Creating multiple different websites from a single installation of Drupal on Site5
I am new to Site5 and to Drupal, but I think I have grasped enough that I should be able to accomplish what I need to do.
I need to set up a number of related, but different, sites that all use the same Drupal installation code. It would look something like this:
mainsite.com (Drupal installed)
subsite1.com (uses Drupal code on mainsite.com but a different database)
subsite2.com (uses Drupal code on mainsite.com but a different database)
subsite3.com (uses Drupal code on mainsite.com but a different database)
subsite4.com (uses Drupal code on mainsite.com but a different database)
You must be able to access each site on a stand alone basis. In other words, you would access subsite1.com by going only to http://subsite1.com or http://www.subsite1.com. The same for all other sites.
Site5 says you can set up separate websites under your main site, but they have no meaningful information about how to do this. Unfortunately, searching Drupal and elsewhere has not produced anything that works for me. Support has been less than helpful. They mainly say, "We do not support Drupal."
On the Site5 side, I have set up the mainsite and then created domain pointers to a subfolder of the mainsite. These subfolders each have the name portion of the domain name. Thus, subsite1.com is in subfolder subsite1, and so on. I have also created FTP accounts for each subsite with a different username and password.
As for Drupal, I have also set up in Drupal sites/default a separate subfolder for each site and put into it an appropriately modified settings.php folder according to instructions on Drupal and elsewhere. This looks like public_html/sites/subsite1/settings.php, and so on for the other subsites.
I have also tried modifications to bootstrap.inc that some Drupal articles suggest. The same for modifications to .htaccess.
Unfortunately, none of this produces the desired results. I keep getting 403 and 500 errors. However, Apache does note the existence of a website of the proper name at the proper location.
Is there anyone who has successfully done this? If so, could they please post a detailed road map of what they did so others can follow it?
Thank you
A pointing issue
I don't know how Site5 manages multiple domains but you can try the following:
* Instead of creating domain pointers to subfolders of the mainsite, point all of them to the mainsite. If you created the settings.php folders correctly under mainsite for each of your domains then Drupal will handle the rest.
* If this doesn't work, create subfolders like subsite1 but make them a symbolic link to the mainsite folder.
Good luck.
symbolic link problems
Thank you,
I have tried making symbolic links according to another posting I saw. Even though I can log on to SSH without problem, when I go to create the link, I get an access denied you do not have permission error. I guess there must be another user I need to find out about that has permission to do more than just access the shell.
If I understand you correctly, I have to work with settings.php. What would the main issue be? Pointing to the right database? Happily, Site5 allows unlimited mySQL databases. So, I plan to create a separate database for each site.
Thanks again
site5
site5 does addon domains in an unusual. have you contacted them?
Site5 addon domains
Yes, I have, and, unfortunately, they are quite adamant they do not support Drupal. So, you are on your own with them when it comes to Drupal. My guess is they know what to do, but they are just not going to tell you to avoid actually supporting Drupal.
Thanks for your suggestion. I will try to press Site5 Support a little more.
I'm doing multiple sites
I'm doing multiple sites with drupal on Site5 without any problems, however I don't use drupal's multi site capability. To set up a new site I:
1) go into cPanel and add a new subdomain, which is actually a new domain but they call it a subdomain, whatever
2) give it a directory under my public_html
3) go to that directory and create symlinks to all the relevant drupal directories/files, usually everything except the sites directory
4) create a sites/default/settings.php for the new domain
That's it. Works fine for me, and by using symlinks instead of the multisite ability, it gives me the option of using modified files, different theme directories (hide other themes from clients, etc).
multiple sites alternative
Thank you,
This sounds very promising to me. Unhappily, I am still a little too new to Drupal to know all the relevant Drupal directories/files. Would I do any harm if I created symlinks to everything except the sites directory?
Similarly, with settings.php, what is the main concern? Pointing to the proper database for the new site?
Tagged
Tagging. I'm having the same exact problem. Here is the weird part, I can get the domain to work by making up a subdomain name!
I have a main domain kathyandcalvin.com. I transferred directinstruction.org to site5 in my domain manager (godaddy.com). Then I created a domain pointer in site5 for directinstruction.org. It automatically created a subdirectory (directinstruction) under my main account (public_html/directinstruction).
I then followed my own directions:
http://kathyandcalvin.com/creating-drupal-multisite-install-a2hosting-com
It only works if I type in a made up subdomain name (ie slkflsdk.directinstruction.org). That is really weird. www.directinstruction.org and directinstruction.org do not work. I have created the directories /public_html/sites/directinstruction.org and /public_html/sites/www.directinstruction.org . I pointed to the appropriate URL in each settings.php.
Obviously I'm missing something here.
a2hosting.org was much simpler but the service is almost unusable - it is constantly (several times a day) down. site5 has not only been up but is much faster.