I subscribed to two hosting services. I have one XOOPS application and one domain name. I want to switch between the two hosting sites in case one site is out of order for extended time.
I know that the database cannot be in sync between the two sites unless big money co-location can be installed. But its better to have some thing running then not. So what is your suggestion to make this the least impact backup/restore and switching. I will learn cron commends if necessary and both hosts have cpanel.

admin,

sorry about the same posts 4 times, please delete 3. my link is not working properly.

The database can be shared between the two sites quite easily, as long as they are on a virtual server and all pointing to the same database and an image directory on one domain. That way you could have 2,3,4,10 or a 100 sites all exactly the same if you wanted. Only problem is that if the server go's down then all your sites are down I use 3dpixelnet.com which use virtual hosting, so its easy for me to controll all my domain using one control pannel. There cheap too about £17 per year for 60MB Webspace, 2500MB Traffic per month, 1 Domain & 1 MySQL DB.

There is a multi/cross domain hack in development I think, and I know other people have multiple databases sharing certain tables.

The only other thing I can think of is if you set up a cron job or something to download a copy of your database every few hours and transfare it to your other site, but you then risk loosing bits of data, and also the mirrored site wont be any good for posting on as it would get copied over by the new data all the time from the other site. I dont know of anything that would compare them and merge the data between them so that you would get a good mirror.

If you were going to intentionaly shut one domain for a period of time, then all you have to do is keep a copy of your files on your H.D, go into MySQL on your server your going to close, do a dump of your database, upload the files to your other server, go into MySQL on the other server and import the saved database. If the domain name is going to be the same then you shouldnt have to alter any files.

Thanks for your answer.
Lets see:
Mutiple sites run on the same database, no I dont think I want that, becase if the main site with the db goes down, as you said every thing will be down. Besides how to keep all the uploads in sync is another headache, unless all uploada are stored in the database.

I guess cron job solution would be one. As I said, its better than have none. The cron job will not be running when the main site is down, so the copy problem will be ok. The challenge here is how fast you can switch the name server. It takes at least 2 hours to have the name server switched, some times, as the "technical" document says, 24-48 hours. If it takes that long, even 2 hours, it is useless.

If I were to shut down intentionally, I mind as well do a full backup and restore.

I am thinking in terms of desaster recovery for xoops.