Thread: 'Dynamic' Master Pages

OK, I need help wrapping my brain around this. Perhaps y'all can nudge my brain in a different direction.

I have two websites for clients that I support -- let's say they happen to sell books; JungleRiver.com and ShedsAndRoyal.com.
Naturally, the two client have a brand that they want to display on the website -- logo, color, etc. The actual application is
exactly the same for each; let's say they want a page that accepts a visitors first name that, when submitted, display a second
page that say "Hello, <firstname>! Would you like to buy a book?". Now, since the two applications are the same, I don't really
want to have multiple copies of the index.aspx and hello.aspx pages; rather have these shared between the two websites and only change
the 'brand' displayed. Yes, we can assume the two site are hosted on the same server in two different virtual directories.

While some of the branding can be done with .CSS and .SKIN files, I'm believing that the whole visual look of the site is too much
for just .CSS and .SKIN files along -- so it would seem that master pages are the best way to go -- one with JungleRiver.com's brand
and the other for SR.com's. For a week or so I played with 'dynamic master' pages (and got it working too!) before I realized that
I could just name the master page something common (like skin.master) in the virtual directory for each site.

Currently however, I copy the entire site over as well -- the master page along with all the content pages that perform the
same function. So, I have duplicate pages in JungleRiver.com and SR.com. The obvious problem being that if I need to change one
of the content pages, I need to change it in ALL the sites.

So, I figure that I can place the common content pages in a separate directory. At this point however, I'm thinking that master
pages work a little backwards -- such as when I enter a URL like www.jungleriver.com what I want is for IIS to use the
skin.master from inetpub/wwwroot/JungleRiver and the index.aspx from (say) inetpub/wwwroot/common. This begs two questions that I
haven't resolved in my cranium yet:
1. Who to get IIS to render the index.aspx content page from common
2. How does index.aspx know to use the master page from JungleRiver rather then ShedsAndRoyal? (Which I can do by setting
(from the JungleRiver/web.config file)

Any nudge forward, or in a different direction, would help.

In reality, the application is not so simple (I'm sure you figured that out). There are about 30 content pages and 50 or so clients
(read that as 1470 duplicated content pages). The process and page flow is defined in the web.config file.

It sounds like you need a setup like the following, using Virtual Directories:

Sharing Master Pages in Visual Studio

ASP.Net 2.0 - Master Pages: Tips, Tricks, and Traps

Thanks, I'll take a deeper look at those mebbe tonight or over the weekend. Quick look tho seems to be doing what I call the 'backward' approach -- the content page controls the master page -- but I can see many nuggets of goodness in there.