I'm working on a new business that will host web applications for a type of business. At the bottom of their page will be a "Powered By..." tag that lets people know that the system they are viewing could be used with their business. My plan is to court many of these businesses with my applications capability and get them to transition their web site (most have one already) to my technology. I love Winhost and want to use them. Now, I just need to understand the most efficient way of handling this setup. As I see it, there are a couple general approaches - both with drawbacks. 1. Create one site as the parent. Add all of the logic of the "application" at the root level. Use one database with distinct ApplicationID's to manage membership with each site. Create folders for each "client" that act as Application Folders and share some code from the root. PROS Easy to maintain and share updates One hosting account One .net Project to maintain CONS URL Rewrite goofiness No controls over new customers email accounts No individual FTP login 2. Create a site and purchase a hosting plan for each client. PROS Full control over emails and ftp No URL rules required No propogation of system-wide code causing problems CONS New features would need to be deployed individually to ALL customers Multiple hosting accounts to manage and pay for Multiple .net projects to keep track of. I'm sure these are not complete lists, but this is why I'm waffling. I don't know what I haven't considered yet! Wondering if the community out there has any experience with this question and could anyone give me advice.
For the sake of simplicity (and sanity) I would open a new site for each instance, but I understand your reservations. Individual sites would allow you to suspend or discontinue service on a per-user level, which would be a lot easier than trying to stop service for someone when everything is shared. Just a thought.
I think you mean you would add domain pointer for the additional sites. You wouldnt get email service for each domain this way. That alone would probably be reason not to do so. Staying on topic however, I've never understood why people would want to cram in multiple sites and jump through all these hoops considering the pricing. Yes, we all want to save money, but I just dont think its worth it in this case.
Well, the rough thinking is I just want to write my code and manage it in one place, then customize a few pages (like Master Template and maybe in individual folders) while sharing the rest of the code. But, I am starting to see the wisdom of the multiple-account approach. I think what I'll end up doing is wrapping up my core logic in a dll and then just have to worry about sharing that logic across all the created sites.
