New Message: Re: Manila Best Practices?

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A new message was posted:

Address: http://manila.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$235

By: Steve Hooker (steve at cybersaps.com)

I used to run Mac Classic, but PCs are much cheaper :-( Much prefer Win2000 to XP, where I get, very occasionally, dialog boxes sometimes appearing which as yet I'm unable to dismiss without a TimBuktu visit. (Oh, for the ease of Okey Dokey Pro). And although I restart Frontier every 5,000 hits, the Win2000 box hasn't fallen over for nearly a year. I also had some crashes with Timbuktu on XP, so went back to Win2000 PDQ and have to say it's solid as a rock, unlike the Mac Classic.

Never tried OSX. Apple have probably lost me as a customer :-(

/How to add and delete sites *without* resorting to remote control of the host server/

One adds sites with the createASite form. Stick it in any site and so long as it's a hosting site (see config.manila.hosting.sites) that site too can spawn sites. By using the create a new site callbacks, you may create sites that are themselves hosting sites, which contain the createASite form, and thus create sites of the type, mySite.partOf.thisSite.myDomain.com, providing you've wild carded you DNS.

Or, through the control panel, but, this bypasses the config.manila.hosting.sites.["everything.mydomain.com"].existingGdbName sticking all new sites in manilaWebsites.root.

I have a plug in that allows bulk site deletions, search by name or date it was last updated. eMail them a warning, etc. It deletes all records of the site, stats, domain entries etc. And stores the sites, just in case. It's not perfect, but nearly so. Mail me if you want it.

/How can you ensure that all new sites you create allow the admin to be a member automatically?/

Use the create new site callbacks. There, you can add a new member to every newly created site. Using these callbacks you can customise new sites to be anything you want, news items, vanilla Manila, add default messages, customised macros using the new site owner's email address, anything.

There are also callbacks for swapping themes, thus, a sexblog could see the light and become a soccer blog, if you catch my meaning.

/Virtual hosting--keeping one domain's content separate from others/

That's much more involved. I suspect you mean keeping most viewed sites divided by domain. I had to do this when creating sexblogs on the same machine as soccer blogs. But it can be done. If this is what you mean, I'll write up my how to. It just means sticking in a #pref stating who the parent who spawned the site is, then watching out for it when storing config.manila.stats and reading them.

/Creating sites with top-level domains instead of subdirectories--how does everyone handle script the DNS changes required?/

Do you mean *.wild cards in DNS? It depends on your nameserver app or who handles your DNS. www.register.com will do wild cards, thus you merely point *.mydomain.com to your Frontier server, and everything.mydomain.com gets there. Frontier will create config.domains.["everything.mydomain.com"] pointing to your site on createASite time, and everything runs sweet.

Steve Hooker

http://www.cybersaps.org/

This is a Manila site.. http://manila.userland.com/.