Unusual Setup, some advice if you will

Hi there,

I’m looking into using MODx (most likely Revo) for a few sites.
I’m basically working in a company who currently build bespoke CMS’s per project/site, and I would like to demo MODx as a kind of proof of concept argument to perhaps use an open source solution (if you ever needed to do such a thing)

I have a few unusual requirements, and I just wanted to see what people think and basically pick brains

The manager would need to sit on a different domain, that is IP restricted:
IE: http://myadmin.mydomain.com/manager
This would power www.mydomain.com

www.mydomain.com would be hosted on a number of servers scattered around the place. Im not to familiar with this setup, but from what I understand a request is sent to the appropriate box that will respond to a connection. Not sure how this effects cache as I have no direct exp with multi-server setups? Anyone? I know SESSIONS cannot be carried, this might help.

In terms of development we would need to use version control, and be able to build and deploy from this. This is where I see problems as MODx kind of expects to be living in /manager

Any help/suggestions on the above would be greatly appreciated. If anyone has any exp in this area and can reply that would be great.

Thanks in advance

I’m not really sure about the multi server part, but I can tell you that SESSION in Revolution is stored in the database so I don’t think you’ll have problems there.

Quote from: lucas at Jun 14, 2011, 05:32 AM

I’m not really sure about the multi server part, but I can tell you that SESSION in Revolution is stored in the database so I don’t think you’ll have problems there.

Session in the DB? Is this correct. I mean $_SESSION[]

Yep, sessions are stored in the database by default in MODX Revolution, so it is essentially ready for load balancing configurations. You can configure caching as needed for the environment, including using server specific file caches on each web node (a couple of simple plugins can trigger cache clearing on the remote nodes), configuring memcached servers for shared memory-based caching, etc. We have many successful deployments using protected subdomains for accessing the manager, very similar to what you are describing.

Basically the manager would need to reside on a different box than the site.
This is currently the case. We build custom CMS’s to manage MYSQL DBs, then we deploy what are essentially standalone frontends that use the DB for content.

What I am after is this:

MODx manager running of a separate machine to the front end.
MODx front end working off the DB on this machine.

I’m sorry if this sounds vague but I do not have a lot of experience with load balancing, however I do have a lot of experience making MODx sites, and I want to bring the benefits of the MODx work flow to what I am doing now.
I don’t know where to start with this to be honest!

Decided to give it a go on my local machine.
I have the core sitting outside the webroot.

MODx Core is here: c:\xampp\core\
MODx Manager is here: c:\xampp\revolution_manager\
MODx is here: c:\xampp\revolution\

I get a white screen on the front end. Manager allows me to login however the content area is blank, error from php logs:
File does not exist: C:/xampp/htdocs/revolution_manager/connectors, referer: http://revolutionmanager.localhost/manager/index.php?a=47&class_key=modStaticResource

Now even if I get this working, the cache will be written to the core/cache/ dir, but both the manager and the front will need to have a different core as they would be on different machines? This wont be easy will it

Did you use the advanced distribution to install this? There are a number of configuration issues that must be set properly and the advanced installer provides a screen for you to specify those paths. You can also set the paths and URLs in the config file manually. Also make sure all the config.core.php files in the distribution point to the core location.