Host multiple sites of the application located in one folder

Question

Hi,

I want to know the best way of hosting a web application for different domains. What I want to achieve is this:

1. Have single folder of the web application for easier maintenance.
2. Be able to override some parts of Web.Config per each site (ATM only ConnectionString, but could be more).
3. Store log files on file system without interferring between web sites.
4. Store other files (produced by the application) on file system without interferring between sites.

The brute-force solution would be to create directory for each web site and change all the configuration for each one independently. This one really guarantess the sites are independent.

But for the sake of easier maintenance (is it really easier?) I would like to have the application in one folder (so I deploy in to one place, upgrade once etc).
But not sure how in this case I can achive things I mentioned.

I would like to hear some suggestions and maybe there is an elegant solution for this.

Thanks,
Dmitriy.

Answer 1

If you use the same files for multiple sites you will experience file locking. I would argue it is easier to Manage the web sites by separating it as well, because having a single shared web.config could confuse settings. Eg pointing the correct tracing/logging to the correct locations.