Multi-site, shared content, no prefixes

I had the exact same need as you. My conclusion after researching, is that drupal wasn't build with the idea of several sites sharing same content. You will find many threads and pages about sharing same code, but not same content.
There is obviously a cache problem to start with.... you might get it over with different cache tables, I don't know and didn't wanted to venture there. This is from a non code point of view.... i'm sure drupal gurus could get this running.

I made the same test as you, and got weird results. My sites really felt unstable so I ended up restoring a database backup and installing another drupal copy for second site !!

I strongly think that drupal should allow several sites (each with its custom theme / blocks) to share same code and content.

This was with 4.7.4, I don't know about upcoming 5.0 though.

Brakkar

First, do you have caching enabled and do you see the pages once, and then on reload or coming back to the page does it fail? Did you normal site work without those multisites? Just checking some options. If you don't have the mbstring extention in PHP, you might have similar problems. I sure did.

You are correct that the cache table should almost never be shared across subdomains. Many of the links for themes and menus are placed into the cache and if will mess up links across subdomains. Trying making separate tables for the caches?

My own tests showed that the CCK module does not work across subdomains and common content (shared nodes and related tables). The cached CCK nodes are only cached in the subsite it was created in, and none of the others. Also, other cached settings like TinyMCE settings and filters did not go across the shared content multisite.

Again, this is across sub-domains, and I believe that across main domain will act the same way. Maybe you could try a setup across simulated directories, instead of sub-domains.

----------
My Drupal/Tech Thoughts
vbDrupal Articles at Skejo.com

I have two sites sharing content although I do have two databases. I have different front pages defined for each, as well as different content showing up dependent on their categories in various sections of the site. What does your settings.php file look like? I have the "main" site in the sites/default folder, and the "secondary" site in sites/othersite.com - in the settings.php file, I actually have to have each and every table I am sharing listed.

    $db_prefix = array(
      'default'   => '',
      'authmap'   => 'main.',
      'flexinode_data' => 'main.',
      'flexinode_field' => 'main.',
      'flexinode_type' => 'main.',
      'profile_fields' => 'main.',
      'profile_values' => 'main.',
      'role'      => 'main.',
      'sequences' => 'main.',
      'sessions'  => 'main.',
      'users'     => 'main.',
      'users_roles'     => 'main.',
      'role'      => 'main.',
      'node'      => 'main.',
      'node_access' => 'main.',
      'node_comment_statistics' => 'main.',
      'node_counter' => 'main.',
      'node_revisions' => 'main.',
      'event'     => 'main.',
      'profile_fields' => 'main.',
      'profile_values' => 'main.',
      'signup'    => 'main.',
      'signup_log' => 'main.',
      'term_data' => 'main.',
      'term_hierarchy' => 'main.',
      'term_node'  => 'main.',
      'term_relation' => 'main.',
      'term_synonym' => 'main.',
      'url_alias'  => 'main.',
      'vocabulary' => 'main.',
      'vocabulary_node_types' => 'main.',
      'view_argument' => 'main.',
      'view_exposed_filter' => 'main.',
      'view_filter' => 'main.',
      'view_sort' => 'main.',
      'view_tablefield' => 'main.',
      'view_view' => 'main.',
    );

Seems to work.

Howdy,

i profit of this interesting thread and of the expertise of neural, coughrusty and others to scratch my own itch:

my site is an aggregator with something like 30 main taxonomies, and i'd like to keep a unique code and layout, but have different subdomains for each term (ex: cats.mysite.com, penguins.mysite.com, ...) pointing to their respective front page (the term node).

Basically everything remains the same across all sites (layout, users, taxonomies, ..), only thing i need to have separated blocks tables to show different blocks on each site.

My main site is at /sites/mysite.com, and secondary sites are at /sites/cats.mysite.com, /sites/penguins.mysite.com etc..

I tryed all the ways:

1. prefix only separated tables:
   'default' => '',
   'blocks' => 'sub_',
2. prefix the default ones and leave empty the shared ones as adviced at 22267:
   'default' => 'sub_',
   'block' => '',
3. give all my tables a prefix 'main_' and go through steps 1 and 2

Nothing:
every time i change (add, remove, sort) a block in www.mysite.com, the change reflects also in subsite.mysite.com.... <:|

really don't know where to bump my head here..

i am actually sharing these tables:
`blocks`
`boxes`
`caches`

Am i wrong? Shall i share something else (system, variables,..)?

Please, any hand extremely apreciated, thank you lot in advance!

---------------- Edit: SOLVED! ------------------------

aha, seems the issue was with the name of the /site folders not catching up with the subsites:

renaming them to /sites/cats.mysite.com, /sites/penguins.mysite.com (*not* mysite.com.cats, mysite.com.penguins ) solved the problem!

Also seems that just prefixing separated tables only is working fine:
'default' => 'main_',
'blocks' => 'sub_',

so the issue at 22267 seems to be fixed now.

it's been 5 months now since this was posted.

after all the testing and comment from others, I wonder what's the best practice to achieve this (multisite with shared content and minimal prefixing.) + allow content addition from respective sites (based on permission).

another comparison using Views/OG multisite: creating/managing content for multiple sites from a single interface

or Managing multisite content from a single Drupal instance

there are just more out there ....

its difficult when information are all over the place, but yet could not find the final answer and I get lost...iskhh iskhh ....

-najibx-