Multiple VBDrupal sites with one VB database

[Don 944 LA]

I have been reading EVERYTHING concerning multiple sites etc ...

I still cannot wrap my head around the overall concept.
What I am trying to do is have:
(1) Splash site leading to everything. "latest" content being displayed for each "leg"
(3) independent looking VBDrupal sub-sites either through sub.domain.com or domain.com/sub, using different themes and permissions.
(1) VBuletin forum where userbase is populated throughout everything.
(1) MediaWiki site ( standalone, no user base needed )

The reason for the (3) separate VBDrupal sites is as follows :

News site ( users can create, Visitors cannot, but everyone can comment )
Gadget site ( users cannot create, but can comment )
A paid membership portal where the users can interact, however paid users have thier own Area/blog etc..


The reason for the "cannot create" is that articles and such will be Ad specific and sponsored etc ...

Should I create 4 totally independent VBDrupal Full install sites linked to the same VBulletin database ??
The instructions for creating sub directories under the sites/ directory state that you can have independent themes and modules ( /sites/sub1/themes /sites/sub1/modules ) however, I can't really understand how to implement them.

The site is Free-MP3.com. test url: ( vbd.free-mp3.com )
The News VBDrupal site will have news articles and such pertaining to latest technology, legal matters, communities etc.
The Gadgets VBdrupal site will be strictly reviews and news on products. I will have sponsored ads integrated into the articles ( full html PHP enable ), thats why no users can create for security reasons. But users can comment.
The Forum will just be a VBulletin forum.
The MY Free-MP3.com will be a place where bands or musicians can have thier own area and pay a small membership fee, while distributing music for free or charge.

So basically the Forum, and the news sites are the only sub sites that the user base would have permissions to do and create things.

It would be absolutely wonderfull if the users in the VB db could also be shared with the MediaWIKI database.


I hope someone here can understand what I am trying to do, and maybe offer some hints or at least point me in the right direction.

The sites are hosted by ME at home on a 2003 Ent Server with IIS6, so I can do more than with an external host. I will also be moving them to a Linux (Suse10) server soon.


Thanks
Don

[tamarian]

Check post #2 here:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?threadid=97341

And the comments from Matafleur,

[AntiThesis]

Is there any way to do this? I'm unable to get to the Vbulletin.org thread for some reason. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Caerydd]

That thread is inaccessible for me too :( The only vbdrupal page I can find on vb.org is in the 3.5.x section.

[Matafleur]

Eh, I'll do a write up on this some time.

Still experimenting with multi-sites using the new vBDrupal NG builds, but I'm happy to say that it has native multi-site support.

[Caerydd]

I'd love to see a vbdrupal specific tutorial on this. I'm looking at doing a subsite of alleria, specifically for creative development, so i want to look at user and content sharing (e.g. the ability to push a document from a subsite to the main site, but also to withhold the majority of the development content from the main site.)

[Caerydd]

Can I ask why that thread is inaccessible for me? I'm fully licensed, why can't I see it?

[Gman]

I can't get to it either. Maybe it was deleted or something.

For the multisite stuff, yes it is very possible to do it. Skejo.com does this exactly as you say, subdomain differentiation with shared user and content (creative uses of other modules to really pull this off). Mostly you just need to follow the normal drupal multisite setups.

[Caerydd]

Okay, awesome. I shall attempt to experiment another time. I am always interested in a step by step account by someone who has it working, however ;) First I need to clean up my /modules locations >>

Anyway, interested in the following set up

alleria.com <-- main site dedicated to the game. Published material only.
forge.alleria.com <-- Creative development. Possibly adapting project.module and project_issues.module to tracking work on in development creative material. Also an archive for work that is not accepted.
guilds.alleria.com <-- Site utilising Organic Groups, to house communities for in game guilds, and any interest groups players would like to build, e.g. 'California Meetups' for people who live in cali.
multiverse.alleria.com <-- Website for 'alleria fan fiction, art and music', which is essentially whatever anyone wants to write set in the allerian universe, but would not happen in the canon stories being told at alleria.com. Not sure how this would be structured.
blogs.alleria.com <-- mebbe moving blogs to a subsite to allow a much more focused service, rather than a rather shabby, unidentifable section on our main site.

The subsites would all be running phptemplate based skins, I think.

[silurius]

Okay, now I'm looking at adding a mediawiki to my new vbDrupal project. I got vBulletin and Mediawiki working together with one userbase last year, but the steps to get there were not well documented and the final result wasn't perfect from an administrator's perspective.

Has anyone had success with getting this working in a vBDrupal setup?

[elmuerte]

well since vbDrupal doesn't change anything to how vBulletin works w.r.t. to user account and session management it shouldn't be much different than with a normal vBulletin setup.
unless an other thing messes with the normal vBulletin authentication vbDrupal should simply function as normal, so if this MediaWiki integration only uses the vBulletin accounts/sessions it should work.

alternatively you could connect MediaWiki to the vbDrupal side, but I wouldn't do that, it adds way too much useless overhead.

[adrenalis]

In the vboptions control panel under vbDrupal, we have to put in a Drupal system path and Drupal URL... will there be any errors because several different vbDrupal installs will have several different paths?

[adrenalis]

I just installed vbdrupal into a parallel directory because I wanted to be able to have different content for each instance, but whatever changes I make to the second instance also apply to the first. Also, the second instance has all of the content from the first instance, which defeats the purpose. Is there something else I can edit so that multiple instances of vbdrupal can run parallel to each other, using the same vb database, yet displaying different content?

[Matafleur]

I just installed vbdrupal into a parallel directory because I wanted to be able to have different content for each instance, but whatever changes I make to the second instance also apply to the first. Also, the second instance has all of the content from the first instance, which defeats the purpose. Is there something else I can edit so that multiple instances of vbdrupal can run parallel to each other, using the same vb database, yet displaying different content?

You'll need to manually create a separate set of tables in your SQL database for the second instance. If you want to share users only, you will have to share the following tables: authmap, profile_fields, profile_values, role, sequences, sessions, users and user_roles.

Then, you'll need to add a directory and settings.php under /drupal/sites/ with the name of the URL the second instance will be accessed by. For example, if you're going to access the second instance with www.foo.bar, then you'll set it up as follows: /drupal/sites/foo.bar/settings.php

Finally, in the new settings.php, you'll need to edit the $db_prefix array to indicate which tables you want to share with the first instance and which you would like to keep separate.

The settings.php file has pretty comprehensive information which you should read through before attempting to do a multi-site installation. I'm actually currently testing out a multi-site setup and am starting to compile a list of tasks and tools required. It's still a little buggy and undocumented at the moment, as far as vbDrupal is concerned.

[adrenalis]

Thanks for your help; I am using a test board right now to try this on... I'll post up once I get it going.

[adrenalis]

You'll need to manually create a separate set of tables in your SQL database for the second instance.


Can I just edit the plugin and then upload it again?

by the way, was this
If you want to share users only, you won't have to share the following tables: authmap, profile_fields, profile_values, role, sequences, sessions, users and user_roles.


supposed to read you WILL have to share the following tables? :)

[Matafleur]

Can I just edit the plugin and then upload it again?
I didn't do it that way, but it might be worth a shot. What I did was to create a fresh install of vbdrupal/vbulletin, then to dump the fresh SQL tables. I'm using that dump to generate tables for my new sites at the moment.

by the way, was this


supposed to read you WILL have to share the following tables? :)
Yes, my bad. :o

[All4Data]

Okay, now I'm looking at adding a mediawiki to my new vbDrupal project. I got vBulletin and Mediawiki working together with one userbase last year, but the steps to get there were not well documented and the final result wasn't perfect from an administrator's perspective.

Has anyone had success with getting this working in a vBDrupal setup?

silurius did you get this sorted?

[silurius]

silurius did you get this sorted?No, not this time. The customer had to bail but may come back, so that particular project is going to be frozen for a little while. But my earlier attempt (over a year ago) was definitely passable, especially for a smaller group of wiki consumers. The only "bad" customer facing issue, aside from the upper case requirements for user names, was keeping their relative sessions active when they switched back and forth between applications. That is probably easily fixable, but I don't know because that project was also brought to its knees for various reasons (sometimes I think software is more reliable and consistent than people are).

[All4Data]

I use vbwikipro quite effectively with vbulletin and with vbdrupal

currently I am deciding to set-up a number of sub-domain sites instead of the previous route of a number of different domains on different url's

instead of co.uk ... .net .... .us

I will be setting up uk.domain .... us.domain .... ca.domain