I apologize if this is not the right place to post this message, but I thought that here I may find Forum module experts that can answer my question.
I am trying to implement multiple sites with flatforum using Domain Access (i.e.: single database, single settings.php, wildcard dns) and would like to support multiple Forums. Each site needs its own completely independent forum. Domain Prefix (a module in Domain Access) allows me to easily create/copy prefixed tables/structures. My question is: in order to have completely independent forums (independent taxonomies)...
* which is the minimum set of core tables that needs to be duplicated for each site? (forum, term*, comments, flatforum, all? others?)
* is there any additional action (SQL statement) that is required to complete the setup?
I am asking the second question because Domain Prefix carries out a plain table duplication, without going through the specifics of hook_install(). I am a Drupal user with no programming experience. Thank you.
Comments
There's no simple solution
I've run into similar snags and there are no simple solutions with existing modules that I can see.
Prefixing only works on material with its own tables, but forums are wrapped up together with other content types. They're all nodes and comments, so to prefix forums to multiple sites you end up prefixing ALL of your content, which may defeat the point of your multiple site setup... unless all you're looking for are shared logins.
If shared logins are all you need, you could do that with a standard prefix multisite install (although I'm not sure on wildcard DNS solutions other than Domain Access).
If you need more than shared logins, Domain Access could probably be expanded for finer Forum control, but that's probably outside of agentrickard's scope / interest. If not Domain Access, then something similar will happen eventually anyway (the Bryght guys have developed Multple Domains, but I don't think it's as mature as Domain Access). Drupal needs better multisite control, but I wouldn't expect it soon.
One thought and something I'm probably going to look into myself, is to recreate a forum-like experience as describe in the Forum deprecated? thread, possibly with Taxonomy Access (which I haven't tried yet either, but I notice DrupalBB uses for its single-site distribution). That may prove to be more flexible when used with Views and Domain Access.
Speaking of which, if you haven't looked into all that Views & CCK can do, check those out.
This is IMHO hardcore Drupal stuff and I'm pretty new to Drupal myself, this isn't for the feint-of-heart. I don't want to discourage you, but there's nothing that comes even approximately close to a plug-and-play solution for Drupal forums in a multisite configuration.
The other paradigm: Organic Groups
Being my own devil's advocate, I'm going to follow up by mentioning Organic Groups, which is basically what we're using to post this thread we're on. It's not the same thing as what's typically thought of as a "forum", but may address some of your needs.
I hadn't mentioned it in my first reply, because typically when someone wants forums, they want forums in the vBulletin / Invision / phpBB style. But it's worth noting that Domain Access already has support for Organic Groups. I admit I don't have much experience with it, but it seems much more like the Drupal way of doing things, whereas Drupal forums are like pushing a square peg into a round hole.
Organic Groups are useful,
Organic Groups are useful, but a little fine-grained for the purposes I was describing. If you want a site-wide forum then you might only have maybe 5-10 boards/site with maybe 5 sites maximum, the forums module is then the way forward.
Organic groups would be the approach to use with much smaller communities. Indeed, on the site I am running, I'm developing Organic Groups to create a solution for individual teams/supporters, which will create hundreds of subgroups which could each have their own little forum (within the group) in addition to the site-wide forums. Sub groups is a possible solution to this, but it just feels like it is the wrong tool for a simple site-wide forum.