest version and check it out.

Also I recommend www.dnncreative.com if you want to invest in training videos. Pretty decent for a one man operation