Well the first thing that came to my mind was the company-specific url, though for me in terms of:
http://myapp/company1/login is the login page, but once logged in, the site acts as normal with no “company1/” prefix.
routes.rb:
map.company_login “:company/login”, :controller => ‘account’, :action => ‘login’ (which will then fill in params[:company] with the given string, with which you can validate proper input).
Jason
I ran a site for a few years (pre-rails) that had a different environment for different companies. Everything ran off the same codebase, and we did a subdomain lookup to populate local variables, etc.
I wouldn't do it this way with rails. I'd run separate web environment for each customer, and probably use a single database.
I could maintain the consistency of the code throughout the different apps by using a single capistrano deployment - i.e. creating multiple identical copies. IMO the advantage would be in the scaleability. Given that rails apps are so memory hungry, there's every chance that a successful site would need multiple instances spread across multiple servers.
So, why not isolate the apps by company
This is just my opinion...I'm no expert...
To answer your question, though, Jason's suggestion of a company specific url makes sense. You'd need to wire the logout / login functionally, accordingly.
Using subdomains would be easier. And might look more "professional" from the clients' point of view.