please, Iam new in Druple world its soooo useful for me and sooooo helpful.. I love working with Drupal... but i have a problem with multisites and i tried to solve it and searched for it in the Forum but i cant reach for the solutions ,,,,
I need to create special websites not the defualt so as i read , I created folder in sites directoy i created site1 and site2 folders ,and copy settings.php in it...
and created their owned database and modified settings.php for each sites.
i am working as localhost, so at first time I loged to http://localhost/drupal and followed the installation steps , all these steps are for default folder . how can i entered to site1 and site2 , what is the URL from localhost??? i tried different ways and it doesnt work. if i make wrong what is the true steps?????
if there another required steps please explain it step by step to be understanded...
Comments
two types of sites
Assuming you really do want multisite (see below), there are basically there are two ways of setting up an extra site - as a subdirectory under the url or as a new host/domain name. Both methods require you to configure your web server such that when you go the url you want for the site, your web server serves files from the directory where Drupal is installed (ie where the index.php files is).
With a host/domain name style site, you could create a new virtual host in Apache with the same DocumentRoot as your main site (in fact I recommend using virtual hosts for your main site too).
With a subdirectory style site, you could either make a symlink (on unix) for your subdirectory that points to the parent directory, or you could configure an alias in Apache so that the subdirectory gets served from the parent directory.
Subdirectory sites are more of a pain IMO.
One thing to realise with Drupal multisite is that all Drupal sites are effectively multisite, it's just that if you only use the default site you are just using the fallback site because Drupal can't find a closer match. One thing I recommend is to set up all your sites the same way eg if you use virtual hosts use virtual hosts for all your sites, also don't use the default site make all your sites named sites (it can just mask server misconfiguration) etc etc.
If you want to develop/run multiple sites on your local PC, then don't use http://localhost/drupal/... it is too limiting and can set up some assumptions that are harder to reverse when you finally upload your site to a hosting provider. Set them up on your local PC as much as possible to replicate a shared host - eg use multiple virtual hosts and DNS aliases (eg in your hosts file) so that you can give your sites unique and more realistic urls with subdirectory paths that won't differ between development and production.
And here is my main ranty opinionated (and somewhat conflicting) piece of advice for multisite newbies...
Don't use multisite. You might think you need it, but you most probably don't. If you don't know webservers and how they work enough to instinctively understand what happens with multisite setups, and don't have a better reason to use it than "I want to save less than a MB of server space" or "I only want to upload my Drupal once", then I would recommend staying away from it.
In most cases it adds unnecessary complexity, reduces flexibility between sites and makes future upgrades harder. What if you want to upgrade one site to a new Drupal version, but the other site has modules that aren't ready for the new Drupal version? You'll either have to: wait for the other modules, or split the two sites.
--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example knowledge base built with Drupal
What's a guy to do then?
So what is your criteria for needing to run multisite? And what do you suggest as an alternative?
I've been searching drupal.org for over a week now for information that would help with my latest project, and it's come down to this: There simply is no good explanation of multisite. The explanation included with drupal is one of those things that's obvious if you already know how to do it. It's basically useless to anyone else. I've yet to find anything in the handbook about it. I've accumulated several dozen URLs to pieces of related info, but nothing seems to work together.
Now I'm certainly not asking anyone to do my work or solve my problems for me. I'm technically competent and don't usually have trouble figuring things out. But this has been a less that pleasant experience.
See: Why Drupal "Sucks" at http://drupal.org/node/34421
Dean Collins
jdcllns
Multisite
The reason multisite is "hard" for some people is that it is almost totally a webserver configuration issue rather than a Drupal configuration issue. The small Drupal part of the job is very easy.
It is next to impossible to describe how to do it in detail because the detail is environment specific. Each webhost, control panel or linux distro etc has different locations and methods of configuring the component parts. Therefore the best you can hope for is broadly applicable statements about what you need to do to your webserver.
For people that understand webservers it is easy to translate those generic docs into what they need to do to their webserver. Similar to documenting a simple task like changing the oil in your car - it is next to impossible to provide a detailed procedure that would work for everyone unless you rely on the readers knowing how the generic engine part names map to their own car make and model.
Another reason why it ends up being "hard" is that people try to lump too much other stuff into understanding "multisite" or are actually wanting something else altogether. Multisite is very simple conceptually - there is almost nothing to it. It just allows a Drupal instance to look at an incoming request url and match it against different configuration directories for choosing how to handle that request. It has nothing to do with sharing database tables, functionality or content etc between sites. Sure you can build some of that on top of a multisite set up - but likewise you can also do all that stuff the same way on top of separate Drupal instances without using multisite.
Where are you getting stuck?
--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example knowledge base built with Drupal
I kinda snapped
When I read your response to Nada_G about knowing webservers and not knowing when it's appropriate to use multisite, I kinda snapped. Multisite is not obvious to newbies. It is poorly documented, and there is nothing about when it's appropriate to use.
You're right, though. It's not actually multisite that's giving me problems. I'm working two projects involving multiple domains and subdomains where user access control is critical. I described my situation here: http://drupal.org/node/196463
Over the past weeks I've accumulated quite a bit of info from drupal.org, but I did a lot of searching to get it. You'd think there'd be a simpler way.
Dean Collins
jdcllns
Looking at your other post
I don't really see a lot need for any multisite stuff. It seems more like an organic groups type problem to me at least. Organic groups can have managers for each group/site, different themes for each group/site etc etc.
The only link to multisite is that you want different urls for different parts of the 'system'. Multisite would possibly make it harder than it already is. I think figuring out url handling inside the one site is more what you are looking for - I recall some solutions for that, but I can't find them at the moment.
But if you really do want to use multisite, then these links might help...
http://drupal.org/project/og_sites
http://drupal.org/node/48472#comment-648670
Multisites original use case was for reselling shared hosting within one Drupal installation rather than for creating sprawling intertwined subsites, which is more the realm of sharing database tables (you don't need multisite to share tables). Sharing tables is a bit of a hack and is something you shouldn't attempt unless you know databases and Drupals internals well.
Multisite is simple - what you want to do isn't, and will take some work.
--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example knowledge base built with Drupal
Organic Groups, Maybe
I've been tinkering around with Domain Access, Multidomain, Multisite Manager and Single Signon. That combination seems to do what I need. Organic Groups is a "less than obvious" solution so I hadn't considered it. I'll read up on it and give it a try. That is, after I figure out how I locked myself outa my dev site. :-)
Thanx
DC
jdcllns