I'm not entirely sure how to properly ask this, so please bear with me.
I have an idea for a site I would like to build, which would basically be a site for members to create some data and have it housed in my database. I would like to offer a value-add to the site which would allow people to spin off their own website via my own "website builder" tool (probably some sort of CMS). Their website would be able to communicate with my master database to display their data.
Getting down to the crux of the topic, I'm looking for architectural advice/ideas/etc. regarding what services I could use to do this. I'm not looking a 100% automated solution, but something along these lines (which may not be completely correct, I admit):
Customer puts in an order to create their own site, using my tools.
I setup a separate domain for them, roll out the CMS foundation to the site, and the customer has full editing control of the CMS to design it however they would like.
The CMS would have some customizations so that it includes functionality to call APIs located on the master site, which would return the relevant data.
In the research I have done on SO, I've seen a lot of mentions of Umbraco which honestly looks like a good start. I'm just worried that when I go to upgrade a version, I have to deal with overwriting my custom API functionality. I'm guessing this is the nature of the beast, and requires me to accept/plan for it.
Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Some high-level starting points? Thanks!
I've been thinking about this same issue for my customers.
It is not hard to automatically roll out a stock cms such as Wordpress or Joomla. This sort of thing is done all the time by "1 click installers" that DreamHost and others have.
Including custom widgets or plugins for the CMS that can connect to your main app is also not hard.
For dns, you can use Amazon Route 53 or other DNS services that include a good api at the dns management level.
I suggest that you focus on using a CMS that is very popular (eg Wordpress or Joomla) rather than something less well known such as Umbraco. Using a more popular system will drastically reduce your training costs--remember that if you supply the CMS to your customers, then they'll also expect you to supply the support for it...
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Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask and if it is, please do let me know where best to do so.
I want to write a script that will pull data from website B (external site, not owned by myself) and display that data on website A (site owned by myself).
Now, I know how to do this programmatically and so my question is more about the legalities of the approach.
For example, Twitter provides API access so that you can embed tweets or a twitter feed into your page. The sites that I would like to pull data from may or may not have such APIs and so I would have to write a scraper.
Am I allowed to scrape information from websites and display it on my own site? I will of course make it absolutely clear where the information has come from; I do not intend to use any information and claim that is is my own.
I think this is generally frowned upon, as you are basically doing the same as copying a CD putting your own label on it and selling it to others (i.e. taking someone else's stuff and pretending it's your own). I suppose it depends on the licence of the web site you are scraping. If the web site provides an API (like Twitter), then they probably allow copying.
I have to put an extranet on the Wordpress CMS for a non-IT professional.
He told me he wants a community intranet for his clients.
I researched on the web and found three templates which can meet his needs: Thrive, Woffice and Alliance.
But I don't really know how I can choose between them. It seems they can make same things and I need help to take my decision.
How can I find the advantages and drawbacks of them?
Good work!
Ultimately, you cannot know for sure without embarking on the implementation, so it is a case of reducing the risk. If it becomes clear the selection you've made isn't working, you can switch to an alternative with relatively little disruption.
I suggest you take the role of advisor and work with your client to decide. Summarise your findings, prepare a presentation in which you demonstrate each template (even if just the demo mode on the theme site) and listen to their feedback.
If you are looking for people with direct experience of implementing Wordpress intranets who may have been through the same process, try some of the intranet groups on LinkedIn.
We are planning to create an asp.net website (probably mvc), that needs a cms for news items.
Our content managers and others who require to publish news have asked if they can use wordpress for content management.
Our users have different roles, and news items should be visible to certain roles, or even specific users if possible.
The reason they want wordpress is the manager's user friendliness, so if some other alternative with the same kind of user experience would be ok.
Could anyone please point me in some direction?
NOTE: I'm still doing research at the moment, so I've got nothing holding me back at this point.
There is an API plugin that has been developed to spit out information in JSON, but I have not actually implemented a site with it:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/json-api/
Perhaps you could have the authors work on a wordpress install and create your app to draw content via that plugin?
I too was facing the same issue, little different. We want to have WP as CMS so that our site can take the benefit of SEO which is very easy with WP. SO we installed WP under a folder in the Main ASP.net based website. Initially there were issues, I was unable to run it. Finally managed to run it. Solution is posted here - http://www.wwwlabz.com/how-to-run-a-php-based-website-from-a-subfolder-in-asp-net-website. Hope it will help someone. Actual site where we implemented this is http://www.periproperties.com/content/.
Now I want to have specific section of WP to be accessible on my site. SO I am exploring different options and will post, if found something
Thanks.
DotNetNuke is the most popular ASP.NET based CMS (source). I am implementing my first project in it and so far I am very happy with it.
Note the free edition will not work for you since you need customizable security roles and free has a limited set of predetermined roles. You'll need the pro edition.
I don't know how similar it is to WordPress. Overall, WordPress is much more popular but of course there are platform issues with WordPress since it is Apache based and you want to create an ASP.NET website.
I've been adding quite a few blogs to sites and I'm wondering if it's better to add blogging software on the site or use an external blogging service. The major reason I can think of adding a blog to site is if you want to customize it later on (other than look) such as more integration with the site. If I put it on the site, I'll probably use WordPress as I'm familiar with it.
Is there any major advantage to one method or the other?
I would go with putting the blog on your website itself. This will help with a number of things:
Transparency: Your users will feel as if they are on the same website, because they in fact are. Your blog will become simply an extension to your website. On the other hand, a blogging service will most likely appear as though you are going to a completely different website.
Integration: You are able to integrate everything on your website with your blog. This includes any existing user bases, or future ones. Also, the look of your blog can match your website perfectly, much more so than with a blogging service.
Customization: You get 100% control over every single feature of your blog. If you want some new crazy feature, you can program it. Blogging services are typically much more closed than this.
The downsides will be that you have to maintain it, and any features that you want you have to put in yourself.
One of the advantages of having blog on your site is that all the content will belong to your site, which is good for search engine since it will increase your site visibility through SERP. But you will have the price to pay: installation and maintenance.
It's not cut and dried:
(Assuming this is for clients) do you have an ongoing relationship with the client and time scheduled for upgrades? Most blog software needs at least some upgrading or security patching from time to time.
Are you relying on some sort of social media network effects from these blogs? If so, you may get better mileage from a hosted product as they often promote related sites within their networks (e.g. Wordpress has the "Possibly related posts" feature).
As Brian said, integration could be an issue if you have other areas of your site that rely on logins. In that case, probably better to host it yourself.
I'm looking for a wordpress-like blog interface to put inside a Joomla hosted site. The admin interface of Joomla is quirky enough and hard enough to use that daily updates are infeasible.
What I am looking for is an easy-to-use posting interface that supports multiple users with different accounts/names, a tagging scheme, and easy find by date/user/tag functionality.
In particular I'm looking for a relatively easy-to-deploy, out-of-the-box solution, and would prefer not to hack rss feeds together or write too much custom code. I know there are several extensions out there but they all receive largely mixed reviews... Has anyone used any of these? Or has anyone had experience putting something like this together?
Well you could do this - have a wordpress installation. Get the users to post there and then use the RSS feed from it (or the XML RPC Blogging API) to update the Joomla installation. You will have to write the update piece once, but then all the headache is gone.
I'm not trying to be smart here, but if the admin interface of Joomla isn't working for you, aren't you doing yourself a disservice by trying to patch their UI instead of spending your time looking for a CMS that is easier to manage/a better fit for your user base?
Edit: All of the CMS's I've dealt with in ASP.NET are homegrown. However I'm looking into checking out Umbraco based on the recommendations of two well-respected friends. In the case you presented where you already have content in Joomla and a migration out to another CMS is going to be overkill, I think that vaibhav has got it right. You should look into setting up Wordpress or some other blogging engine and then simply have Joomla consume the content and display it in the Joomla site. I've not done it, but from what I remember of Joomla when I was looking at it, I believe that it would support this.
After doing a bit more research I decided to go with the open source MojoBlog. It was quite easy to install and configure and after a few stalls and hang ups that were resolved via perusal of their forums I was up and running. The edit interface is not ideal but it much better than Joomla admin, and it has multi-user-support, tag categorization, modules for viewing by tag, date, etc. Think it will suffice for my needs in the short term.
We at 'corePHP' have successfully integrated the WordPress and WordPress Multi-User blogging platforms into Joomla!. Please visit us to see what these feature-rich components have to offer you. https://www.corephp.com/wordpress/wordpress-integration-for-joomla-1.5.html
Happy Blogging,
Michael Pignataro
VP of Operations
www.corephp.com