I am working on allowing free hosting for a missionary organization that I support. (hundreds of individual missionaries sites)

I want to minimize the future upgrade process and seem to recall that there is an installation process that uses shared folders with symbolic links. This is volunteer work and is being provided at no cost to them.

Is that correct? Is it documented somewhere? (I think I remember reading it, but can't remember where)

Also I would appreciate any pointers, gotchas, etc about automating the installation.

So far I have the ability to create the cpanel account, configure the subdomain, and set up the empty database.

I can easily add the job to install the files into a directory, creating the conf file, and loading the database.

I'm going to have to create an alternative wec install since missionaries have somewhat different needs than a church. I'm assuming that this means just updating a site and taking a mysql dump of the site the way I would think it should work.

Thanks in advance for any pointers/info.

-Chris

Chris,

As a heads up, this can be very tough at times, especially when there are upgrades to TYPO3 and extensions. Other people can jump in here but from a maintenance perspective, I think it would be best to use one TYPO3 install and then give each user a backend account with access limited to just their website. You would become the admin for all. Then you can upgrade one install and upgrade extensions as needed. You could probably create a t3d of a page tree to get each one started. There is overhead having all these sites in one install but currently that is my suggestion.

The other option is separate installs like you are suggesting. You can create one directory with the source in it and symlink everyone to it. That helps some with disk space and upgrades, but you will still find yourself going to every site at times and updating them one by one. That is really painful.

In Him,
Mark

Chris,
I would agree with Mark on some of the challenges he mentioned above. There are definitely maintenance headaches, but I'll go ahead and cover a couple of the specific questions above in case you do go with this approach.


If you download the tar.gz version of the Starter Package, you'll see that it uses symlinks also. There's one main symlink (typo3_src) that acts as a hub for the other symlinks. For example, the main index.php for the frontend is symlinked to typo3_src/index.php and the main /typo3/ directory for the backend is symlinked to typo3_src/typo3.

typo3_src is a symlink itself though, pointing to a specific TYPO3 version (ie. typo3_src-4.1.5). To upgrade TYPO3, you can change the typo3_src symlink to point at a new folder and thats it for file updates. You can use this exact same approach to get a shared TYPO3 source. Rather than pointing to typo3_src-4.1.5 in your own directory, just point out to a global location that many users can share. You'll of course want to be careful with permissions and things like that to prevent user changes to the shared source, but that's really all there is to it.


Yep, that's it. From doing this for the WEC Starter Package I can point out a few gotchas. There are several tables that you'll always want to clear before creating the database dump; I'll list those below. You'll want to make sure that the WEC Constants are in a good default state (I always leave my development domain set as the constants.wec.siteURL accidentally). You'll also want to double check the Wastebasket to be sure there aren't deleted records lingering around.

Tables to Clear
cache_*
index_*
tx_realurl_chashcache
tx_realurl_errorlog
tx_realurl_pathcache
tx_realurl_urldecodecache
tx_realurl_urlencodecache
sys_log
sys_history
be_sessions
fe_sessions
fe_session_data

Hope that helps
jeff

Hi All

Have a look to this post here:
Author: Andi Becker
Posted: Jun 23 2007 - 12:51 AM
Subject: re: WEC config for SUBdomains

Last Year I described how to set such a thing up as we are running most of our sites like this. Isn't to difficult - depending on the Hoster and how he supports you with ssh or his Team.

If you have any questions after this post it or mail me.

Andi

@WEC Web-Team: I could ot find out a way how to REFER to this article as in your settings the link to the post is not available. It would be helpfull to change this. Thanks

Andi,

I just copy the link in the browser if you find the article. I do not know of a way to enable some sort of link to an article in CHC Forum.

In Him,
Mark

Here is that thread I think.

Hopefully that will help. It does appear that we talked about this.

In Him,
Mark

Okay, from looking at Andi's previous comments, it looks like Andi is using shared source files like Jeff discussed. With symlinks, all installs can use a common source. We use this approach as well. It is efficient and can simplify upgrades some.

Now that we have used the shared source approach a lot more, I see more value in a single installation of TYPO3 IF and only IF the conditions are right. These are:

- one person is managing the installation and serving many people who are updating content on their individual websites
- the people doing the individual websites are not very technical
- the environment is controlled where the administrator can choose which extensions and features are available

Here is an example that is coming soon. Let's say you have 100 websites and it is time to upgrade to TYPO3 4.2. With one install, you can upgrade it all at one time. This will require changing the source, using the install tool to update the database, and changing any extensions that need to be changed. For example, extensions that have moved to the core of TYPO3 must be uninstalled, deleted, and the new version reinstalled. This process may take 10 or 15 minutes. If you have 100 separate installations, then it will take 100 times that amount of time because you must login to every website and make the updates. If individual users need autonomy then separate installations with shared source is probably the direction you need to go. But if you have a controlled environment, I lean toward a single installation. What do you think? Andi, how do you handle upgrading many installations when it requires database updates and extension changes?

In Him,
Mark

Hi Mark and all who are thinking about 1 source and multiple TYPO3-Sites

It is like Mark said and we are doing the same exactly as there is a real need for it.
We even share as you can see the WEC Templates and also our ABC Templates throughout all sites. This is also made by a symlink. This time it is a symlink in fileadmin linking to a RESOURCE FOLDER which is available from all our customers. If they wanna have a Template modified they are able to copy the template files to their own fileadmin folder and modify it there, but they can't modify the originals.

The same is happening with Extensions we are having installed in a GLOBAL folder. Unfortunately some extensions don't like his global folder and then you need to install locally, don't worry about his to much.

A problem might occur if one site is going its own "path" in doing and defining things. Then probably you would be much better in having a single complete TYPO3 Site instate of One TYPO3 Source for many sites. But in such a case usually the one modifying the settings of hesitate is also able to update he TYPO3 System.

If you are having people who only want to create mainly content on their sites (Missionaries) and not Programmers who wanna program extensions and features, then you are much ,much better with the solution Mark, Jeff and I just described.

It is like everywhere - SHARING is much better then wanting it all alone for oneself ;-)

Andi

Thanks to each of you for replying. Andi, I haven't yet looked over your link but will try to soon.

I appreciate the information. Because each of the missionaries are independent, it was always my plan to give them their own installation. I have crudely completed the process that sets up their cpanel accounts, sub-domain, mysql database for wec, and the wec install (using sym links to shared source) including loading the database and adding the needed variables into localconf.php from a single web form. Users will be allowed to self subscribe but only after email verification to establish them as members of the mission organization.

Are any of you familiar with mSites? From what I can tell it seems to have some nice "features" like an integrated photo gallery and from what I hear the ability to send HTML emails with updates (articles) that were added since whenever the previous email was sent...which is a good way to do a newsletter for the missionaries.

Things are proceeding well. Would love someone to help build a custom theme since that's not my skill...but it's not a paying job beyond getting credit for the theme. Thought I would toss that out there even if it's a long shot.

Thanks again everyone!

-Chris

Wow Chris,

It sounds like you are making great progress!

I don't know much about mSites but have you checked out the new smooth gallery in the WEC Starter Package? It makes some sharp slideshows and you just upload the pictures, clear cache and it does the rest.

For templates, you can at least offer them all the WEC templates, not just the ones in the Starter Package. They can see each template in action at http://demo.webempoweredchurch.com. You can use Andi's trick to do that. Symlink the tv-templates directory and put all the templates there.

In Him,
Mark