MODx Revolution multi domain installation tutorial

Hi Henning,

thanks for the tutorial!

it’s working great, but i ran into one problem ...

i got 2 contexts the standard "web" (accessible via www.seite1.com) and another "seite2" (accessible via www.seite2.com)

when i login via www.seite1.com i can preview the resource in "web" just fine, but previewing resources in context "seite2" will add "http://www.seite1.com/manager/" in front of "www.seite2.com"

any ideas?

MODx 2.0.4-pl2

thanks, j

You need to right-click on the context, and edit its settings and create/update the following:

site_start, base_url, http_host and site_url

More details here:
http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Creating+a+Subdomain+from+a+Folder+using+Virtual+Hosts

hey odeclas,

... thanks for pointing out

i went over my settiungs again and filled out the field "name" in context-settings + added the trailing slash to "site_url"

now it’s working

As a web developer I’ve got a number of clients.

I’m undecided whether to have one install of Revo for multiple clients.

Pro = only one install to keep udated
Con = if it breaks all my clients go down

Anyone got experience or opinions on shared install or one per client?

Mark

The problem is you have no separation in elements tab for separate contexts.
I think it’s not the right idea to use for multiple client-sites.
It’s perfect if you have one company which has a few websites but not for different clients.

Thanks for the input. I’m going off the idea for a single install. Another con is if I have to move one client to another server everything feels tangled up with a single install.

However I’m currently building 3 Revolution sites simultaneously and just uploading 3000+ files for each install, setting all the initial system settings, installing the packages and then in future having to patch with new versions of Revo, I’m just worried I’m making a rod for my own back.

I hate looking back and thinking “I wish I hadn’t done it that way!”

I know a few webshops that are building multiple clients sites with multisite install of Wordpress.

Hi,

you should know that for the future it’s planned (i hope so but it’s in the tracker) to get "workspaces" (import/export) where you can have default settings, snippets, plugins, etc. and you "custom setup".
But honestly I’d have to say that dealing with revo updates and installs without a SSH connection can be a bit annoying due to the big package… so tell your clients to get a SSH connections to their servers ;-)

I’m also tempted by a single install for multiple client sites, but am not keen on sharing a single manager and database. The concept that really appeals to me would be having separate databases for each client, but all running from the same core - if there were 6 sites on that 1 install, there’s only going to be 1 core to maintain and upgrade. That seems way more attractive than managing 6 different installs, which always feels a bit clunky to me.

I’ve had a bit of a test installing a single core outside of the root and then running setup on other sites using that core, which seems to work ok (with a bit of fiddling). The only thing that is a bit of a turn-off for me at the moment is that I still can’t (or don’t think I can) fully achieve the above, as I think to upgrade I’d still have to upgrade the core and also all the separate manager installs. I could be wrong about that last point though.

It’ll be interesting to see how things progress with multi-site configs.

I could be wrong about this, but I think the sites could share the manager and connectors directories in addition to the core. Those are the only directories that need to be updated.

There might be some quirks with updating add-ons since you’d have to install them in each site and their core files would already be there after the first update.

For my dev site (with multiple client sites) I simply have one manager / packages install, and several contexts that point to subdomains / physical folders. I then create site-specific categories to keep my elements / chunks clean (with a custom mnemonic prefix for each client).

It’s kept me sane during the eight? manager upgrades that have been made since June... and countless package updates. I now make it a policy to only upgrade to -pl packages (although only Shaun is really strict on that naming convention).

Now, if only I could persuade my clients to all use the same host....