Template Engine Suggestion

Hello,
We are running zencart and thinking about turning our site into a template engine and allowing other to white label our content (at a nice price, of course). We think that we have some unique conent that others in our market would like to make look like their own.

The end result needs to have two flavors: super simple implementation and completely custom look and feel implementation. Obviously, the goal of the former is to enable non-techs / those who want to go the cheap route and the latter is for those that insisit on their own branding and are willing to pay for it.

So, what suggestions do you gurus have out there? Do you have a favorite package we should add to Zen? Should we just tweak zen? Please provide you best estimate to how complex your suggestion is and what special skills if any would be required. Should we be thinking blending in a CRM, CMS, Open Source this, Open Source that,...

Anything goes... give me your best shot and tell what how you would make a killer template system using zencart as your platform or as part of your platform... I can take it!


Many thanks in advance for your replies.

Best Regards,
Mike

First and most important: keep it simple, the speed is the top priority, so whatever you do, make it run fast, do not slow down the cart.

I'm not really understand your idea, are you saying that you will have a site, or a template site, and customers can just come in, pick up the part they want (the product info display, the check out template, etc...) and pay for that?

It would also be nice to make ZenCart admin panel a more complete system, we can have customer relationship (support, order tracking,....) and accounting, etc...

I guess an example would help clarify the type of application:
http://www.alamode.com/Default.aspx

Basically, a template engine as I use the term (I am not sure if there is a name for this type of site) is a site like godaddy to an extent that hosts URLs, allows others to launch a site using your content, and manage their customers via their site hosted by us. In the above example, this is for the real estate industry, they have content (searching for houses) that is not easy to duplicate, so they charge for allowing agents to "leverage: their tech / content to launch a site branded as the agents. Our idea is similar, just different content.

Hope this helps those reading the post understand and provide suggestions.

Many thanks in advance for the advice.

Best Regards,
Mike

Ok, gotcha.

I think I see people doing that. I'm not really interested in having my site hosted on a "template engine"(or whatever it is) like that. It's nice to have all things set up in place, but I don't like the idea of having a 'limited control' over my business site. It can be a nice thing for starter/beginner though.

Yes, that is the idea... it is mainly for non-techs. For example, in the real estate space... real estate agents tend to be very non-technical. They simply want a site that will help them sell houses. Their preference is to never actually visit their own site, but just to have it to generate leads for their practice. A template engine would achieve this goal... in theory, pick your color, give us an email address, and punch the purchase button. And presto, instant lead gen machine (from their perspective). No fuss. No muss.

Lawyers, Doctors, etc tend to be the same... the max they want is to enter blog content on their site. The catch for them is: everyone can blog. So, if you have some unique content / tech that a non-tech cannot provide on their own and the non-tech does not need to maintain your tech, then they like it because differentiate their site (eg, house searching requires programing).

I have seen this model in several industries. There are ton of them in real estate, so they are easy examples to find (hence the reason I used the one I did).

My question is how to do this same concept considering we are using zencart?

Interesting concept depending on the market you are looking at as you stated the realestate market is fairly well saturated and specialized.

Sounds like a good idea, just make sure to protect yourself. Bad resellers ext....
Also be ready to provide LOTS of support because as you already said this is for people who are really not computer literate. You probably also want to read the terms and conditions of your hosting company whoever you decide to go with because I bet you most of them say something about not "re-selling" there services which essentially you are. Good concept though.


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