reference files from external server

[ukfusion]

Hi, im building my own CMS and wish to have my files hosted on 1 server for easy updating rather than sepperate uploads into different hosting packages etc.

My clients websites will all be hosted on different servers but i want them to access the CMS from one set of files so when i make updates they are applied to all clients.

I've tried using fopen/file_get_contents etc which works fine but my problems are with server variables etc as its using my external server details rather than the ones the files are displayed on....for example after they log in it sends them back to referer which was the external server rather tan theirs.

So i would rather they accesses the system where it actually was on my server....so im wondering what method i should use or is there a standard way of doing this.

Thanks

[Dormilich]

I’d recommend you provide a sensible update mechanism like the linux repositories.

reason: each client server would have to send all configuration data (some of them sensitive) to your CMS server which will result in a large amount of network traffic (if the CMS were on the client server, PHP could use file access, which doesn’t generate HTTP traffic). then it receives the processed webpage and sends that to the requesting user agent. somewhat like double or triple the network traffic than if the CMS were on the client server. I doubt your clients like to pay that in exchange for an always-up-to-date CMS. another reason is implementation changes. say you change something in the CMS and for some reason that causes a malfunction with the client’s set-up. are you gonna pay their downtime? what if someone hacked your server (deleted your data)? can you ensure that even then the CMS will work? what about Databases? are they hosted on the CMS server? what about the DB security?

I think the advantage is not worth the risks you’ll encounter.

[ukfusion]

Hi, if i was to implement this then i'd make sure i had a rollback feature aswell as a testing environment.....its just to make things easier for me in the long run...if i had 1000 sites im sure it would get more and more difficult to keep them all updated...but thanks for the feedback.

For now ill just stick with multiple uploads.