Can I plug a (.net) CMS into an existing site design?

Question

I have a website design that I want to integrate with a CMS. This is static html+css at the moment, but once it is finished there will be a small amount of dynamic content - menu, navigation, etc (and creating/editing pages of course).

I want to keep my existing design, but use a CMS to update sections, add pages, etc.

All of the big CMSs that I have investigated seem to be difficult to retrofit into an existing design and it looks like I would have to start from scratch to build my design with the CMS.

Is there a CMS that I can plug into my existing design - e.g.: by adding server controls to the pages? If not, how difficult is it to rebuild my design within a big CMS, such as Umbraco?

I would welcome any feedback from others who have gone through this process, particularly with CMS recommendations.

Answer 1

If you designed your original static site correctly (with adequate separation of presentation and content), you ought to be able to use your existing website as raw material for the CMS. Any CMS worth its salt should allow you to keep your original style sheets, or at least incorporate some of your existing elements into the CMS site design.

But the pages from a CMS are dynamically generated, so it's not like you can lay a CMS over the top of your existing website and expect it to work without some modifications.

Answer 2

If you are using Umbraco and start with static designs, your process would be along the following lines:

• Install Umbraco from MS web platform installer so that the database and configuration files get set up without too much pain
• Login to the Umbraco back-end
• In the 'Settings' section create a top level doctype and template for all the aspects of the designs that run through the pages (eg navigation UI, SEO metadata) - I usually call this top level something like the website name
• From your designs create a doctype and template for each distinct design and from the template specify that you are inheriting from the top level template
• Copy your html into the templates; refer to CSS files (Styles folder) and JS files (Scripts folder)
• Go to the 'Content' section and add pages for each template and preview them (you may need to check the doctype 'allowed children' settings)

You will now find that you can add pages that use your designs which will now be .net MasterPages and stored in your projects MasterPages folder.

Answer 3

To my knowledge, you can't get around the fact that your static site must be converted to include some server side components to utilize dynamic content.

Answer 4

The Umbraco CMS doesn't dictate any markup or design. In fact, for smaller projects we will take an HTML/CSS template and pull it into Umbraco.

With Umbraco you can build the dynamic parts of your web site using Razor, .NET User Controls, XSLT, or Partial Views.