The Challenge

Syntro had an existing (small) website, built with ASP.NET, without any content management capabilities. Syntro had no internal programming or design capabilities, so for updates and additions to the site they had to work with an external party. While this worked well, it was an expensive solution.

Syntro expressed the wish to be able to update and maintain the site themselves in a user-friendly and intuitive fashion. Because money had already been invested in the overall design and structure of the site, this should not be compromised in any way. Also, the CMS should anticipate future growth.

The Solution

When Syntro came to Stinhue Sofware • Intreanet with the above questions, we showed them Sitefinity. It was immediately clear that Sitefinity was easy to use and that maintaining the site and expanding it with new pages could be done without any knowledge of HTML and the like. Also, because the existing site was already based on ASP.NET, using master pages and themes, the overall look and feel could be kept by simply importing the theme and master pages into Sitefinity.

The Results

It took about two days to convert the existing ASP.NET website into Sitefinity. This includes the time to rebuild the content and apply proper descriptions and keywords to the pages. Master pages and themes could, without significant changes, be reused in Sitefinity. The existing search functionality was replaced by the built-in Sitefinity search engine. Most of the time was spent rebuilding the site menus using site PanelBar and TabStrip. By using the external style sheet capabilities of these two components, the menus could be rebuilt as exact replicas of the original menus.

After a short half hour demo of the new site, Syntro were able to explore Sitefinity on their own. In just a few days they were confident enough to bring the new site live!