Scalable architecture

[eluser]Prophet[/eluser]
Scalability is an interesting topic; there are many different approaches to it.

I am in the middle of a web project at the moment that provides a stock management service to wineries. One option for this project was to create the software and sell it to the wineries, but we decided on creating a centralised multi-user web service instead.

Everything in this project is done using one website, and one database. This allows us to modify code whenever we see fit, and never have to re-distribute the software or offer updates/patches. We can even change the structure of the database if necessary. The key to making this project work has been good, efficient database design.

You could quite easily treat each school as a user with a profile, settings, user level, etc. Build the core application as you have done in the past, but make the functionality available only to registered users (schools).