umbraco Forum » Extending umbraco » Extending umbraco » E-commerce and function rich site

E-commerce and function rich site Options
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Amardeep
Posted: Friday, May 16, 2008 12:44:27 PM
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 5/9/2008
Posts: 10
Location: UK
We currently have a website built on Microsoft CMS and Commerce server (MSIB). We are trying to identify a new platform for our website and the plan is to use open source CMS solution and build all the functional aspect of the site in mainly on pure .NET.
Existing site is a content and feature rich site. We have about 2,000 pages managed in CMS and lot of functions some of them are below,
1. Online shopping and payment
2. User joining and registering on the site
3. Maintaining their detail like, address, name, password, mailing preference and payment preference etc…
4. Getting a quote and buying an insurance
5. Complex search and book Making bookings for certain events.
6. Linking with partner sites to provide single sign on function for the registered users.
All of the above functions link back to our back office system via web services to provide real time integration.
As you can see it is a functionally rich site, as I understand one of the options to make these functions available on Umbraco site is by developing and deploying Custom/User controls. In my view this option is good for exposing small functions and not the kind of functions that I mentioned above, this approach will introduce lot of challenges some of them are in development process, maintain state between user controls and having to deploy and maintain 100s of Custom/User controls.
Other option is to write an independent application use master page feature in .NET to get the navigation/stylesheet etc from Umbraco and use Umbraco only for CMS functions. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
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drobar
Posted: Friday, May 16, 2008 4:07:17 PM

Rank: Umbracoholic

Joined: 9/8/2006
Posts: 1,698
Location: KY, USA
You're right that umbraco is not going to replace your insurance application. But umbraco can certainly integrate with it to display information to website visitors, and pass information back to your backoffice applications. .NET controls would be the way to do that. Those controls can be quite simple or very complex, depending on your needs.

An example to look at might be the Commerce4Umbraco project by Paul Sterling. You can read more about this project here:
http://forum.umbraco.org/yaf_postst4325_Commerce4Umbraco--Preview-Release-1.aspx
http://motusconnect.com/commerce4umbraco.aspx

This is a classic example of using the strengths of each application to the fullest. The system that you propose is certainly possible, though it will take some time to develop the controls. If carefully designed, the on-going maintenance of your controls shouldn't be particularly difficult.


As you point out, you could keep the content and the other applications separate, but I don't see that that gains you an improved development/maintenance environment. Also, though .NET master pages are coming in the next release of umbraco, they are not available in v3.0.5. There are, of course, other ways to accomplish this, but since you mentioned master pages I thought it worth clarifying the situation.

Have fun with this project, and let us know when the site goes live! And feel free to ask questions along the way :)

cheers,
doug.
MVP 2007-2009 - Official Umbraco Trainer for North America - Percipient Studios
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Amardeep
Posted: Monday, May 19, 2008 4:50:17 PM
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 5/9/2008
Posts: 10
Location: UK
Hi Doug,
Thanks for the quick response and pointers, do you know approximately when you will have the release candidate of 3.1 for us to exploit master page functionality.
Sure will keeping you posted when we go live and may be lot more questions before that 
Amar
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neehouse
Posted: Monday, May 19, 2008 6:09:41 PM

Rank: Umbracoholic

Joined: 7/20/2006
Posts: 1,074
Location: Charleston, West Virginia, United States
Look for something regarding 3.1 in the near future.

Of course, the pre-release source is on codeplex.
• 2007/2008 MVP • 2008/2009 MVP • Certified • Licensing • Support • Development • Hosting •
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