Hi fellow Drupalites, if you have a moment check out my new site Rankster.co.za – which is a South African web listings directory.
Basically it's an independant directory of good web sites listed by category. The users can rate/rank the sites with the most popular getting the top position. The site also features web site reviews, popular online videos and various other bits and pieces. I would be interested to hear any thoughts or suggestions you may have.
Obviously it's built on Drupal, with a fully customised theme which is built upon the 'Beginning theme' foundation. A bunch of modules are utilised – the main ones being Panels, Views, CCK, Advanced Forum, Fivestar, Voting API, Nodequeue...
The one thing that I've done that is slightly unusual is this site uses a shared database and Drupal install with a UK version (www.rankster.co.uk). It was a bit of an experiment but the reason I did it is because the sites are essentially the same with some shared content which is applicable to both regions, but then there is other content which shows only on one of the sites as it only applies to that country.
Basically when I create a new site listing item I choose whether it is Global, UK or South African focused. The two sites then rely on their own 'View' settings to display the content relevant to their instance. This means that all database tables are shared (eg nodes & taxonomy) but there are some DB tables which are seperate like views, cache and some other bits and pieces.
It took quite a bit of tinkering with things like having two different settings.php files and some duplicate DB tables, but everything now seems to co-exist nicely.
I hope my description of running two different sites from one site/install makes sense!