[wp-hackers] WordPress Hosting: Individual Sites vs Network

[John 3:16 Media]

Hello everyone, I am wanting to get into WordPress hosting for a specific
type of clients.  Now I am trying to look at all my options.  Specifically
setting each client up with their own individual site versus using a
network.  Having a network does simplify things like provisioning,
upgrading, supporting, etc.  Also seems that it could save a large amount of
disc space, for core wp files, plugins, and themes.

But here is my problem with a network: Each site is unique, unrelated,
unlike in a blog network (which is what the network feature was designed
for), technically I can set it up to keep the sites as independent from one
another as possible, but they share the same user's table and I would really
like to avoid this.  Also some clients with advanced needs would still have
to go on their own individual site.

For this reason I am heavily leaning towards individual sites, but would
like advice as to overcome the issues.  For example provisioning new sites,
I believe I can use cpanel/WHM API's to create a new account for the user
and create the MySQL user and database, I can use the cpanel skeleton
directory to load the files into the site then do some sql queries to build
the db, then write the config.  Does this sound like a good solution, does
anyone have any experience automating w wp install.  For updates, is there
some function I can have a cronjob call say nightly to initiate wp's auto
upgrade?  For just the core, and/or just specific plugins or themes.  Is
there anyway (with themes especially) to share wp files for multiple
installs, I say especially for themes since I plan on offering tons of
themes for my users to choose from, but at the same time I will need to
setup a theme to be available for just one site so maybe a hook or something
to have wp not only load themes from the themes folder but also some central
folder on my server, would such be possible?

Thanks everyone in advance for your help and insights with this project.