18 Jan

webme-mu: create your own website

I’ve just finished the first version of the site creator. You can create your own website using this wizard.

This involved a bit of work on my part – I needed to separate personal files (images and other downloadables) from internal files (scripts and other resources), and ensure that personal files could be read from anywhere on the server, not necessarily from a web-accessible directory.

Then, I needed to write the site generator to write config files automatically.

Then, WebME needed to be hacked to load the correct config file, based on the domain name requested.

This has worked. I now have two sites running on that server (http://verens.webme.eu/ and http://webme.eu/), both of which use the same engine instance. The only things that are separate are their databases and their personal files.

The best thing about this was that it was possible to do this without compromising the structure of the downloadable version of WebME. The downloadable version and the multi-user version use exactly the same source code. The only difference is in the config file. In the case of the multi-user version, when the config file is loaded, it acts as a proxy, loading the correct site-specific config file.

After all that work, I need a drink! Please, give the site a chance, and report any problems you come across.