Multiple Sites, one set of PHP files

jcantrell

Greetings all.

I have ideas in my head for a mass produced website. What I am trying to come up with in my head (development will start next week) is a way to update all of the code in the sites at the same time.

There will be no custom coding in any of the sites (a possibility of 4000+), so what comes to mind for me is 2 ways of doing it.

Setting up the sites so they have the templates, and the templates read the main files from a single location.
Keeping all of the domain information in a database, and writing a script that would go through the database and execute commands on the server to copy the files to the correct folder for each site.

All of the sites would be on the same server, each site will have it's own database (updating the databases will be an entirely different problem, but could probably be handled similar to #2 easy enough).

I could come up with number 2 myself, but number 1 is giving me some problems, also would number 1 just be extremely slow?

I'm thinking about something like this for number 1:
<?php

include ("./currentsite/variables.php");
include ("./currentsite/header.php");

include ("/home/httpd/vhosts/basesite/actioncode.php");

include ("./currentsite/footer.php");

This way every site will have the exact same code, but call the actual code from a base site.

Help me with more ideas, or elaborate on these! Let me know which you think is better! Thanks!

Natty_Dreadlock

u might have a look at the cms section of hotscripts.com (PHP->content management)... However, if u wanna code it by yourself, u concept is ok... however, i don't know why u wanna go through the db and generate all html pages on the server?? caching?? Usually, u access the db everytime a script is run, so that your pages are always uptodate..
the include thing is not extremely slow, since i assume header.php just contain html data?? so why should it be slow?? it's a solution many people use.
hth

jcantrell

Thanks, I'm actually not storing html data in a database, it would be like me writing something similar to phpNuke, only allowing it to be hosted on my server, and having an automatic update function for the code in the site. The content will still be up to the administrator of the site.

Hope this clears up my intentions a bit.

JAKE

Natty_Dreadlock

ok your approach seems to be ok for your plans... so do 'em, i do not see any real conceptual errors... my only question was why u wrote:

Keeping all of the domain information in a database, and writing a script that would go through the database and execute commands on the server to copy the files to the correct folder for each site.

So it's for multiple users? and why do u go through the db and copy "the files" (which files??) to the user's folder? do u mean php scripts or rendered html files??
however, your idea seems to fit your needs, so why not do it??
hth

jcantrell

An example, say I develop a site for car lots, it would let them keep track of their cars online, as well as keep up their website. I should have clarified what I meant by users, when I say users, I mean people who buy a website from me, that was confusing.

So in the database, I would store information about my clients.

ex: Joe's Used Cars, joesusedcars.com, /srv/www/vhosts/joesusedcars.com/httpdocs, updates=yes.

So, what I would do in this case is write a script that would go through this "clients" table and copy the php scripts from the base site directory to the clients site directory which is stored in the database (cp /srv/www/vhosts/basesite/httpdocs /srv/www/joesusedcars.com/httpdocs). So I have a controlled, automatic update system, whenever I run the update script.

I know that this way would be easy enough, and maybe now you understand what I mean when I say including the files for the different sites.

So, when you go to joesusedcars.com it would actually be pulling the header and footer from joesusedcars.com, but it would be including the action php scripts from the base site, using the joesusedcars.com database.

So I wouldn't even have to run the update script, because anytime I change the scripts in the base site, it would automatically change for all clients, since they are including the files from the base site.

Thanks again for the input.

Natty_Dreadlock

ok i got your point the idea is good u can do it... however, be extremely careful when programming the "action php scripts from the base site", since they control all the pages of all your users, some security problem would affect all your client's pages... so use mysql_escape_string (http://de.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-escape-string.php) on all your inputs that are used in a db query, make sure u check all input values passed via GET/POST etc. So do not try to save time when coding these "global scripts", since a few hours spend more here can avoid lots of problem later...
hth

jcantrell

Sounds good, thanks for the help!