Drupal Multiple Site Installation/
I have a few questions that I need to figure out..
I'm trying to setup a multiple site installation for local church congregations... Here's my situation.
My church has local congregations in different cities. Each of these local congregations should have a local web site.
I'd like the sites to be pretty much standard installations, with the same theme, etc.
I'd like to setup each local site on a different subdomain. For instance, pittsburgh.mysite.com and cleveland.mysite.com
I'm looking for input... How should I go about this? I'd like to have a standard installation for each site, but I don't want to have to set up each site as I go. I basically don't want to have to go through a new installation and configuration between all these different sites. If there are 100 sites that I'd need to run I don't want to have to install drupal, add the theme, add and configure all modules, etc. each time.
How can I go about getting a "vanilla" site just the way I like it and making it a standard installation?
After the installation I'd like the site to be independant of the others, but if I could start with a standard "customized" Drupal installation then it'd be much easier to tweak each site as it needs it.
I'm not sure if I'm being clear, but any ideas or guidance would be really appreciated. I've been working with Drupal for about a year and a half so I have a pretty good idea of how it works, but I'm definetly no expert.
Thanks ahead of time!
You could do this with a
You could do this with a multisite-- if you want to create a "standard" installation, create one install just the way you want it and then backup/zip the drupal directory and the db-- you can then use this as a "seed" for your other sites. You might also want to take a look at the http://drupal.org/project/profile_generator module.
I think I would probably do this with a combination of the pathauto, subdomain, sections, and tac modules.
Another option would be to do this with the organic groups series of modules.
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did you get a solution yet?
tomdisher,
Did you find a way to do multiple site subdomains? I'm in the same situation as you and would love a solution to our problem.
Drupal native multi-site
@tomdisher, @totaldrupal,
Are you familiar with configuring Drupal's native multi-site support (see: INSTALL.txt)?... setting up each domain and/or subdomain within the /sites subdirectory? And placing modules in /sites/all/modules and themes in sites/all/themes, etc.?
I use this extensively and it works very well for me; I think quite a few folks use this. When an update comes out for Drupal core or a module or theme, it really helps in streamlining the update process.
--
Matt J. Sorenson [ emjayess ]
WEBJAX'd! || twitter.com/webjax
emjayess.net || twitter.com/emjayess
I've never worked with
I've never worked with that... I've sort of wondered what the sites folder is for. This sounds like it will be a big help, but I still need to deal with the new sites starting at one point with a theme and the modules enabled... Perhaps a backup module?
Any other suggestions?
Installation Profile
The multi-site capability is extremely handy... continue to get familiar with that, so you can run your various sites on just a single Drupal codebase (and optionally separate databases, or a single shared database with table prefixing)... and then probably take a look at putting together your own tailored installation profile.
Installation profiles allow you to do things like customize which modules (core and/or contrib) to include & have installed by default, specify which theme is turned on, automate some or all of the configuration you are currently doing post-install, and set up any other custom installation actions/steps you might need or want.
Here's the installation profile guide, and here is a related distribution profile group on groups.drupal.org.
Alternatively, I might suggest taking a good hard look at Organic Groups, to see if that approach might suit your needs. I think OG is pretty flexible in how it can be rigged up, and if it can be made to meet your requirements, you could actually avoid installing a dedicated sub-site for each of your communities.
hope that helps.
--
Matt J. Sorenson (emjayess)
d.o. | g.d.o. | WEBJAX'd! | twitter