This site and charlieforet.com are the same program

Here's something you can't see from where you're standing. integrationera.com and charlieforet.com, my other site, are the same program running on one server, wearing two faces.

One codebase, one database, one machine. Different domain, different name, different everything you can actually see. The industry word for this is multi-tenant: many "tenants" in one building, each behind a locked door, sharing the plumbing. Your account here, your progress in this world, none of it exists on the other site, and none of that site's readers exist here. Total separation, one engine.

The way it works is almost boring. Every time you load a page, a small piece of code reads the domain you typed, integrationera.com, and decides, before anything else runs, that you're on the Integration Era side. Every query after that only ever sees this site's data.

The interesting part is what almost went wrong. When I flipped the switch to run two sites off one app, my database was only half ready. The two tables I'd least want to leak across sites were the two that matter most: the characters readers build, and the purchases they make. Content and money. Getting that scoping wrong is the kind of bug you don't get to apologize for, so I wrote a single test whose only job is to scream if this site can ever see the other's rows. It's still watching, right now.

I wrote the whole thing up, the doorman that reads the domain, the scary part, the silent bug that was filing my posts under the wrong site, over on the other site: One engine, two faces →. There's a podcast version linked there too, if you'd rather listen than read.

Or stay on this side and go find your Foundation. Whatever the quiz decides, it decides here. And it stays here.