A single installation of Big Medium can manage sites in different domains, with a couple of caveats.
A single installation of Big Medium can manage sites in different domains, with a couple of caveats.
First, the domains must be hosted on the same server as the one where Big Medium is installed. Second, Big Medium has to have permission to edit the web directories for those domains.
In a nutshell: scripts in the domain where you install Big Medium must be allowed to have access to the files in the web directories of the domains that you would like Big Medium to manage.
This is easily arranged if you’re hosting your own dedicated server, but if you rent web space from a hosting company, things sometimes get trickier. For quite valid security reasons, hosting companies often seal off each domain’s web directory so that customers cannot tamper with each other's files.
Unfortunately, this often means that Big Medium does not have permission to manage the site files in domains other than the one where it is installed. If that’s the case, Big Medium will complain about permission problems when you try to set up a new site in the other domain.
This can often be remedied, however. Many hosting companies allow you to set up domains under the web account of one “master” domain. Scripts installed in the master domain have permission to manage the files in these secondary domains. (DreamHost and Pair Networks are two well regarded hosting companies that allow you to do this.)
Check with your hosting company’s tech support team for details or help. They should be able to help you to configure your domains to allow scripts installed in one domain (the Big Medium scripts, in this case) to have read/write permission to the files in your other domains.
If your hosting company cannot or will not make the necessary changes to allow Big Medium's scripts to access files in your other domains, you have a few options:
Install Big Medium separately into each domain that you would like to host. Please be aware that this requires additional licenses. Big Medium’s license agreement requires an individual license for each installation.
Move to a new hosting company. There are hosting companies that can help you to get this set up. The aforementioned DreamHost and Pair Networks are two of them.
Last resort: Make your domains’ web directories world-writable. The web directory for individual domains is often named either public_html or www. In
Unix-based servers, you make a directory world-writable by setting permissions to chmod 0777. CAUTION: This is not secure. Doing this means that others with web accounts on the same server also have read/write permissions to your web directory, not just your Big Medium scripts. It will work, but it invites trouble. If you decide to do this anyway, you should set your security settings to “low” in the “Big Medium server Info” screen of the “Settings” menu.