How to make two web sites appear as one - What features are important?

Question

I am about to write a tender. The solution might be a PHP based CMS. Later I might want to integrate an ASP.NET framework and make it look like one site.

1. What features would make this relatively easy.
2. Would OpenId and similar make a difference?
3. In the PHP world Joomla is supposed to be more integrative than Druapal. What are the important differences here?
4. Are there spesific frameworks in ASP.NET, Python or Ruby that are more open to integration than others?

Answer 1

I think that most important thing is to choose the right server. The server needs to have adequate modules. Apache would be good choice as it supports all that you want, including mod_aspnet (which I didn't test, but many people say it works).

If you think asp.net integration is certanly going to come, I would choose Windows as OS as it will certanly be easier.

You could also install reverse proxy that would decide which server to render content based on request - if user request aspx page, proxy will connect to the IIS and windoze page, if it asks for php it can connect to other server. The problem with this approach is shared memory & state, which could be solved with carefull design to support this - like shared database holding all state information and model data....

OpenID doesn't make a difference - there are libs for any framework you choose.

Answer 2

The most important thing is going to be putting as much of the look-and-feel in a format that can be shared by any platforms. That means you should develop a standard set of CSS files and (X)HTML files which can be imported (or directly presented) in any of those platform options. Think about it as writing a dynamic library that can be loaded by different programs.

Using OpenID for authentication, if all of your platform options support it, would be nice, but remember that each platform is going to require additional user metadata be stored for each user (preferences, last login, permissions/roles, etc) which you'll still have to wrangle between them. OpenID only solves the authentication problem, not the authorization or preferences problems.

Lastly, since there are so many options, I would stick to cross-platform solutions. That will leave you the most options going forward. There's no compelling advantage IMHO to using ASP.NET if there's a chance you may one day integrate with other systems or move to another system.