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I am on a dedicated project. It is an e-commerce website. That website is in 3 languages and runs on 7 domains at the moment ( .com/.us/.au/.fr/.ru/.ca/.nz ). It has been running since forever so very old logics and processes are still being applied into it as big changes cannot be made easily. Now, it has 32 email templates for every domain related to purchase etc. At the moment if there is even a little change a designer has to do it 32x7 times. It is highly redundant. I proposed my development team to make master template for each domain and seeing as only EN FR and RU will need different templates so i will have to only make changes 3 times. Now, i am baffled as to how the backend for that would/should be, as in, the header, footer, navigation etc will all be coming from cms/database where a non technical person will enter text to make changes. Can you please give me an idea as to how should i approach this ? The project is in asp.net.

Sorry for the long description but i am really confused as to how the data entry person will enter all the information related to emails and other things that will need this sort of implementation. Sorry for my english as i am not sure myself if i was able to clearly state the issue, let me know and i will explain it again. Thanks.

AspiringCanadian
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  • Your question is not one that can have a clear unique answer and depends from a lot more factors, you ask for design proposal, design guide. The design can be anything. And the design of a site can take many days and must be done from the experience of your developers. The one that make the design must be able to look to the future and know before start the developing how its ends. I know that all that cann't be done with that little data that you give. Also know that you can not have a real answer. and Don't take me for the downvoter. – Aristos May 01 '13 at 07:48
  • All i currently need is to find the easiest way to manage the emails and make it as simple as possible for the data entry person as he/she is not technical at all. – AspiringCanadian May 01 '13 at 07:54
  • Yes, what I am say to you is that the person that make the design must stay above your project, look all facts (files, server, database, technologie, people, etc) and design for a solution. Let say that someone here tell you. You can make one master page and take all the text from the database depends from the language and location. So this is one page only. But is this possible to you ? with out know all the rest factors ? – Aristos May 01 '13 at 07:56
  • The development team is capable of almost anything that is thrown towards them, if that is what you are asking. What i have in my mind is to create resource files in the db which will have text boxes for each website. – AspiringCanadian May 01 '13 at 07:59
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    Yes I say you the same - but I see the site, its looks very complicate, very big one. You need to make tests and prototypes on what you going to make before start making. If you going to create resource files, start make a test, see if its works, if its fast, if you can handle and then move on. – Aristos May 01 '13 at 08:03

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If you use a proper CMS (e.g. Kentico CMS) that stores content in a database, the backend depends on how the CMS organizes the data in its database.

Learn about how the content maintainers will organize the language-dependent content (in the way that you are already thinking about it - content for what defined page sections per language)...and how that will translate into your CMS's underlying organization of the data.

Start small, and be systematic - on the input end (i.e. how a content maintainer will go about doing their part) and on the content-consumption end; try to make one simple portion of the site that works with so much redundancy today...work without it; and go from there.

For example, focus initially on one simple defined section in one page with content for each language. With that clear, consider a more complicated section that requires organization of content for each of its content areas. Then expand to multiple pages, considering different page types that may have different defined sections (and may already be clear from different master pages they employ).

For email templates in particular, I have successfully used a CMS-maintained Smarty template per transactional-email type (e.g. order confirmation, shipment confirmation etcetera) for e-sales - even with ASP.NET being the primary technology on the team. You may need # of email types * # of languages templates, but it sounds like such an approach could work.

Also, consider that your CMS very well may expose services whereby you can get the content, such that you do not really have to be directly concerned with how it organizes the backend data.

J0e3gan
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