How to set up a method of easily managing multiple websites?

Question

I have similar instances of the same web application running across many domains. I need an easy way to manage (edit, add, etc.) certain files (php, css, html) for each domain.

I was thinking of writing a control panel in PHP, but was wondering if there are existing scripts people have already written for accomplishing this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

There are several choices for managing the infrastructure of your servers. Here are some and you may want to ask on ServerFault website too.

• Puppet http://reductivelabs.com/products/puppet
• Chef http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home
• Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_configuration_management_software

Answer 2

It depends on how customised each instance is - if there are code changes, then I'd recomment using a SCM like git. You can hold each customised version in a separate branch, and deploy them as separate instances. If you have a change that needs to be incorporated into many sites, then you can cherry pick that commit across the branches.

I've used this method to deploy a suite of 18 sites that used a common codebase, and it works.