Best of the ISP-Lists

Your Corporate Client's Website

Members of the ISP-Webhosting list discuss creating a uniform look and feel for a corporate client who needs several similar but different websites.

[April 18, 2001]

On the ISP-Webhosting list in April, BS inquired,

"I've got a client who needs separate websites for each of their many offices, but the only difference between them will be the details specific to each office, such as the address, etc. Is there a pre-fabricated solution for this kind of thing?"

A number of respondents shared their favorite solutions:

[KJ offered] "I would use, say, Dreamweaver, create a template, and customize each template for each site. It will take a little work, but you can charge appropriately."

[DO added] "Generate a template site containing their corporate layout, then make a set of update forms for them use to fill in the relevant details concerning their offices. It's probably best done in ASP, using either Access or SQL."

[ED countered] "I'd vote for PHP Zend or maybe even SSIs. If the content won't change often, most any sort of fill-in-the-blank or search-and-replace program will do the trick." Others suggested just using a database for the contact information:

[CU advised] "If the only thing that will be different is the office address, here's a trick. Assuming there are twelve different domains, build one web site with one IP, point all twelve domains to that IP, and put them up so they all point to the same site. Now for your contact page, do something like this. Determine the domain name, do a database lookup keyed against the domain name for the contact info, and return the appropriate info from the database on the screen. The upside is that you only need to build and maintain one site. The downside is that if you need extensive customization, you may need to build twelve sites."

[TA agreed] "Every little bit of database backend cuts time off your maintenance needs. I don't care how you do it, but some type of database backend is a good solution."

DW offered an even simpler answer:

"I usually just copy the directory over to a new web folder and then make the necessary changes to the pages. Then I publish the new site to the destination on the remote server. I think building the templates is too much work just to make an address change on a duplicate web site. Just copy the directory, and then create a new one with it."

—End