Only.com offers the world's largest and most complete family of subject-specific portals, all sharing the prefix: Only-.
Our company has created a software product "only.com" for implementation a series of thematic portals. Over 10000 different sites are organized under common user database and engine.
Data structure:
To ease the data management of the system the relational data structure was adapted using SQL. All data are stored in 8 databases with vertical splitting by functional criterion to enable distributed functionality. It's possible to deploy every database on a dedicated database server without software modification. Beside that, project solutions enable a horizontal splitting of databases and mirror databases creation with automatic synchronization.
During software system implementation our own methods of "clever" CGI programming were used:
HTML template technology (full separation of software code and HTML code, to allow web designers and software developers to work independently from each other).
Kernel - the executable for template processing, plug-ins executing and carrying out of common system tasks, such as user authentication procedures, points earning, statistics, audit, etc.
"Plug-in" technology - the ability of smooth development and attachment of additional software modules. These modules can interact with common databases without difficulties and with each other, using well-designed internal interface.
Software system runs in mod_perl environment. That ensures high performance of the system and access to internal Apache structures.