white-labelling [Catalyst]

[Carl Johnstone]

> Interesting term, 'white labelling'; where do you get it from.

It's a fairly standard term for the process. One origin I've come across is 
it comes from manufacturers selling products with plain white labels to 
supermarkets, who would then brand them as own-brand products. However these 
days it applies in all industries where such practices are common, for 
example white-label credit cards are common.

Good web examples would be LOVEFiLM  ( www.lovefilm.com ) providing a DVD 
rental service under several other brands :-

http://www.tescodvdrental.com/
http://dvd.easycinema.com/
http://www.odeondirect.com/


> A client wants something similar so I am interested in the issue. The 
> sites
> will have some differences such as CSS but access the same application.

If you can get it just down to CSS changes, you could probably just put a 
conditional in where you load the CSS files (testing the hostname used to 
access the site).

It's likely that sooner or later though you're going to need actual template 
changes, in which case you could just use an alternate view in Catalyst 
pointing to a separate set of templates. You probably want to experiment a 
little as it depends where you want the balance between separate and common 
stuff. Too much common stuff and it gets harder to customise the look and 
feel for a client to what they'd like. Too much separation means more 
maintenance work when improving your application.

Carl