This may be a hard question to answer but I'm wondering what the best way to "plan" a site would be. I'm looking at adding a ton of different products under different categories, etc. Is it best to make subdomains or sub-sites from a first "core" page...each having their own product databases?...I was thinking that would keep the databases the smallest but then create search problems between all of the sites. What's recommended to keep things fast and efficient? Since I'm just testing things out right now and don't have an official site up, it's very easy to customize or fix things now, in the beginning planning phases - hence the question :).
Thanks for any ideas!! -Joe
Hey David,
Thanks for the reply, that helped a lot and the other threads did also. I'm a little confused how to work the multiple installations together.
I would like to do your recommendations but need further explanation. When you recommend multiple installations, what I'm thinking is something like this:
Main site/electronics (one site)
Main site/household (another site)
and in each directory install a full version of the software, just keep the config and feed directories different (and keep a "core" version of the site handy for installation into each directory).
Does this make sense? Thanks again!
Hi,
Yes - that's spot on. It just means you don't have to keep lots of copies of the entire script locally - just one master copy that you can use to make any changes (and then upload the modified files to each of your installations - /electronics/, /household/ etc. - so that the only things you keep in your local copies of those directories are the /feeds/ folder, and config.php.
Cheers,
David.
Hi David,
It's working out so far, so thanks for the great help! I'll work on the next questions for you haha ;)
Hello Joe,
I would strongly recommend multiple installations without sub-directories if you are planning a very big site - lots of users do this in order to create a virtual category hierarchy, by having sub-directories of their main site represent the "master" category (which can be good for SEO) and then the single category level within each installation becomes a second level category. It's straight forward to create a search box at the top level with a drop-down for which installation (mater category) to search - lots more info in this thread:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/205
As regards managing a set-up like this; on your local computer I would just keep one "master" installation in which you can manage your visual look & feel changes, and then in your local version of each sub-directory, just have config.php and the /feeds/ directory so that you don't have to continuously update lots of files all over the place.... at least for starters, once you're up and running you may want to make installation specific mods of course...
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.