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AnonJr
Moderator

United States
5768 Posts

Posted - 17 December 2007 :  13:36:07  Show Profile  Visit AnonJr's Homepage
At work we've had an explosion of requests for departamental sites on our company intranet. Unfortunately, because most departments didn't need/want a site the current process has been to have the Webmaster over in IS create them one. Fortunately its not me as I have the joy/horror of being a departamental programmer for Training and Development.

Anyway, in the past they've been small, hand-coded jobs as the needs were small and there weren't that many departments that needed/wanted a presence on the intranet. I should add that there are a couple of exceptions to this, my department being a big one...

Because of all this, the big spike in need is overwhelming the guy over in IS. We'd talked, and I mentioned how I'd turned Snitz into a nifty portal that almost anyone could maintain - for example the Eastover Fire Department site.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that y'all had the setup of new forums automated pretty well, and I was wondering if y'all could give me some pointers so we could do the same using a customized Snitz to set up a portal for each department to maintain and use.

Any chance y'all could help me?

Podge
Support Moderator

Ireland
3776 Posts

Posted - 18 December 2007 :  20:29:49  Show Profile  Send Podge an ICQ Message  Send Podge a Yahoo! Message
Sure.

Podge.

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AnonJr
Moderator

United States
5768 Posts

Posted - 19 December 2007 :  06:03:02  Show Profile  Visit AnonJr's Homepage
Thanks.

So, where do we start? I've almost got a customized version finished that we'd like to use as the "base" version. Is this something that is going to be copied separately for each department? Or is there a way to change which connection string is used based on the URL (or something)? Or should I just expect an e-mail so you're not publicly publishing trade secrets?
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Podge
Support Moderator

Ireland
3776 Posts

Posted - 19 December 2007 :  08:50:24  Show Profile  Send Podge an ICQ Message  Send Podge a Yahoo! Message
If you have a lot of departments then the last thing you want to have to do is edit the code everytime you need to update your portals. Create a folder for your portal code and place the code inside. I don't know how your intranet is setup but you should be able to create a virtual folder in the main intranet website for each dept. and point it to the folder your created earlier.

You should use only one database unless you have a very good reason that you need to create one for each dept. Edit config.asp so that the prefixes (i.e. FORUM_) changes based on the url. Your database connection should stay the same.

Do you need to automate the setting up of each portal?

Podge.

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AnonJr
Moderator

United States
5768 Posts

Posted - 19 December 2007 :  13:47:11  Show Profile  Visit AnonJr's Homepage
I'll have to check with the Webmaster over in IS as I'm not sure which server this is going on. If it goes on the one I think it will, we shouldn't have any problems setting it up like that.

While we probably won't let the departments themselves set up their portal, automating the setup would be a good thing.

Thank you very much for your help. This will make life sooo much easier.
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Podge
Support Moderator

Ireland
3776 Posts

Posted - 20 December 2007 :  05:26:35  Show Profile  Send Podge an ICQ Message  Send Podge a Yahoo! Message
You're welcome. If you're going to automate the setup then its a lot more work. It will be a lot easier just to create a virtual folder (or website) in IIS and run setup.asp

Only having one set of code to update saves a lot of time. As far as I can remember I had to make some changes to the way the forum handled cookies but that was because I was using subdomains. If you are going to be using subfolders i.e. http://intranet/dept1 then it shouldn't be necessary.



Podge.

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AnonJr
Moderator

United States
5768 Posts

Posted - 20 December 2007 :  06:12:07  Show Profile  Visit AnonJr's Homepage
If its a lot more work then we probably won't be automating. The Webmaster over in IS should be back today from the conference he went to. I've sent him a link to this topic so we'll probably be working out some of the details in the new year.

We'll be using the subfolders as that's how its set up now. ( http://intraname.mainsite.com/departments/departmentname/ ) There are a few exceptions to this, but we're working on consolidating the chaos. Because of the volume of traffic we're actually migrating my department's site over to its own server - where' I've got an upgraded version almost ready to go.

Thank you again.
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JJenson
Advanced Member

USA
2121 Posts

Posted - 20 December 2007 :  11:13:16  Show Profile  Visit JJenson's Homepage
Just to chime in here I would be very interested on making an automated creation of snitz. Basically I want it for a site that I am making for families and groups that can just create there own personal site with security.

Is this possible on a shared server or would I need a dedicated one?

Sorry side stepping your question Anon I am just very very interested in this idea.
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Podge
Support Moderator

Ireland
3776 Posts

Posted - 20 December 2007 :  12:06:15  Show Profile  Send Podge an ICQ Message  Send Podge a Yahoo! Message
You would need access to IIS to set it up correctly. Shared server with VPS could work - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server


Podge.

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pdrg
Support Moderator

United Kingdom
2897 Posts

Posted - 21 December 2007 :  17:35:07  Show Profile  Send pdrg a Yahoo! Message
Just have to wave the flag for code maintainability here - if you have to apply a bug fix, you have to apply it consistently to all the instances you created PLUS the master instance, and if you haven't kept a track of all of those instances, you can end up with unsecured instances in the wild, maybe sharing the same database/superadmin password/whatever.

Perhaps you can do something a bit cute with some server-side includes to run everything but the config files from the same master set? Just thinking aloud, and looking ahead at the possible pitfalls down the road!
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