I recently joined up with a team to develop a large site where users can upload their own pics to galleries,
may be going up to 1000 users in maybe 6 months to a year (est.) However they may be having pay-for-downloads,
copywritten MP3s and other stuff in the future .. Right now the site is set to use "private" filesystem,
but its really slow, we need all the speed we can get. BTW Im relatively new to Drupal.

Another Drupal developer had an idea - setting up a seperate Drupal install on the backend, maybe in a sub-domain install that would be set to Private file-system and handle security of files etc.. The main site people see would be set to Public filesystem for speed etc.. when users upload/download files it would be getting them from the backend Drupal site. Any ideas, input on how yourselves would go about setting up such a system... ? I'm assuming this could be 2 Drupal installs using same database?

The situation is complicated by the fact that the site was set to private from the get-go, and both the current "files" directory and the sub-domain that Drupal site sits in are side by side folders in the root - there is no site in the root
of the hosting account (im new to the project) I am not looking forward to breaking all the image links in the site. Better now than later?

I cherish your feedback,

Thanks and cheers

Jeremy
Glowingtree Productions
Toronto Canada

Comments

Glowingtree’s picture

not sure, new round these parts...

cog.rusty’s picture

About broken image links, I think you are pretty safe with the "private" file system. The links will be virtual ones, always "/system/files" (if you use Cean URLs and the base URL is not a subdirectoy) or always "system/files" (if you use "/?q=" URLs), no matter where the files really are. You will only have to update Drupal's setting about the real location of the files.

I am not sure about the benefits of the second backend site, but anyway, to implement it you would have to have at least some database tables shared. Shared users, for one, to implement a common login and access rights.