| During CMS installation, one of the IIS virtual sites is selected to become a CMS-enabled site. However, after the installation, it is often necessary to create another CMS site on the same machine. There are several configuration issues to consider before you start creating a new site: A CMS site is a Web application. It can be installed at the root of a virtual IIS site and accessed using the root URL http://<CMS site>, or it can be installed in a virtual directory off the root and accessed using the nonroot URL http://<IIS site>/<CMS application>. The site information is stored in the Content Repository, which is a SQL database. This database may be dedicated or may be shared between several sites within the same CMS installation. CMS allows multiple CMS sites to be hosted on the same machine; each is accessed using its own root URL http://<CMS site>. This configuration may require HTTP host headers to be enabled in IIS. All sites share the same database.
Based on the configuration decisions you make, there are different ways to set up a new CMS site. The new CMS site will use a dedicated IIS virtual site and a dedicated database; the site will be accessed using the root URL http://<CMS site>. The new CMS site will be installed as a Web application off the IIS site root; the site will be accessed using the nonroot URL http://<IIS site>/<CMS application>. If you want this site to be accessed using the root URL, you will have to write a redirection page or configure the redirection on IIS. The new CMS site will use a dedicated IIS virtual site but will share the database with other CMS sites; the site will be accessed using the root URL http://<CMS site>. The new CMS site will share both the IIS virtual site and the database with other CMS sites; the site will be accessed using the root URL http://<CMS site>; HTTP host headers identification will be enabled on the IIS site.
In this chapter, we will look into all these configurations. To start with, we will focus on creating a new CMS site with its own dedicated database. In this scenario, a CMS site may have its own dedicated IIS site and be installed at the root of this site, or it may be installed as an off-root Web application; we will look into both possibilities. We will then discuss the installations that allow multiple CMS sites to share resources such as the IIS sites and the database. Let's start. There are several tasks involved in creating a new CMS site, as follows: Creating and configuring a new empty SQL database to be used by CMS Setting up an IIS virtual site Running the CMS Database Configuration Application (DCA) to point the CMS server to a new database and to populate the database with the CMS schema Running the CMS Server Configuration Application (SCA) to configure the CMS server Adding virtual directories manually
As far as the sequence of tasks is concerned, the first two are interchangeable; the others need to be performed in sequence. The last task is only required for Web sites with authoring enabled. | 