Alone in a sea of web sites

Have you ever been to the mall when it's crowded?  You drive around the parking lot, looking for a spot, but the only thing close to the doors is a handicapped spot.  You look at the vehicle your driving, realize that it is not a handicap and decide to move on.  You eventually find a spot in the same postal code and start the long walk to the door.  On the way you see this little sports car drive into the handicap stall and out pops someone who, other than his driving style, has no handicap.  What he did, and you didn't do, was take the first available spot to park in.

This is, in many ways, how most projects build their installation applications.  (Yeah, I'm wondering how I'm going to connect the two myself, but hang in there for a couple of minutes.)

Many development projects have their own servers.  These servers are isolated in that no one else uses them and the project teams can configure and administer them any way they wish.  Once they are ready for UAT, however, they need to leave this isolated environment and enter the world of the Shared Environments.  On these servers there are multiple web applications and, drum roll please, multiple web sites.  Many setup applications are designed so that they install in the first web site they come across (much like parking in the first parking spot they see).  This is such a bad idea that I shudder when I write about it.

Applications need to understand that they co-exist with many other application.  Indeed, they are running on a server that has at least one web site and probably more.  During the installation process the web application should enumerate the web sites that are available and ask the person installing the application under which web site it should be installed.  Much like asking which directory to install an application into, the web site to install into is just as important, if not more important than the physical location of the files.  If the application just blindly installs itself in a web site the Deployment Team will quite often need to move the web application between web sites and, hopefully, everything moves over properly.  Nothing like crossing your fingers and hoping that something works.

So, please, in the future, change your web application installation programs to enumerate the web sites and ask which web site the application should be installed under. It's either that or I start leaving nasty notes on your windshield.