I'll soon be creating a custom theme and some plugins for a forum that is already in use and I'm thinking about running second instance on beta.forum.url with the new theme and plugins enabled when it's close to being ready (but in need of testing), that I'd like to work with the same database as the main forum - so that users can just use beta if they want to preview new features while still using the same forum as others.
Now, I know that the list of themes/plugins enabled is stored in database, so I'd probably need to do something about that, but is there anything else that would stop me from running two instances with a bit different configs off one database? Some sync issue with posts/topics or something like that?
EDIT: actually, since I might as well help others, would it be a good idea to add an option to add some instance identifier to db plugin entries to core? Perhaps in config.json? So that if it's set NodeBB would look for plugins:<instance>:active for example.