I would agree with Robert. I was contracted to work on a site once that was doing just what you want - they were an application provider for their clients web sites. All the clients provided was a look and feel template, and they did the rest.
At first it was easy. In fact they had one core file that did all the grunt work for the application, then a client wanted something a bit different. It was needed in a hurry, and wasnt much of a change, so they just put in a <cfif clientid="345"> and made the change in that core file. Then another change was needed. And another. And one more complex for another client. Before long the core file was strewn with all these <cfif /cfelseif/cfelseif/cfelseif switches and the file had swollen to about 5 times its original size. It became almost impossible to maintain. Just finding the line to maintain became about 80% of the time required to do a simple little task. Eventually they had to re-write the whole application. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion 9 Enterprise, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 5:21 AM, Robert Harrison <rob...@austin-williams.com> wrote: > > From a technical standpoint you are on the right track... we do a similar > thing in that we use a standard framework and deploy that to the sites we > build, thus we use copies of the same codebase. It seems the approach you > are taking is to really use JUST ONE codebase to run all the sites. > > Technically I can see the allure, and if this is for a company owned group of > web sites and they are all similar this can work. However, if this is for > sites you are deploying for clients, there are at least two places where that > can really cause some problems. There are: > > 1. Your relationship with the client changes and the client wants to take > the site and move. Now you are faced with either holding the client's site > hostage or giving away your multi-site base code framework (possibly even to > a competitor). Neither of those is an attractive option. > > 2. Also, assume one or more clients keeps coming back to you to make > adjustments and additions. Now your code is getting more and more mucked up > with custom-code exceptions. That's also not cool. Eventually that will make > your framework really difficult to manage and upgrade. > > If this is an in-house thing and you know the sites won't be moved and you > can control what's going in them somewhat, your approach is good. If you're > going to do this for separate clients, you should probably think about > building a framework you can copy, profile, and customize as needed. > > > Robert B. Harrison > Director of Interactive Services > Austin & Williams > 125 Kennedy Drive, Suite 100 > Hauppauge NY 11788 > P : 631.231.6600 Ext. 119 > F : 631.434.7022 > http://www.austin-williams.c ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:342403 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
