Best Practices for Multi Site usage.
I'm looking for some help with best-practices, and pointers to effective documentation to help me set up a multi-site install to help give student groups at the .edu I work at, a real effective web environment.
The messy way to do that is to just deploy a new drupal site any time someone wants a new student group website. But thats just asking for problems down the line with patching and management... I know how to do that, and, I know the minefield that presents when the many different student groups all want websites...
So, I'd like to use the multisite capabilities of drupal to do something like this, and I'm asking, 1. is this possible, and 2. where can I find some nice clean documentation on it, since google returns many different sets of instructions, that aren't complete.
I'd like to set up a drupal multi-site install at "groups.domain.tld", with the sites located at...
"groups.domain.tld/site1"
"groups.domain.tld/site2"
"groups.domain.tld/site3"
... etc ...
In real life, it would be something like "groups.domain.tld/knittingclub" or ".../bowlingteam"
Is this possible?
Or is it better to do sub domains?
Such as...
"site1.groups.domain.tld"
"site2.groups.domain.tld"
"site3.groups.domain.tld"
... etc ...
The documentation on drupal.org is fragmented, and didn't work for me.
Right now I'm trying to do it in Ubuntu 9.04, but I have access to CentOS, and RHEL if there is pre-written documentation around for it already.
Any pointers?
Thoughts?
Thanks!
This video really helped me
I based my set up on this video.
http://media.gotdrupal.com/matt/tips/d6/Multisites_d6.mov
Let us know how that works for you.
[edit]
God, I sound like a tool. I meant to sound a bit more interested. I really do want to know if that video answers some of your questions.
Sorry!
[/edit]
haha. No worries, thanks for
haha.
No worries, thanks for the link, I'll check that out tomorrow.
Have you looked at organic groups?
It sounds to me like organic groups might be a better fit than multi-site. You probably don't want to have to fiddle with apache and the file system each new semester.
Look at some options
Yes, you should look at Organic Groups http://drupal.org/project/og as well as Domain Access http://drupal.org/project/domain
And, you should also look at Aegir, which just had it's 0.2 release -- http://groups.drupal.org/aegir/0.2
I am not sure if Aegir suits
I am not sure if Aegir suits the requirement as Aegir talks more about managing different drupal instances and not multisites.
Regarding your requirement of
"groups.domain.tld/site1"
"groups.domain.tld/site2"
"groups.domain.tld/site3"
yes, this is possible with multisites. You need to create a subsite and then create a symlinks for those sites to be accessible in that way.
Asif
Azri Solutions (http://www.azrisolutions.com/)
No
Uh...what? No, Aegir is a system on top of multi site specifically for managing lots of separate installs. That's "multisite".
Subdomains over Subsites
Three compelling resons to choose Subdomains over Subsites
1) Branding – each subsite has contextually different content - distinct products
2) The use of subsites increases relevance and hence the search ability of content with in the subsite.
3) Each subsite will eventually have it’s own full featured content and community
Netlink Technologies Ltd
I blog and Twitter :)
I think the Docs might have the answer...
I think all your questions are addressed here:
Setup of /sites directory for multi-site
http://drupal.org/node/53705
multi site
Greetings, after days of trying to set up my site I decided to start over with a new hosting service. Installation went 100% better with the new host. Now would like to set up a multi-site configuration. I have been reading some of the posts and have gained some valuable information but would like some feed back before proceeding. This is what I am trying to create:
Domain is jpcrazy.com
I have set up sub-domains jpcrazybuttonco.jpcrazy.com, jpctours.jpcrazy.com and jpcphotos.jpcrazy.com.
I would like to setup the button co similar to: http://affordablebuttons.com/; jpctours similar to: http://bluelavamedia.com/; and jpcrazyphotos similar to a shutterfly or flickr type photo gallery. Is a single install, single database the best way to proceed.
Are there modules designed for this type of set up?
I know you all have heard these questions before, I appreciate your patients and expertise. I was born with only half a brain, unfortunately it was not the technical side.
Lon Jett
"A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing." (Emo Philips)