smarty - Several copies of a PHP site with tweaks: maximize code reuse and minimize duplication? -

Sorry for the confusing title ....

We are developing an application that has multiple Companies

However, it is designed for each company, for the most part, it is the same, your standard sort database header page (search page, edit page, etc.). There is a separate process, and we will be working directly with each company so that we would like to use some kind of system which allows us to zoom the page while viewing the page, on which the company is viewing the page. . For example, a company might want some additional fields on a data input page, or another company should see a different piece of data on the search results screen, and so on.

I think that this is all imaginary and I believe that I had a solid example to give you, but honestly, the companies have not given us very good examples. We just want to be ready.

So my basic question is, What is the easiest way to allow for these changes and optimization on a per-company basis? Obviously, the most flexible but at least programmer-friendly way will be to make a complete copy of the application for each company. This is not obviously an option because we need to update the code on all the sites, run it and test and keep the issues that will result from the custom code.

What is your solution? Perhaps if we have a master set of templates, but then each company can have a separate subfolder with any replacement template files ... Of course we can still update a bunch of different template files while changing one of them. , But it will be more localized anyway.

Is there any better way? Maybe some kind of dispensing template engine, so that we can edit the original files and these changes will be at the top of the original (like a patch)? Or maybe we should use PHP5's object-oriented feature and then use polymorphism? What is your best suggestion, and especially if you have experience with such things, then what are the options and what have you used and why?

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I think this will help you a lot. This is actually a great pattern for factoring stuff, which is mostly the same, but in some places different I'm actually working as a template method hierarchy for my project right now.