[GSoC 2009] Native Joomla Multisite Support

[ccoxhead]

I did a quick evaluation of the products, available for download.

Virtual Domains (beta) seems to do the job, I want, quickly and easily.

Multiple Domains on the same Joomla Installation without a core hack. Virtual Domains simply allows you to point a Parked Domain to a different template and/or menu. Simple and effective. Complete data sharing with no sync required.

I plan to support this extension with a donation and I hope that it or similarly easy Multi-site capability is included in near-future releases of Joomla.

Best wishes.

[tboheeren]

Hey naveen,

Congratulations on your 1.0 release! A job well done imo.
For fun I tried it on 1.5.14 but the component does not create a website in that version

Could you keep us updated about compatibility with 1.5? I would like to wait untill 1.6 is out but I think you would be faster than the official 1.6 release date... :-)

Anyways thanks again and big gratz.

kind regards,

Thibaut

[zzfyhnren]

A quick question for insomn1a (or any other who knows the answer), do I have to have a domain name for each site? this will cost money, though not too much.

For example, if I have a domain name for my master site: http://www.mastersite.com, can I create a sub-site using the url: http://www.mastersite.com/subsite? If yes, how to configure apache VirtualHost for this?

BTW, I installed your 1.0 release, it works fine. Well done! Thank you for your great job.

[zzfyhnren]

just figure it out, config httpd-vhosts.conf in this way, and create a site with url: http://www.mastersite.com/subsite, then no additional domain name need for the subsite. Make sure subsite's virtual path just point to the same path to the master site as "/opt/lampp/htdocs".

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /opt/lampp/htdocs
ServerName www.mastersite.com
ServerAlias www.mastersite.com
ErrorLog logs/mastersite-error_log
CustomLog logs/mastersite-access_log common

Alias /subsite "/opt/lampp/htdocs"
<Directory "/opt/lampp/htdocs">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

[insomn1a]

You can take a look at the 1.0 release of the multi-site component developed this summer, there is a webinar that demonstrates how it works as well.

http://code.google.com/p/joomla-multisite/ (Project link)

http://community.joomla.org/blogs/commu ... isite.html (webinar)

As far as the future:
-1.5 Support is currently being worked on, there are some logistical things to think about to get this working (features in 1.6 not present in 1.5).

- Still have to put out documentation on how to setup vhosts etc.

-Looking for ways to make the component better
.: Simplify syncing, this should really automatically be handled
.: More multisite options
.: Grouping of tables for new users

I really thank everyone for the support it really is motivating, if anyone would like to help with the development pm me.

[miamiman]

Would somebody please advise if Mr. Naveen Gavini's multi-site extension will be included in the 1.6 core? Really need a solution to this! Thanks.

[ianmac]

Would somebody please advise if Mr. Naveen Gavini's multi-site extension will be included in the 1.6 core? Really need a solution to this! Thanks.

It will not be.

Ian

[miamiman]

Would somebody please advise if Mr. Naveen Gavini's multi-site extension will be included in the 1.6 core? Really need a solution to this! Thanks.

It will not be.

Ian

Thank you Ian,

Sorry to hear that.

Will the project be available as an extension to 1.6? Is it stable? Has there been any further development since August? Naveen Gavini mentioned that he may set it up for 1.5. Has there been any development on that idea?

[ianmac]

Would somebody please advise if Mr. Naveen Gavini's multi-site extension will be included in the 1.6 core? Really need a solution to this! Thanks.

It will not be.

Ian

Thank you Ian,

Sorry to hear that.

Will the project be available as an extension to 1.6? Is it stable? Has there been any further development since August? Naveen Gavini mentioned that he may set it up for 1.5. Has there been any development on that idea?

I don't know the answer to that question. You'll have to speak to Naveen about that. It certainly seems like a compelling feature that we'll want to incubate for a future release.

Ian

[redrings]

Sorry to hear that multisite will not be part of core in 1.6, been waiting on this for a while to do faculty personal homepages from a single install. Hopefully this will be released as an extension for 1.6 stable.

[hiwaar]

I am very interested in your work. could you please drop me a quick mail
Thanks

[rjareno]

Congratulations on your 1.0 release! That's what I need.

Are you going to keep on developing it? I think I found a hole security and I want to know if it will be fixed. If I create a joomla and in this joomla I install multisite component I can see others Joomlas and manage them.

Thanks

[Mavashi]

Hi guys,

Im working in a project thats works similar that JMS called mtwMultiple. It replicates multiple sites with a custom configuration (next versions) and 3rd party extensions support too. You can test it here: http://extensions.joomla.org/index.php? ... 4&Itemid=2

Hi, maguirre!
Is your project alive?
Extension has been unpublished from extensions.joomla.org...

[simonegiusti]

I installed Gavini solution and it is what I was looking for.
I don't know what JRoute is and I am not able to specify to correct url to reach a sub-site.

Main site url is: www.domain.com/joomla
What url have I to specify for e multisites portals ??
How can a user reach these portal or administer it

Is there something like www.domain.com/joomla?multiportalid=xxx ??

[miamiman]

Would anyone care to comment on the Multisite option offered by JMS2WIN?

What are the advantages / disadvantages of JMS2WIN vs Gavini's proposed 1.6 solution?

[simonegiusti]

I installed Gavini solution and it is what I was looking for.
I don't know what JRoute is and I am not able to specify to correct url to reach a sub-site.

Main site url is: http://www.domain.com/joomla
What url have I to specify for e multisites portals ??
How can a user reach these portal or administer it

Is there something like http://www.domain.com/joomla?multiportalid=xxx ??

any answers??

[simonegiusti]

Ok ... I try again ...

1) I installed multisite extension
2) I create a sub-site

and now I can a user reach this site I created
What shall I wrote in URL ??

[NicholasJohn16]

Is this component still being developed? Any hope of it becoming 1.5 compatible?

This is by far the best multisites solution I've seen. I'd love to use it, but don't really wanna wait for 1.6.

[vsbill]

Any further word on a 1.5 version????

[pgc]

Hey All!

I have this installed and working on the joomla side, but have no idea what is going on from the apche/IP side of things.

I can't seem to find any documentation on that. I have 13 sites that I need to publish and this looks like the winner....if I can get the rest of the setup info.

Thanks!

[thewatcher]

The Wordpress is already in multisite.

Nice to see the multi-site version. I'm looking forward to see it in action.

[NicholasJohn16]

I just installed this on a RC1 and it's not working. I get 404 and other errors when trying to access the slave sites. Is there any hope/plans for future development? This is an amazing component that I'd love to see developed more.

[cyberwizzard]

I've been anxious to see multi-site support as well in Joomla 1.6. I've read numerous people voicing concerns about performance issues but all of my sites are small so I'd rather simplify maintenance and administration using something like this.

However, it looks like after the release of the 'stable' build no further work has been done on this component. The ideas of the design are fairly straightforward though so it should be possible to update the component to work in the current 1.6 branch (whether or not I will update everything depends on the amount of time it would take me).

As an initial observation the plugin is very broken atm. One major issue I have is that it replaces two Joomla files, obviously using out-dated versions. Ergo: do not install in Joomla 1.6 RC1 because you will only break things...

Edit: the code would actually benefit from a bit of modifying to fix some potential issues with performance and security.

Edit 2: The database layout changed breaking the plugin for all virtual sites. That explains the 404 component errors in virtual sites.

Edit 3: I actually have the plugin sort of working again in Joomla 1.6 RC1. I made minor fixes to remove PHP warnings and some bigger ones to get everything working again. I haven't tested component sharing yet nor linking some tables (like users) to the main site but stand-alone virtual sites seem to work.

Edit 4: I rewrote the installer logic to attempt to patch Joomla (2 files) instead of blindly replacing them by possibly obsolete versions (4 files). Also the URL matching to find the correct configuration should be faster (no more directory listings on each page view) and more reliable ('scary' characters are now removed).

Edit 5: User sharing works so I assume the other table sharing still works as well. Module sharing seems to work fine as well.

Edit 6: Component sharing seems to be partially broken: the virtual sites see the components but their administration panels do not have menu items to actually configure them. I tested using PhocaGallery to see if manually modifying the URL to access the admin controls would allow me to configure the component on both a master and virtual site - this is working.
The problem seems to come from the fact that MultiSite was written when 'components' was still a table in the database, the admin links are now part of the 'menu' table (which does not get populated for virtual sites atm).

[cyberwizzard]

Version 1.1 of the plugin (with my modifications) can be downloaded on my site: http://cyberwizzard.nl/site/downloads/v ... /7/11.html

What works: installation and removal, creating/editting/removing virtual sites, installing+sharing modules, creating content and other things on virtual sites, linking things like users and groups to another site, installing plugins and components.

What does not work: sharing plugins and components - the virtual sites do not get the administrator menus which makes it hard to configure components and plugins. They do function though: if you don't mind inserting your own URL magic to access the panels you can set things up for virtual sites.

Changelog version 1.1:

• Numerous fixes to comply with PHP 5.3, mostly by-reference warnings.
• Fixed a couple of bugs with missing class members
• Updated SQL schema to Joomla 1.6 RC1 for virtual sites.
• The framework.php file is no longer modified.
• Updated installer to only modify defines.php and perform an actual patch instead of a blind file replace from the package.
• Installer now installs an index.html to hide the entries in 'config'
• Updated uninstaller to only replace defines.php with the backup version on both the front- and backend.
• URL to configuration name conversion is now using a file as cache to speed up potential lookups and provides filtering to get rid of 'scary' characters. The fuzzy domain matching is preserved.
• Fixed potential inserting of overlapping prefixes: removing of a site would remove tables from the other overlapping site as well.
• Fixed a nasty bug where reloading the panel during deleting would remove the *entire* database instead of just the virtual site.
• Added a fail-back check to the administrator side defines.php in case the installation fails: this allows the admin side of Joomla to keep functioning (so the component can be removed to fix the frontend).
• Rewrote installer with lots of error checking and using the Joomla 1.6 installation class style. Removed both old install and uninstall scripts.

Tested on Joomla 1.6 RC1:

• Installation
• Removal
• Creating new virtual site
• Removing virtual site
• Linking users and groups on virtual site to master site
• Installing new modules and configuring plus using it on both master and virtual sites
• Installing new components and plugins plus using them. Configuration is not possible because the administrator buttons are missing in virtual domains.

[bharatsoftpro]

joomla 1.6.x have a ability to make multisite very easy way e.g http://expoglobalonline.com here single joomla managing 200+ site.
minor core enhancement similar to language.

[cyberwizzard]

Care to elaborate on that? The site that you linked seems to have nothing to do with multi-site management under Joomla and afaik its still not a core functionality.

FYI: WordPress has this built into the core and it can be activated with a single line in the configuration; something which I think is needed for Joomla as well.