Ok. so for about 10 years now, I've been making a living
building websites, static and dynamic, as well as web apps.
I've built them one at a time, always going back to the drawing
board to recreate every page, form, and query from scratch.
Mostly because I knew that once I started reusing code, it would
be easy to fall into a rut and stop writing better code.
However, the time has come for me to leverage what I've learned
in CF (albeit CF 4.5) and develop some "reusable" applications that
I can sell to more than one customer. (Market forces at work.)
My first "reusable app" will be dynamic websites for Real Estate agents.
What I'm after is some advice on the approach.
My thinking so far:
- Build custom designed websites (my niche) on the public side,
rather than use one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter templates
- However, instead of building the CMS end of the app from
scratch, I figured I'd build a one-size-fits-almost-all CMS
app
for the Real Estate sites
- The CMS would differentiate clients by their login info and,
as we do with many app variables, I would tell the CMS which
database to work with based on the login info. seems like it
would
be easier to recreate databases per client rather than try
to manage
one database for all the clients' data
- So, in summary, I create custom websites (graphically), build
one CMS app to handle adding, updating, and deleting data
for the
various sites, and use individual databases for each site
(MySQL)
It sounds like a workable solution. Once, I started building a single web
app
that included a single front-end website, single CMS, and a single database
that would contain all info for every site, including all graphics, text,
etc. That
turned out to be too complicated to manage.
I think this approach would be more workable for a one-man operation.
And I know this sounds like a "duh" moment for many of you who have been
doing this for a long time, but I've always been one who resisted reusing
graphics, code (I do copy and paste *some* ;o), etc to make sure I am always
learning.
Coding from scratch
and creating graphics from scratch always ensures that I'm starting with
everything I know at the time, rather than just continuously copying what
I knew 5 years ago. I'll still update the app to deploy knew things I
learn,
but this sounds like a reasonable compromise between custom work and
reuse.
I'll cut my teeth on this approach with CF 4.5, then move on to CF 8 when
it comes out.
Thoughts anyone?
Thanks,
Rick
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