What setup are people going with for Orchard CMS and multiple sites?

1
votes

I've just joined the Orchard CMS movement, but I'm having some major meltdowns about the setup. Their site has too much documentation about what I'm not looking for and it's making it tough to figure this out.

I plan to run about 15 brand new websites on one web/sql server and I have a separate development machine. I plan to make some custom themes and modules to suite each website's common and specific needs. I want to use IIS 7 and MS-SQL 2008 on the production server.

So, should I:

  1. Just create the Orchard sites on the production server itself (With Web Platform Installer) and port in any themes and modules as necessary?
  2. Or create the sites on the dev machine and Publish to the production environment with WebMatrix and WebDeploy?

I hate to create hello world sites on the production server and add content, themes, modules, etc as I develop them as in option 1. Or, in option 2 doing the web deploy introduces some complications such as database schema deficiencies because the site's db was created on the dev machine's SQL server and WebMatrix doesn't handle porting in the db schema during the Web Deploy (does it?). It seems option 2 makes it a lot more complicated.

What are other people doing in this situation?

1
orchardcms

1 Answers

2
votes

Definitely the second option. WebMatrix should handle DB deployment just fine. You might want to take any problems you've faced with this to the WebMatrix support or forums. I routinely deploy sites from my dev box to production, fwiw.