website customizable by users

[icky_thump]

Hi all,

I don't know the term of the type of site I'm investigating, so I'm calling it "a la carte".
I'm curious to hear feedback on whether this is possible and how so.

We are a manufacturer and wholesaler. We sell to our customers, who mark it up and turn around and resell to the end clients. A lot of our customers are very small businesses that don't have much invested in websites. So, we made a "generic" catalog site for all them to be able to use without giving away the fact that they really buy everything from us. This is the site I'm looking at redoing completely.

One idea was to have it so that each one of our customers could customize our site and tailor it to suit their needs. They don't always want to sell all our products that we have on the site. I've been looking around for something like this, but yet to find a good solution.

I've not yet done a CMS but had a thought that might work there.
The site I'd make would be MySite.c0m
then create accounts for our customers where they could make it
joe.mysite.c0m
pam.mysite.c0m
fred.mysite.c0m
etc.

Is that a possibility with a CMS?
Or is there a better solution?

thanks for your feedback!

[Teraflops]

I am not sure, but maybe something in line with Virtual Community
Something like geocities, just you will have more control over it ?

[HeathMan]

I wonder if creating a wordpress product feed plugin that was easy to use and slightly customizable might not be a better option. This way your clients could purchase a domain and some hosting, probably for less than $100 a year, and get set up with their own site.

It seems like aside from the upfront cost, it might also require a little bit more support, but if your clients don't have their own websites anyway, you would probably have support issues no matter what you do.

This might, in the long run, be easier, have a lower cost, and more of a benefit for your clients. You also don't risk one of your clients doing some shady stuff to their sub domain and messing it up for everyone else.

Just a thought. I guess it depends on what you are selling too...

[icky_thump]

The Feeds are an interesting idea.

Actually, a lot of our customers do have their own sites already set up. Some are quite nice in which case. Those tend to be more invested in the site and are less in need of our "generic catalog". It's the smaller sites, some simple, some that are um...... not all that great... that invest less of their resources into web and therefore utilize what we offer.

Knowing only the basics of how CMSs work and even less about feeds, my guess is that our customers that would use this would find a CMS interface easier than setting up something to feed into their site. But that's my GUESS. Thoughts?

I'll have to investigate this Virtual Community. I'm not sure that is really what I'm looking for though. The title and description make it sound more Social.