Hey all Over the past few years I have built and added to my own CMS, and its getting a bit dated and has evolved far beyond the scope of its original specification. It was done very much procedurally, and has turned into a total nightmare to maintain and add extra functionality Anyways I have decided to start from scratch, and build a framework / cms from the ground up using OOP and MVC structure design. Also I have considered using other frameworks such as zend, cake, code igniter etc, but a) I wanted it to be all my own work and b) building my own I get to make it do exactly what I want, how I want, without any other bits I am not going to need / use. The main decision I have made with this is that I want to have one version to control multiple websites, as up until now if I spot a bug I have to then refix that bug in numerous other live, proofing, and development versions as well which is a massive pain. This also applies to updates and new features. Also when deploying my current system its quite a lengthy process because of the number of files, where as I could just add a new site to the existing setup which would be much more efficient. Anyways as I want a central version I wondered if it would be more efficient for the whole thing to run from a single database, or have a database for the centralised bits such as users / groups / permissions tables etc, and then a database per site for content / posts tables too. Plus with the whole MVC thing, some aspects would be unique to a particular site, where as others would be able to be shared by all. Would having an MVC layout for the main framework, and then sub layouts for the individual site be a bit overkill and inefficient? Also have a few more questions too but they hinge on the above and what peoples opinions are. Appreciate peoples comments especially if you have similar experiences with frameworks / MVC / multi site CMS's. Cheers
Hi, I have worked with zend and symfony, but i didn't like very much and created a very simple framework to helpe me on my projects. I think you should have everything centralized in one single database, have multiple databases is a complication unnecessary to this project, also, you will have more control over the database and can build a better relational project to improve the expansion of your data. About the MVC, in my opinion, you should have some pre build templates, and handle it with css, having customized templates will give some headaches after some time to maintain it. cheers
I think the benefits of having your own framework, as you said, is that you own 100% of the code. The downside, of course, is that you own 100% of the bugs as well. Personally, the reason I don't use my own framework any more is because I like to have the community support and documentation available.
Is this something you have done also with your framework? Also it would have to be customisable templates as the front end sites are all so different theres no other option really. Either way though its a million times easier than how I would do it at the mo also I am having second thoughts about 1 database to rule them all. exporting / importing would be a bit of a nightmare. however if I had all user tables as part of one database and the content split out into individual project databases then it could be handled a lot easier To be honest I can deal with that, as long as I can fix them all in one place, rather than fix for site_a and then have to roll out the same fix on identicle copies of code for 20 other sites