Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites - Page -1

5/17/2011 10:54:52 AM

uniquegodwin

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Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Hello,

I have developed several site-features on top of mojoportal for our application. These site features are tightly coupled with our custom enterprise cloud service application.

Now, we provide our service resellers with their own branded website using mojoportal. But,all these are on top of a single mojoportal installation.

Will there be any negative effects on the long term because I'm creating several websites on the same mojoportal installation?

Please advice..

Thank you

5/17/2011 11:19:37 AM

Jamie E

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Hosting multiple sites on one installation means that the data for all of the sites is kept in a single mojoPortal database. This has several downsides that I can think of. First, the data for all client sites is shared, and not individually secured (e.g. if any client gets the database access credentials from user.config/web.config, they could potentially log into the database and change data for any of the sites). Also, if one of the clients wanted to leave and host their site elsewhere, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to move just that site's data out into its own database.

If possible, it would be a much better idea to host each site in its own mojoPortal installation. That way, each site's database would be individually secured, and could be moved to another server with minimal effort.

Jamie

5/17/2011 11:31:27 AM

Joe Audette

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

To me this is a business decision. mojoPortal makes it possible to host multiple sites in a single installation but whether to do that is a business decision.

It is true that if you are allowing users ftp access to the whole site including the Web.config and user.config they could get the database credentials and possibly get access to other customers data. It is also true that it makes it more difficult if you later want to be able to give your customers a backup of only their data.

But if you are not giving ftp access and not planning to offer copies of the database to customers then these issues may not matter to you. For general offering of hosted sites of random customers I probably would not do that myself but for your scenario it may be fine.

There are some benefits such as less server resources used per site, easier to upgrade all sites at once etc. But the bottom line is it is a business decision one has to make such decisions based on their own goals and needs.

Best,

Joe

6/3/2011 12:05:57 PM

principal_X

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Hi guys... I am in the same boat. I currently have 4 or 5 web sites set up on a shared instance of mojo. It has worked great for me and the customers using it. I already have one customer who needs their own testing environment before moving it into production. The thought of writing the extensive sql scripts to "splice" a web site out from the shared database seems daunting and not even a sure thing. I wonder if anyone has done this successfully.

I am considering flipping the other way and having each website in it's own instance of mojoportal. Therefore managing testing and production environments would be a cinch.

What sort of limitation do you think I will encounter. Memory usage, performance? Have you tried stress testing this type of scenario. How many instances of mojo could I run one server, given the hardware specs?

Thanks

Steve

6/3/2011 12:33:38 PM

uniquegodwin

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Hi Steve,

We're using Mojoportal in the same way. We have multiple websites hosted on the same mojoportal installation and no problems so far.

If you use seperate installations, one thing is that you'll have to upgrade them manually as new versions are released.

and I think the disadvantage comes up when you need to integrate seperate installations with your custom control panel / reseller panel.

But, anyway, it really depends as they say. No idea on the stability and performance.

I understand that you want to split them. If it's hard,have you considered having one copy for testing and one for production?

Regards,

6/3/2011 1:11:03 PM

Joe Davis

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Hi Steve,

At i7MEDIA, we run a lot of mojoPortal sites, all separate installations for each client. Some clients have multiple sites inside one installation but clients never share the same installation.

We have, in the past, extracted one site from a multiple-site installation. It's possible and we can provide the service. I will say that if you are comfortable with SQL, it really isn't difficult, just time consuming.

As far as performance goes, it really depends on the equipment, traffic, and size of the sites. I can say that we have a good mix of small and medium sites running and they all do fine.

In our environment, upgrades aren't too bad really because we have scripts that we wrote to allow us to upgrade sites faster. We also install the sites in a manner that allows for easy upgrading. See this blog post for more information on that. We can share those scripts with you, if you like. You must be able to remote into the desktop of your server to use the scripts, though.

HTH,
Joe D.

6/3/2011 1:31:49 PM

uniquegodwin

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Hi Joe,

That's nice to hear..

It would be great if you could share any scripts that we can use..

I have just found this so far but I haven't really tried it myself yet...

Thanks.

6/3/2011 4:30:08 PM

principal_X

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Thanks for the info guys. Nice to know that someone has already written scripts to peel out an individual site from a shared site instance of mojo. I think I am still going with the one instance per site... but those Sql scripts would be very helpful with getting the current sites peeled out and into their own instance.

6/3/2011 10:17:09 PM

Joe Davis

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

I need to clear up the scripts. While we have extracted sites from multi-site installations and we wrote scripts for this process, those scripts are very old and I do not feel comfortable publishing them. The script I am comfortable sharing is our upgrade script. It does look like the java app that uniquegodwin linked to is a lot nicer than anything we have. I will make a blog post about our script in the near future.

Thanks,
Joe

6/7/2011 3:33:12 PM

principal_X

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Joe,

Thanks for the offer on the SQL scripts. Would it be possible or you provide me with what you have? I understand that they would need some work before using. Once I make the appropriate changes and get it working successfully, I could, in turn provide them back you and the forum as a contribution.

Steve

6/8/2011 6:31:53 AM

Joe Audette

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

One way to do it would be to make a full backup of the db, restore the db on a local machine with a copy of the installation, then make sure the site you want to keep is set to true for the IsServerAdminSite field in the mp_Sites table. Then delete the other sites from the web ui (see the FAQ item about how to delete sites). That should get rid of most or all of the other site data, then you could backup the database again with just the one site.

Hope that helps,

Joe

6/8/2011 12:46:37 PM

Joe Davis

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

I spent some time looking for the scripts I wrote the last time I had to do something like this, it was well over a year ago, but I can't seem to find anything. I think Joe's recommendation is probably the best way to go at this point.

I will publish our upgrade script in the near future. I am contemplating rewriting it in PowerShell as it is currently Batch script.

Thanks,
Joe D.

6/8/2011 5:11:07 PM

principal_X

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

Joe,

Thanks for that idea.... I am going to give that a try! I will let this post know the outcome.

Steve

11/30/2011 3:49:18 PM

Shaun3180

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Re: Deploying Mojoportal - Multiple sites

uniquegodwin, I see you linked to a Java-based solution I created many months ago (http://code.colostate.edu/auto-upgrade.aspx) which I now consider to be “deprecated” (although you could certainly adapt it). I have since created what I consider to be a simpler/better means of automatically upgrading multiple installations of mojoPortal (since I generally use separate databases for each of my sites), using PowerShell:

http://code.colostate.edu/automatically-upgrading-mojoportal-using-powershell.aspx

I would definitely welcome any improvements to the code, as this is my first foray into PowerShell (obviously anyone using the code would want to make certain tweaks regardless). Secondly, even though it’s possible to upgrade numerous installations of mojo with one click using this script, I do not recommend this, as I think it’s better to upgrade/test each site individually as you upgrade.

Typically the script is able to perform an upgrade of the mojo core, form wizard pro, mobile kit pro, and event calendar pro in 1-2 minutes, so it's not too cumbersome of a process.

Hope it's of use to someone...
Shaun