By jason342 on

Can someone explain please?

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stborchert’s picture

stborchert
he/him
Primary language German
commented

If you've got multiple sites (for example: example1.com and example2.com) you are able to manage both with only one drupal installation. This is meant by "multi-site".

hth,

Stefan

jason342’s picture

jason342 commented

Can I go just with a standard drupal installation for a single site for now, then in the future go multi-site if I chose to. I would just like a simple single site for now, but in the future I might go multi site. So if I would like a multi-site in the future then I must make take that route now? ot is multi-site a feature that can be added to a standard drupal at any time without complications?

Minty’s picture

Minty commented

Do the single site to start, you can add new sites later

Minty’s picture

Minty commented

Right - more than one site from one installation of Drupal.
Very helpful even if you run a single public site, as you can create another one as a test site.
For each site, you need separate databases (or if you want to use a single database, distinct tables identified by adding a prefix to table names).
A single codebase makes maintenenace simpler than multiple installs. Everything is in one place so only one to keep up to date, backup etc and you know each site is running on the same code. You can keep site-specific parts like themes or additional modules in the sites folder.

jason342’s picture

jason342 commented

This multi site sounds good. But I don't think I can handle multi site right right now, maybe in couple of months time. So can I add multi sites later or must I make this decision now whether I want multi-site or not.

Will the standard instillation drupal suffer any loss of data if I do decide to go multi site in the future?

What I’m asking is drupal flexible if I start with just a regular drupal instillation now, then in couple of month time go multi-site from my current instilation?

Or if I do start to go with just a standard drupal now, then want multi-site in the future, then would it be a complicated procedure to then?

Sorry for the silly questions, to me Drupal is what Mars is to mankind.

One giant install for me, one great leap for my site.

Minty’s picture

Minty commented

I set up a few individual sites first, and have just got to multisites. My only problem was getting the details right to make multisites work at all. Once I had it, with some help on the forum (thanks guys), it worked just fine and was easy to convert to a single codebase with separate database tables.

My advice - go for single site first - there's plenty of other stuff to learn first and the conversion isn't too painful when you do need to go for it.

When you are ready to switch, if you have more than one site set up, you can keep one installation as the 'master' installation and just copy the site-specific files like themes, css, page.tpl.php or whatever into a subdirectory when you want to go the multisite route. Once you point the additional URLs to the right place, they pick up the site-specific stuff and just work.

Maybe others know better, but I don't think there is any donwside on the original site.

STL_Realtor’s picture

STL_Realtor commented

So am I understanding right, that the idea of a multi site would be so that you could use the same database, but put different faces on it, and different domain names. For example, if I had a database of Notre Dame Sweatshirts, I could use them for a Notre Dame website, for a All college theme website, and for a normal sweatshirt website, all with different domain names, but all reading the pictures, description, price, etc from the same database?

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Interactive Realtor St. Louis Real Estate

davidlark’s picture

davidlark commented

... and the reasons for having multisite include:
* saving disk space by only having one drupal installation
* only having to upgrade the drupal files once when you need to upgrade
* only having to upgrade your modules once when you need to upgrade
* being able to create test sites easily

However, it is possible to share tables. The most common reason is so you user can log in once to access all your sites. Others are doing more complex things like you describe. If you search this forum you will find them.

Enlightening-Times’s picture

Enlightening-Times commented

Can please you point me to any documentation for creating new sites with the install that I already have.

Thanks

Jade

davidlark’s picture

davidlark commented

... http://software.davidlark.net/Drupal/Guide/GettingStarted/Installing

also:

http://drupal.org/node/120647

garyreece’s picture

garyreece commented

Signed in, but can't go to the link http://drupal.org/node/120647.

davidlark’s picture

davidlark commented

... reorganizing the site. I believe the best starting point is now http://drupal.org/documentation/install/multi-site .

Seneschall’s picture

Seneschall commented

I run an online community in my hometown, and am looking to expand to a 2nd city.

Here's what I want to do.

One site to rule them all... (I know, cheeky) This site would have news and classifieds, and others as well, taken from other sites.

secondary site 1: for my hometown. These classifieds and news would be labeled for this city. But also sent to the main site.

secondary site 2: ditto, for nearby city.

Basically, member goes to hometown site, sees classifieds, adds one. member two does the same. 2 classified ads (ed-classified, specifically) are now on the hometown site.

Two people go to secondary site 2 and adds their classifieds.

Site one has 2 classifieds.
Site two has 2 classifieds.

MAIN SITE shows all 4.

The same would go with news items, real estate & jobs. Is all of this doable?

Forums I'm not worried about, other than all 3 sites should be able to access the SMF forums with their respective usernames intact.

davidlark’s picture

davidlark commented

... so what you would need to do is set up your secondary sites as normal community sites. Then configure your primary site to access the tables in the secondary site's databases, and then, if no modules are available, modify the ad modules so that they draw from these tables. Perhaps someone who has done this before would have more specifics.

Seneschall’s picture

Seneschall commented

I decided to start from scratch & get a new master domain for the project. I have that set up as well as a first city site as per http://drupal.org/getting-started/6/install/multi-site

It worked. What I'm wondering now is how would I run taxonomy? A couple modules would rely on taxonomy, but I don't want to have ALL the sites running the same kind of taxonomy.

I.E. I want Classified Ads to be across-domains. Entered on one, shows up on another. Will Add a "Location" taxonomy for this. However, news taxonomy shouldn't be cross-site, as I'm simply going to use the aggrigator on the main site to pull that up.

Would Taxonomy stuff have to go into the Shared Database?

Am I looking at this the right way?

dunklea’s picture

dunklea commented

I am actually trying to set up a very similar network of sites.. One central site that would host the forums and other community features and content, surrounded by three other sites that would host their own unique content. I also want the ability to share certain content and links across all four sites by accessing their respective databases.

It does seem that this is all possible using Drupal's multisite setup, however, I am a little concerned with how this will affect my SEO. It seems to me that everything is being stored centrally on server so a Google bot will only see this as coming from one domain instead of all four.. (I am new to this so I know there is a very good chance that I am completely wrong about this)

Anyway, I have got most of my site setup already on my local MAMP server but I haven't decided on a hosting service yet. Does anyone have any advice on how to setup and host a website like this?

Thanks!

davidlark’s picture

davidlark commented

... no, you're probably partially right. The folks at Google are rather secretive about their algorithms, so we're all just guessing. Here's what I see:

* They may not know that your sites are associated, but they know they're on the same server.
* They know which servers are commercial shared hosts and which are more private, so they can make assumptions about that.
* Once they know that sites are associated they'll downgrade links between them, but this alone won't hurt you, it just won't help you that much.
* If they decide that your sites are link farms, they will severely penalize you. So you must make your sites appear to them to have individual merit.
* They're certainly not penalizing Craigslist for having parallel subdomains.

So more research on SEO is warranted. I'd be interested in what you come up with.