Advantages/disadvantages of multiple domain management

OK, I think I see HOW to share a single database and manager across multiple domains, but I’d like to hear WHY--that is, the advantages/disadvantages.

I’m sure the greatest appeal is updating the core--it’d be awfully nice to only have to do it once and not multiple times for each domain.

However, I’m worried about a few potential issues:

1) If the update fails to correctly install, all sites go down, right?
2) Don’t a lot of calls to the same database slow down page requests?
3) Won’t the size of the db become unwieldy after a while (depending on number of domains)?

I’m not against multiple domain mgt at all; I’d just like to hear what others think about it.

Hi Puffin,


1. Yes, but this is not a good point. You should first backup and restoring only takes a couple minutes if you have terminal access.
2. By default all your pages are cached(once they were accessed one time) and no connection to the the database is made unless you call snippets/chunks etc uncached. Second, in order for your DBs to be faster you need to put them on different servers or use some sort of load balancing(not an expert, I might be wrong)
3. The size will grow but as I said in point 2, you should use the cached functionality that modx provides. If you can’t use cache than you probably don’t really need MODx

Regards

Thanks, cipa, all good points. And yes, I use caching. However, with multiple domains I assume the cache is much larger than single domain installations (depending of course on number of sites, size and traffic). I wonder at what cache size will the advantage outweigh that of a single installation.

And actually I think my first point is perfectly valid: upgrading should go smoothly but sometimes doesn’t. It may end up being a minor issue, but until you figure it out the site is offline. At least with a single domain installation, one site may go down temporarily, but other domains don’t. This may just be a minor point, but it’s something to consider when making the decision about moving to multiple management.

Has anyone using multiple domain management arrived at an optimal domain number under one roof?

According to the modx team, cache size won’t be a problem, but if you are worried about cache and upgrades than I am probably missing something about your build.
If you plan to have more than 5000 resources for one context than I suggest using a separate install.

You can also group contexts based on similarities. If you have 2 sites that are totally different use 2 installs instead of 2 contexts.

Upgrading Revo is really easy using the terminal, so this is not a big problem for lots of sites on the same server.

So, it all depends. I would personally won’t put 2 different websites for 2 different clients on one modx install but I would do it for one client using 5 regular websites.

Regards

I would personally won’t put 2 different websites for 2 different clients on one modx install but I would do it for one client using 5 regular websites.

Thanks for your observation, cipa, although I don’t understand how one client with 5 websites is any different than 5 separate clients, each with a single website, when it comes to multiple domain management on a single install. Most of my clients (and I imagine most other folks here) fall in the latter category, so if I followed your example, I’d probably always use separate installs.

It depends on the clients. Some don’t want to pay for upgrades, some might pay a yearly fee for updates, some might have a custom module and some not.
Some might ask for the site and have someone else do the updates.

You might have clients that already have hosting. I thin case I don’t think you can use contexts.
At the end of the day do what feels right to you, the client or for the project(s).

Hi,

I’ve been thinking about using one install for multiples websites/clients. The biggest concern i found was about backup. Since my clients are free, they have their website backed up (files & DB) so they could go with another freelance/agence/whatever (which never happened for now!).

And unfortunatly i didnt find a way to only backup a context/website in a way that’s easy to reinstall. That’s why i agree with cipa : 1 install per site/client.

My 2cents.

Cheers

Thanks, Romain, yours is a good point re: backups, something I hadn’t yet considered. My clients are the same as yours. If one decides to move elsewhere, the last thing I want is difficulty separating their content from others.

I’m leaning more and more toward single installs. Multiple domain mgt sounds great until you begin to investigate its limitations.