By bombayhustle on

Hello Drupal Community:

Just as a background, this is my configuration:

Development Environment:
Windows XP
Drupal v5.11
XAMPP v1.6.8

Production Environment:
GoDaddy Linux v2.0 Hosting
mySQL Database

I have 2 main questions:

1. Is it possible to create a multisite setup for Drupal with individual themes for each site? For example, I want to use Drupal to manage www.example1.com and www.example2.com, and each one have their own themes. I know multisite is possible, but I'm not sure if I can apply a different theme to each site?

2. If the answer to the first question is yes, how can I create a development and production environment that have the same structure? Beyond initial setup, I don't want to make configuration changes anytime I change content in each site.

Any help is appeciated,

Thanks!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

kjv1611’s picture

kjv1611 commented

how can I create a development and production environment that have the same structure?

I am pretty sure I saw a podcast title about this very sort of thing a week or so ago (when I found it, already recorded in the past, I believe) possibly over at http://geeksandgod.com or else at another site. I'll have to see if I can find it, it was something I was wanting to look at myself, go over the tutorial/discussion, at least, but haven't found the time yet.

If/when I can find the link to what I'm talking about, I'll post back - it'll be this evening at earliest (if I'm able to find it). Eastern Time, USA.

bombayhustle’s picture

bombayhustle commented

thanks kjv, any help is appreciated. Any idea about the multi-theme/multi-site question?

Thanks

boneless’s picture

boneless commented

check out these
http://drupal.org/node/43816
http://groups.drupal.org/node/11795
http://drupal.org/node/293633

different themes are easily done you just need to either configure it in the default settings.php or use prefixes for layout related tables (see 2nd link)

bombayhustle’s picture

bombayhustle commented

So I figured it out. I now have a multi-site setup on GoDaddy (linux, v2.0 hosting, php5, mysql5). I have 3 domains, with one instance of Drupal 5.11, and 3 databases for each domain.

Here's how I did it:

1. Set up the hosting account to handle all 3 domains with GoDaddy (hosting control center -> my domains...).

2. Create 3 different databases, db1, db2, db3 with GoDaddy. Note the db server for each, they may be different. This will be the one to use in the individual settings.php file.

3. FTP the Drupal package onto the server. I put it in a folder called drupal/.

4. In drupal/sites, create 3 folders: domain1.com, domain2.com, domain3.com (no WWW). Create a settings.php file for each, and change the $db_url as specified in install.txt. Remember, the db server is the one you get from Step 2. Also, change the $base_url to 'domain1.com/drupal', 'domain2.com/drupal', etc.

5. In drupal/.htaccess,

Add the following php handler lines:

AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php
AddHandler x-httpd-php .php4

Also, I added the following lines so that domain1.com is treated as www.domain1.com:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain1\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain1.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Don't know if this is absolutely necessary.

Make sure the appropriate RewriteBase line is uncommented too. The comments in the .htaccess file will guide you.

6. Go to www.domain1.com/drupal/install.php and you should be good. Log into myphpadmin from godaddy and check that the 40 tables were added appropriately.

bombayhustle’s picture

bombayhustle commented

As for the multi-theme setup I asked about, I've been playing around with Zen, and am finding it works great. I put an instance of zen for each site (in sites/domain1.com/theme/zen) and it seems to be working really well.

Also, I have replicated this install on localhost so I have a parallel development environment.

kjv1611’s picture

kjv1611 commented

That's something I want to look into myself in the future, but just too many other things going on for now, unfortunately. I went with anhosting.com - supported by midphase.com for my church's web host, and so far, I'm mostly VERY happy. The reason I mentioned that is b/c you said something about specifying the server for the MySQL databases. I think with anhosting/midphase, it's all on one server. That has made a BIG difference for me in performance. I did use 1and1 prior to that, and they were okay, but performance-wise, anhosting/midphase leaves them in the dust. I still have 2 sites over at 1and1, and one day, perhaps, I'll move one or both of those over as well.

The author of blamcast.com said he hosts that site, and others he runs all from one shared hosting site with anhosting/midphase, and his sites seem to be snappy any time I check them out. He gets thousands of hits daily, as well, I think, but I don't remember all the details. He wrote a long review about it.

All I'm saying is that if you start having performance issues, it very well might be the web host. Apparently most of them have the web site data on one server, and the databases on other servers, whereas it seems only a few have them all on the same server.