microsite in umbraco

Question

I am relatively new to umbraco and have just got the site build but the clients request for a microsite with a completely new look and feel.

So how do I set up a new microsite in umbraco.

Please Help.

Thanks a ton

Answer 1

To give pages within Umbraco a completely different look and feel from the others, there's a few different ways you can go. Obviously there's more than one way to solve a problem, but I'll just mention a few that I can think of and explain how they'd work.

1. Create a new master page template that has your new design, then create child templates for each document type, to include a home page, a standard text page and anything else you may need. Assign these templates to the document types that will use them.

   Pros: Easiest approach. Allows most flexibility in design.

   Cons: The user can choose the wrong template or forget to set the right template.

2. Create separate templates as in option 1, but also create separate document types. Assign the templates only to the new document types. Each document type can extend your existing ones to inherit the same properties or you can create entirely new ones.

   Pros: Ensures that the uses uses the correct template all the time. Allows most flexibility in design. Allows site specific customization - can add or remove properties.

   Cons: The number of document types doubles and therefore the amount that appears for the user to select. Of course the number that they see can be limited by what templates they are allowed to create.

3. Use existing templates, but include a check that determines which site is being visited, depending on the path or subdomain, etc., then dynamically load different style sheets.

   Pros: You do not need to create separate templates or document types for the microsite.

   Cons: Your master template's markup will have to be generic enough to compensate for both designs, therefore it isn't as flexible.

Once you choose an option for how you will structure and style the pages of the microsite (and remember that my list is not conclusive), you will need to determine where to setup the node structure. The best option here, if the microsite will be subdomain or if it has its own domain, would be to add it as a separate home node first and then add all of its own pages below it. Then you can actually setup a different host reference for the site within Umbraco. There have been a few answers on SO that mention how to do that:

Assigning hostnames in umbraco

Publishing multiple sites on a single instance of umbraco

Here are some basic steps to allow Umbraco to use other domain names:

1. Setup your web server to accept host headers for the specific domain/subdomain. In IIS 7.5, this can be done by adding bindings for the domain/subdomain.

2. The new node needs to be a direct child of the Content node.

3. Right-click the node and choose "Manage hostnames". Then add the domain/subdomain URL.

Hope that helps! Feel free to ask more questions.