We’re looking in to a product that we would like to launch that gives small business owners (specifically offline shop owners) the chance to easily build a site.
A option would be a special ‘fork’ of wordpress/joomla/etc with some predefined pages (about us, homepage, opening times, pictures, contact etc) and also predefined templates which they can alter.
A shop owner would sign up and buy or move a domain to us to which we attach the software. He chooses a template and fills in the standard info. Some elements of this are required but he could also add his own pages (e.g. specific sale events).
Within the templates there are elements which he cannot change (backlinks and/or widgets from us). But he can change the templates (colors, pictures, logos).
Everything should be hosted in the cloud (e.g. EC2) and easily scalable. We would sell this service for a small fee per month giving a small shop owner an easy way to his own site.
Are there any open-source packages that have these options?
Joomla isn’t very flexible to adjust,
Wordpress is a better choice.
the build in twentyeleven theme will show you how easy it can be to adjust colors.
It’s also far easier for the user to manage.
You might even take a look at a WP-multisite. Manage all sites with one admin. And keep all your wp sites up to date at once.
To disable some widgets you only need a good template.
Robert suggests magento and shopify, Magento will be too much and to hard to manage. I’m not familiar with shopyfy, but it’s a online shop (not offline)
Form this question I take that you/your company is a startup and you don’t have much experience.(As does a quick google)
What ever you take you will need (more then basic) coding knowledge php/html/css/javascript
Might be worth having a look at http://www.magentocommerce.com/ or http://www.shopify.com