I've been thinking about an online idea for about 3-4 years now and can't get it out of my head so I've decided to act upon it and see if I can get it working. Currently working a POC and design layout which I plan to tender for development.
The main part of the portal and most important component involves user sub-sites. I am unsure how to tackle the process for a user to create a sub-site during the registration process and/or what path to take.
Let's say the main site is www.abc.net - the user would then register a sub-site based on the credentials they input. E.g. user1.abc.net, mysite.abc.net or joeblog.abc.net... whatever they want and so forth. No SEO required - The site templates are fairly basic and the sub-sites will be accessible through the main site. So the process to be:
- User logs onto main site and registers
- During registration, user enters details including sub-site name they want
- Select the template they want - basically different colour schemes. Functionality to be the same for all templates
- their site is created
- when the user is logged on they get directed to their sub-site
- Ability to edit their sub-site - add content and add extra pages, change details…. etc
- General users (registered or anonymous) would be able to browse and search content to the sub-sites via the main site.
Each sub-site to be independent from each other - no content sharing. Basically they are separate websites hosted as sub-sites but need they need some type of editing available like a CMS. Not sure if a shared CMS is possible but the owner has to be able to modify content to their own sub-site.
So my question are…
Do I try and use a Drupal/Wordpress/Joomla CMS with multisite functionality?
Do I try a solution where I have a collection of simple sites that I use for sub-sites, each to have their own database and some type of CMS or WYSIWYG for editing? Is separate CMS even possible for each Sub-site?
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
