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I am about to purchase quite a few domains (20 or more), I'm thinking about making them all point to the same hosting (if this is possible). The site is going to be built with PHP and mySQL, and I have a few questions about this.

Each address is going to do different things, like search a different area, so for example I might get electricalshops.com and then motorshops.com.

As you can see one is for electrics and one is for motor goods, the overall layout of the site will be constant, it is just the database queries that change...

I am thinking of setting up 20 different databases within the one host, and then using a script that gets the domain name and will access the correct SQL query. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it, or if I'm better getting a different hosting per domain.

I really hope this makes sense to everyone, if it doesn't I will type it out again, but some help on this matter would be much appreciated.

I understand your concept....what software are you using? vbulletin won't allow you to use the same license on multiple domains unfortunatly You could hack phpbb to display different sections on the various domains using the same database.

I'm going to be coding it all myself, but I'm just not sure whether i should be doing it all from the one host or if I should be doing it from different ones, and is it going to be slow from the same host ect..

Hmm, maybe make it redirect to the forum category from those. Say like the elecrticalshops.com. The 4th forum is electric, have it redirect to f4-Electrical-Shops.html

I don't want to loose the URL page though, if they go to electricshop.com I want the url to change with the browsing, so it goes electrishop.com/bargans.php and motorshop.com/bargans.php i don't want the domains changing between one another.

Just from a technical standpoint, it is perfectly possible to have all 20 domains pointing to one hosting account; provided your host allows that many addon/parked domains. For the database option, why make things difficult with 20 different ones? Surely the data is going to be relatively similar so duplicating 20 sets of the same tables is not the best way to go. Use one database that all sites access, rather than one per site. Anyway, if you want a central point for data (eg for forums, user registrations, etc) then one DB is the way to go.

Thanks Salathe, I think I might follow that option for the databases, your right I was making this difficult, i just wasn't sure if hosting would allow a lot of domains pointing to the same account. If my domains are pointing to the same account that lets me keep the names constant like what I said in #5 ?

No just to try and find a reliable host that will let me point all the domains to the same account. Also on that note, do you think it is important to have a host close to home, like I'm in Melbourne Australia, and these sites are going to be aimed at people in my area, so am I better to find an aussie host or what?

Originally Posted by Robson I understand your concept....what software are you using? vbulletin won't allow you to use the same license on multiple domains unfortunatly You could hack phpbb to display different sections on the various domains using the same database.

I now understand why you mentioned vbulletin and phpBB, I put forums in the heading, I meant databases, silly me

In your situation, yes it would be good to find a localhost (*giggles* developer's joke). Why bother forcing everyone to connect to a server in the US if everyone is in Aus? (rhetorical question)

Sweet, thanks Salathe, I think I will pay the little extra and use a good Aussie host.

Thanks for your help.