Advice on starting a site with a large number of subdomains and databases please

[Iain_M]

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Ok.. so I registered a great domain a couple of days ago and know exactly what I am going to do with it, in terms of what will be going on it.

But what I'm stuck at is how to actually go about starting it up, and managing it.

The first thing I need suggestions for is creating hundreds of sub domains for every UK city, what is the best/quickest way to go about this?

Second thing is, each city/sub domain will have it's own database, the table structure inside the database will be same, so I should be able to just create one then copy it hundreds of times and just changing a few field values. What's the best/quickest way of doing this?

When all the databases are created I'll have another huge task of importing different data for each city, I don't think there's a shortcut for that lol.

I have a dedicated server in the US, but have been searching around checking what (if any) impact that will have in search rankings for UK searches, since the site will be targeted towards UK. I came to the conclusion that it will be better having a server/hosting in the UK after reading an article on SEOMoz (and various other forums/blogs), to increase my chances of ranking high in the UK serps.
So my question relating to this is, do you think a shared server (in the UK) would be fine to start with? Could someone recommend a UK host? I've never made a UK targeted site before, so I've never used a UK host.
I just don't want want to spend the money on a dedicated server until it succeeds and becomes popular.


Thanks in advance for any advice.


Iain

[affiliatemarketingltd]

quick question

Second thing is, each city/sub domain will have it's own database, the table structure inside the database will be same, so I should be able to just create one then copy it hundreds of times and just changing a few field values. What's the best/quickest way of doing this?

why not add a column called 'city' into the table and then simply call the data by 'city' on the relevant subdomain

1 : save time & 2 : save unneccesary space

[Iain_M]

Wordpress will be the main engine, so I'd imagine I'd need to rewrite part of wordpress to allow for that. I'll look into it, thanks!

[EDIT]
I don't see how it would save on space, it'd just mean all the data is in one database, so that'd be one huge database? which would maybe cause issues later on.

[smartidiot]

I don't see how it would save on space, it'd just mean all the data is in one database, so that'd be one huge database? which would maybe cause issues later on.

Each table in database consume some extra space for tablespaces and internal management. Hence it'll definitely save some space(though not lot). And in the long run, its going to be easier to manage a single database with hundreds of tables instead of managing hundreds of databases. The solutions affiliatemarketingltd suggested is better than what you are planning to do.

[TimL85]

I would tend to agree, 1 DB would be better.

[Iain_M]

OK, thanks. I'll look into having one database.

Any suggestions on how to go about creating the hundreds of sub domains, or is it just a matter of creating them one-by-one? Also, any suggestions for UK hosts?


Thanks,
Iain

[tbp]

For the sub domains, you`ll need to write a script to this for you, which edits the web server config file to add the sub domains (and also create entries for DNS with the Name server).

You could only do this on a dedicated server or VPS, as you won't get access to the raw config files with shared hosting.

If you using Linux, Apache and PHP its not a hard job to create a script in PHP to open the apache config file and add the relevant entries for the sub domains. It can also create dns files by adding config files to the named server directory.

Will make life much easier, and will speed up the creation of subdomains immensely. I use a similar sort of script which I wrote for myself to create a new site on my server, creating users, dns entries, apache set up etc automatically and it took a 30 minute job down to a couple of seconds.

I would definately use 1 database, instead of many so it will make life much easier. Wordpress allows you to alter the prefix of the table names, so you can have many installations of Wordpress running separately, but using the same database for storage. In this case you would just make the table prefix the name of the subdomain to keep everything separate and easy to understand.

With US hosting, it really doesn't make so much difference now. If the domain is one ending with .uk there will be absolutely no problem with hosting in the US, and you'll still get ranked fine in the UK google listings. My server is based in the US, and several of my sites are at number 1 in google in the UK listings.

[aotagain]

Why don't you test the principle for one city in the UK first before investing big time. Then when and if you go for it fully, you'll get the ranking 'formula' right on all of them at once, rather than having to correct it and wait for the search engines to catch up - also if you don't want the expense of a dedicated server to start with, you don't risk much effect of IP address change when you switch from shared to ded.

[Iain_M]

Thanks tbp! good info!

Just took my dog for a walk their and had this thought.

I am using Wordpress as the main engine.

This would save the database having the same table structure multiple times for each city, and the table structure would only be their once.

I will create a main category as the country. Should be a subdomain (scotland.whatever.co.uk).
I will create categories below the countries as cities, which should also be subdomains (glasgow.whatever.co.uk).
I will create more categories under the cities, which shouldn't be subdomains (glasgow.whatever.co.uk/whatever).

Is there a way to sort of park subdomains to do this?


The article that made me start looking for a UK server was this one, but my domain is .co.uk, so it should be fine. I'll just use my current dedicated server to start things off.



Thanks,
Iain

[Iain_M]

Why don't you test the principle for one city in the UK first before investing big time. Then when and if you go for it fully, you'll get the ranking 'formula' right on all of them at once, rather than having to correct it and wait for the search engines to catch up - also if you don't want the expense of a dedicated server to start with, you don't risk much effect of IP address change when you switch from shared to ded.

I see what you're saying about starting with one city, to test it out. That is really what I'm planning to do, but I'm just "future planning".


Thanks,
Iain

[web-strategies]

Have you checked out the multi-user version of WordPress? You can find it at WordPress MU Home

It simplifies the installation of multiple wordpress installations. From the FAQ: "A single box running both web and MySQL will get you pretty far, probably to about 10-20 thousand blogs."

It's the same software used to run the Wordpress.org blogging site, which hosts well over 2 million blogs.

David.

[Iain_M]

Have you checked out the multi-user version of WordPress? You can find it at WordPress MU Home

It simplifies the installation of multiple wordpress installations. From the FAQ: "A single box running both web and MySQL will get you pretty far, probably to about 10-20 thousand blogs."

It's the same software used to run the Wordpress.org blogging site, which hosts well over 2 million blogs.

David.

Thanks David.

I'll look at that.


Iain

[acutts]

Actually, the easiest way to do the subdomains would be as follows

Set up wildcard DNS (ask your host? mine always do it when I ask) on the domain.

Any time you visit *.domain.co.uk (any subdomain) it will display the content from your main website - acting as a parked domain sort of thing...

Couple that with a php script which detects what subdomain the user called (via one of the $_SERVER vars, I forget which) and there's no need to create each subdomain.

I've done that on a few websites and never had any issues so far... not done it with wordpress though

[Iain_M]

Actually, the easiest way to do the subdomains would be as follows

Set up wildcard DNS (ask your host? mine always do it when I ask) on the domain.

Any time you visit *.domain.co.uk (any subdomain) it will display the content from your main website - acting as a parked domain sort of thing...

Couple that with a php script which detects what subdomain the user called (via one of the $_SERVER vars, I forget which) and there's no need to create each subdomain.

I've done that on a few websites and never had any issues so far... not done it with wordpress though

That sounds like a perfect sollution.


Cheers,
Iain