Posted by timmillwood on September 19, 2008 at 8:00am
I am developing a handful on drupal sites with shared users and shared profiles. The Profile module doesn't offer enough so I want to use the 'Content Profile' module but then the profiles are stored as nodes and therefore harder to share.
Comments
Not clear on the issue here.
Not clear on the issue here. We have a multisite, single database (some tables prefixed for subdomain), single codebase installation (www.iofc.org) and are using Content Profile, sharing users and nodes across all sites. Can you say more?
Limited sharing of content (nodes) is not reasonable.
Limited sharing of content (nodes) is not reasonable. Sounds like you would want to share user_nodes but no other nodes.
I avoid this at all costs and if the client just has to have it. Make sure you pad your time estimates by 5X or more.
Many people have made attempts at sharing content (myself included). Some have found things that work for them but their solutions are so specialized they can't really be shared. The Node Module is a required module for Drupal to work. You will find you have to share so many tables that you might as well share the whole DB schema (a single DB). Sharing users is simpler with some thing like ~8 tables shared to do it right.
Sounds like Edward.peters has a solution where he basically is sharing more tables then he is not sharing. The problem arises when you only want to share some nodes and not all nodes.
Organic Groups or Domain Access are two of the best solutions for sharing content across sites from a single DB. They both have single databases and control what content can be seen from which site through ACLs. Organic Groups is very flexible. Because it can be themed per group easily (especially with og_panels now!) it can solve some of the multisite needs. I don't know too much about Domain Access but it seems to be solving this limited cross-site node sharing issue. It's based on the incoming Domain Name rather than group membership.
There are many complications with sharing nodes across sites, "Search" not being the least of them.
My advice is avoid sharing nodes at all costs. Sharing users/profiles is feasible. If you have to use 'Content Profile' think about using OG or Doman Access to control content access rather than sharing tables.
Regards,
Michael Hofmockel
iMed Studios
Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind
Regards,
Michael Hofmockel
Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind
I mostly agree with both
I mostly agree with both previous responders
this whole sharing tables "thang" is fraught with peril and best left alone if at all possible
you need to provide us with much more specific information as to exactly what you're trying to share and what you want site-specific - for example, literally want to sharing nothing except users and roles, that's pretty well acknowledged as safe and documented elsewhere on d.o.
sharing some nodes and not others? I wouldn't even try myself
possible suggestions:
you could keep your "profile nodes" (or whatever) on a central/parent/master site and link back to that from all the sub-sites, perhaps using a single sign on setup rather than shared tables
the drupal_execute() function would perhaps help you automate duplicating the user information between sites - check out the Macro engine component of the Devel module (way over my head)