Hi, I am a web developer and have set-up several clients over the years with my favourite CMS, DotNetNuke (DNN) hosted on a Windows reseller package I use. So far everyone has been happy with the functional yet clunky DNN sites.

 

One client has recently asked for a site overhaul and wants to move their 150+ PDF newsletter documents which are stored in a DNN Repository module onto "normal pages" which don't shell out to a PDF viewer and could then be content searchable.

 

I have searched for DNN modules that might offer such a thing, and tried a few, but they are all just so clunky and ugly, it's like travelling back to the 90's!

 

I feel it might be time to move to another system, but I would like to stay on Windows/IIS if possible so it can remain inside my Windows Reseller system. This is not vital however. I've dabbled in Wordpress and Joomla over the years with mixed results.

 

The PDFs are all based on simple-text Word files which are available for copy/pasting into HTML format if required, but the dilemma is what should I use? They are a small boutique law firm with only 4-5 pages plus the document repository.

 

I have thought about creating a custom site for them as I have created several small CMS systems for other clients over the years, but it seems like I'd be reinventing the wheel.

 

Any ideas of the direction I should look?

 

Thanks for any ideas you may have.

 

Welcome to the forums!

 

Loads of options here.

 

If it were me I'd publish the documents in plain old HTML then do an on demand PDF generation/download. That way you'd get all the docs indexed as web pages (if you wanted) and would be easily searchable via search engines and locally. That also gives you the ability to cross link related docs, hide portions from non-logged in people and so on.

 

As for what CMS pretty much any will handle the data, it really depends how you want to manage the content, access etc. I've done similar jobs using ExpressionEngine which were very straightforward with no reliance on 3rd party addons, the last one I did was an intranet with 1000+ documents, all searchable, multiple classifications, access restrictions on some docs (eg managers only).