Multidomain Site Setup: Single Engine for All Countries

Imagine: you have a site for Russia (company.ru), for Kazakhstan (company.kz), and for Belarus (company.by). Each must display its own prices, content, and legal information. But maintaining three separate sites is expensive and inefficient. The solution is a multidomain site on a single codebase, built on the principles of multitenancy. We set up such systems turnkey, ensuring full content isolation and maximum local SEO signal. A multidomain is 2–3 times stronger than subdirectories in local SEO signal strength, as confirmed by our clients' cases (traffic increase up to 30%).

Problems solved by a multidomain

Separating content and settings — configuring a multidomain site

Each domain is an independent site in Google's eyes. This requires different currency, timezone, legal texts, and prices. A single database with domain binding solves the problem without code duplication. We use a site_domains table storing host, country code, locale, and currency. This approach saves up to 40% of update time compared to maintaining separate installations.

SEO isolation and hreflang

Google must see that company.kz and company.ru are different sites for different countries. For this, we generate hreflang tags in the head of each page. An error in hreflang leads to penalization — we exclude this by automatic generation based on the domain table. Proper configuration increases local organic traffic by an average of 30%.

Session loss when switching between domains

Note: when a user navigates from company.ru to company.kz, the session is lost — cookies are not passed between different domains. We implement SSO via a one-time token: when clicking "Go to site for Kazakhstan", a token is generated, the second domain exchanges it for a session. This works without shared cookies and does not require a single domain.

How multitenant architecture works?

At the core is the site_domains table linking the domain to settings. Middleware ResolveSiteDomain determines the current domain, sets locale, timezone, and currency. Content is stored with domain binding — specific pages override common ones.

CREATE TABLE site_domains (
    id           SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    host         VARCHAR(253) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
    country_code CHAR(2) NOT NULL,
    locale       VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL,
    currency     CHAR(3) NOT NULL,
    timezone     VARCHAR(64) NOT NULL,
    is_primary   BOOLEAN DEFAULT false,
    is_active    BOOLEAN DEFAULT true,
    meta         JSONB DEFAULT '{}'
);

Middleware for domain resolution

class ResolveSiteDomain
{
    public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
    {
        $host = $request->getHost();
        $domain = SiteDomain::where('host', $host)->where('is_active', true)->first();
        if (!$domain) {
            $primary = SiteDomain::where('is_primary', true)->firstOrFail();
            return redirect("https://{$primary->host}" . $request->getRequestUri(), 301);
        }
        app()->instance('site.domain', $domain);
        App::setLocale($domain->locale);
        Carbon::setlocale($domain->locale);
        date_default_timezone_set($domain->timezone);
        return $next($request);
    }
}

Nginx: virtual hosts

A single server block with multiple server_name is sufficient. SSL certificates can be combined into SAN or use a wildcard.

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name company.ru company.kz company.by;
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/company.ru/fullchain.pem;
    root /var/www/company/public;
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param HTTP_HOST $host;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Generating hreflang

A helper generates tags for all active domains:

function hreflangTags(string $path): string
{
    $domains = SiteDomain::where('is_active', true)->get();
    return $domains->map(fn($d) =>
        "<link rel=\"alternate\" hreflang=\"{$d->locale}-{$d->country_code}\" href=\"https://{$d->host}{$path}\" />"
    )->join("\n");
}

What multidomain gives compared to subdirectories?

How to add a new domain?

1. Register the domain and configure DNS A records (up to 24 hours for propagation).
2. Add a record to the site_domains table — 2 minutes.
3. Update the SAN certificate via Certbot — 5 minutes.
4. Add server_name to Nginx and reload — 1 minute.
5. Import or create content for the new domain (depends on volume).

The whole procedure takes about an hour, not counting DNS time.

Google Search Central recommends choosing between multidomains and subdirectories based on business requirements. Multidomain is preferable when content and brand differ greatly across countries.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Forgetting fallback content. If a page is not found for a specific domain, it should be loaded from the common pool, otherwise the user will see a 404. We implement this via a global route provider.
• Incorrect initialization order. Locale and timezone must be set before any Eloquent query is called — at the middleware level.
• Ignoring caching. For a multidomain site, the cache must be partitioned by domain (via prefix or separate tag), otherwise a user from one domain will see a cached page from another.

Work stages

Total: 2–5 days.

Deadlines and cost

Our engineers have 5+ years of experience in building multitenant systems and have implemented over 50 multidomain projects. A typical multidomain setup project takes from 2 to 5 business days depending on the complexity of the existing code and the volume of content. The cost is calculated individually after an audit — order an audit of your current architecture or get a consultation. We guarantee correct hreflang configuration and complete SEO isolation.

Backend Development Services: Laravel, Node.js, Go, Django, PostgreSQL

On a production server at 3:14 AM, the Laravel Jobs queue stopped processing. 40,000 unprocessed jobs in Redis. Cause: worker crashed due to a memory leak in one of the Jobs (leak via a static variable in an Eloquent observer), supervisor didn't restart it because of misconfigured stopwaitsecs. This is not a hypothetical scenario — it's Tuesday. We analyzed such an incident on a project with 500 RPS load: diagnosis took 4 hours, fix — 20 minutes. So you don't lose money on downtime, we offer backend development services with a focus on production-grade reliability. We'll assess your project in 2 days.

Backend is what works when no one is watching. Or doesn't work. We guarantee you'll have the first option.

How do we ensure production-grade reliability from day one?

What we do correctly from day one

Service Layer over Fat Controllers. Controller receives HTTP request, validates it via Form Request, passes data to Service, returns response. Business logic in Service, not Controller. This sounds trivial, but most legacy projects have controllers with 500 lines and SQL queries inside.

Repository Pattern we use cautiously. If you just wrap Model::where(...) in a repository method — that's boilerplate without benefit. Repository is justified when: you need to abstract from the data source (DB + cache + external API) or when query logic is complex enough to isolate.

Jobs, Events, Listeners. Everything that can be async — make async. Sending email, PDF generation, external API sync, aggregate recalculation — into Queue. Laravel Horizon for queue monitoring in Redis: see throughput, failed jobs, processing time per queue.

How Octane handles high load

Laravel Octane with RoadRunner or Swoole keeps the app in memory between requests — removes bootstrap overhead (config loading, class autoloading) on each HTTP request. Gain: 3–8x on synthetic benchmarks, 2–4x on real applications. Important: no state between requests in static variables — that leads to exactly the incidents from the beginning. We use this in projects with >1000 RPS.

What to do about N+1 queries

N+1 is the most common cause of slow pages in Laravel apps. Standard story: page worked fine on dev with 10 records, on production with 10,000 — 8-second load.

Laravel Debugbar in dev environment shows the number of queries per page. More than 20 queries per page — signal for audit.

Model::preventLazyLoading(! app()->isProduction());

Telescope for profiling in staging: logs all queries, jobs, mail, notifications with time detail. Numbers: after implementing eager loading, page load time drops from 8s to 0.3s — 27 times faster.

PostgreSQL: indexes that are actually needed

PostgreSQL 14+ is the primary DB on all projects. We use PgBouncer + PostgreSQL combination. 10+ years experience, more than 50 backend projects, 5 years on the market.

How PostgreSQL helps avoid slow queries

Composite indexes for frequent WHERE + ORDER BY. If you have WHERE user_id = ? AND status = ? ORDER BY created_at DESC — you need (user_id, status, created_at DESC). A separate index on (user_id) doesn't help much with sorting.

Partial indexes. If 95% of queries go with WHERE status = 'active':

CREATE INDEX idx_orders_active ON orders (created_at DESC)
WHERE status = 'active';

The index is small, fast, covers the main load.

GIN indexes for JSONB and arrays. @> operator without GIN index — seq scan. With index — fast even on millions of rows.

GIN for full-text search. to_tsvector + GIN instead of LIKE '%query%'. LIKE without index is always seq scan. With pg_trgm extension and gin_trgm_ops — supports LIKE with index, useful for CRM search by partial match.

Connection pooling: why it's more important than it seems

Rails, Laravel, Django open a new connection to PostgreSQL for each PHP/Python process. With 100 workers — 100 connections. PostgreSQL starts degrading from 200–300 active connections — overhead on connection management becomes significant.

PgBouncer — connection pooler in front of PostgreSQL. Transaction pooling mode: connection to PostgreSQL is occupied only during a transaction, returned to pool between requests. 1000 application workers → 20–50 actual connections to PostgreSQL. This reduces latency by 40% and hosting costs by 30%.

Node.js with Fastify: when it's better than Laravel

Node.js is justified for:

• Realtime: WebSocket servers, Server-Sent Events, chat, live updates
• Streaming: large files, video, streaming data
• High I/O concurrency: many parallel requests to external APIs without heavy business logic
• Serverless: Lambda/Cloud Functions — Node.js starts faster than PHP

Fastify over Express: 2–3 times faster on benchmarks, built-in JSON Schema validation, better TypeScript support, plugin architecture.

Typical realtime architecture: Laravel — core business logic and REST API. Node.js + Socket.io or ws — WebSocket server. Laravel publishes events to Redis Pub/Sub, Node.js subscribes and broadcasts to clients. This separation allows scaling the WebSocket server independently of the main app.

Go: microservices and high load

Go we use for:

• High-load microservices (>10,000 RPS)
• Background workers with strict latency requirements
• DevOps tools and CLI
• gRPC services in microservice architecture

Goroutines — thousands of times cheaper than OS threads. 10,000 concurrent connections on Go is normal on one server.

But Go is not a silver bullet. Development is slower than Laravel: more boilerplate, no ORM at Eloquent level, error handling with if err != nil everywhere. Justified only when performance is a real requirement, not an assumption.

Django and Python backend

Django with DRF (Django REST Framework) — for tasks where Python is needed: ML pipelines, data processing, integrations with AI tools.

Celery for background tasks — similar to Laravel Queue but more complex to configure. Celery Beat for cron tasks.

Django ORM vs raw SQL: ORM is convenient for CRUD. For analytical queries with multiple JOINs, window functions, and CTEs — connection.execute() with raw SQL is more readable and predictable.

Redis: not just cache

Redis in our projects plays multiple roles:

Redis Cluster for horizontal scaling. Sentinel for automatic failover on standalone setups.

Deployment and infrastructure

Docker + docker-compose — standard for local development and production. Each service in a container: PHP-FPM/Octane, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis, Queue Worker, Scheduler.

CI/CD via GitHub Actions:

1. Run tests (PHPUnit / Pest, Vitest, Playwright)
2. Build Docker image
3. Push to Container Registry
4. Deploy: docker pull → docker-compose up -d on server, or Kubernetes rolling update

Zero-downtime deploy for Laravel: php artisan down --secret=TOKEN is not needed with proper configuration. Strategy: new container starts next to the old one, Nginx switches traffic after health check, old container stops.

Monitoring: Sentry for exception tracking with alerting in Slack/Telegram. Grafana + Prometheus (or Grafana Cloud) for metrics: CPU, memory, request rate, queue depth, database connection count. Alerts on: error rate > 1%, p99 latency > 2s, queue depth > 1000 jobs.

What's included in turnkey work

• Architecture design (API documentation, DB schema, service diagram)
• Implementation according to agreed specification with code review
• CI/CD, monitoring, alerting setup
• Load testing (k6, wrk) with report
• Handover of source code, access, deployment instructions
• Training of customer's team (2-3 sessions)
• Warranty support for 1 month after delivery

Timeline benchmarks

Pricing is calculated individually after analyzing load, integrations, and business logic. Contact us for a free audit of your current backend — get an optimization plan in 2 days. Request a consultation.