Installing One Joomla for multiple websites

[mayodele]

I am not sure if I am making sense but please help me out if you understand what I am trying to do. Is it possible to install one Joomla CMS for multiple websites using different Joomla designed templates but using the same components, modules, content and plug-in.

Example, if you go to Yahoo.com and its sub domains, all the components like login, news portal, the user login, the forum etc... for www.yahoo.com and groups.yahoo.com and travels.yahoo.com, finance.yahoo.com are all linked together. Although you have go to www.yahoo.com but mine is a little bit different because you have to point your web browser to different website name.

This is the scenario; I have 5 registered websites i.e. www.baby.com, www.music.com, www.fashion.com, www.movies.com and www.allwebsites.com. I want to install Joomla on www.allwebsites.com but with multiple templates so that when users point their browser to www.baby.com, it will redirect them to baby.allwebsites.com using the template that I have pre designed for the baby websites.

Now these are the million dollar questions a. What is the best way to achieve this?

What I am thinking is to create a sub-folder under www.allwebsites.com, install Joomla cms with multiple templates on the www.allwebsites.com, create my entire category for each websites and point each category to different template. Set a redirection on www.baby.com to point to baby.allwebsites.com or

Install Joomla on www.allwebsites.com, install another Joomla CMS inside baby.allwebsites.com and set a redirect on www.baby.com to point to baby.allwebsites.com (issues, have to do multiple configuration, users will have to register on each websites, have to install components over and over again) or

Install Joomla CMS on www.allwebsites.com with multiple templates, create a sub domain on www.allwebsites.com, category on www.allwebsites.com, assign each category to each templates, point www.baby.com to the sub domain i.e. baby.allwebsites.com.

Please help me, what is the best method to achieve this and what Joomla Components or modules are available to make this a success. Thanks

[imanickam]

Review the extension Virtual Domains - http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... sites/7557. It is an interesting extension. I am not suggesting that this is the way to go.

[mayodele]

Thanks for your input, I actually reviewed virtual domain last night, installed it locally on my wamp server testing this component. It is not working and it might be because I am using a fake domain name but I will test it in a live domain today


Let me explain further, I have already created the Joomla packages that i want locally on my machine but when I was creating the websites, I installed Joomla five times, installed necessary components in each Joomla Installation which makes me have 5 different databases, 5 different account setup, 5 different blogs and forum, but now I want to go live and I am wondering if it is possible to just install one Joomla CMS, load all 4 different already made template in 4 different folders and let all of them use juse one Joomla login, one forum, one blogs etc.. I hope its clear. Please help

[NachoRegal]

I don't have the answer.

However if it is only the template you need to change you could probably write a simple extension or do a very simple core hack that changed the template depending on the subdomain.

If you wanted correspondence emails to come from separate places or change behaviour depending on the subdomain then that would be rather difficult I would imagine.

Not sure if thats a helpful suggestion or not.

Good luck!

[mayodele]

Thanks so much John, I have been searching all night looking for an answer and yet I have no real solution.

I am doing some testing now on my wamp server and will post my result in some hours

[mayodele]

My results are in. After doing all my research, I realized that each Joomla template have their own defined structure and module position. It will be really difficult to merge that and also looking at the folder structure of Joomla, it will not be possible to have Joomla installation the way I want it.

Just curious, is it possible to point www.baby.com (registered domain) to a Joomla template in www.allwebsites.com but the web link will remain as www.baby.com without changing, in that case the user will think he is on www.baby.com but at the backend, it’s actually a template inside www.allwebsites.com/babytemplate.

Please advice.

[mayodele]

Wow I think this using my hosting company redirection combined with Virtual Domains might work. I am going to test that right now

In this case, my clients can go to www.baby.com and the virtual domain inside my Joomla CMS will point it to a template. To the user, they are on www.baby.com but to me and my crew, they are actually working from www.allwebsites.com

I will post my result before weekend, thanks to everyone in advance

[mayodele]

Resolved - One Joomla Installation, Multiple Domains

Park multiple domain name on your hosting company i.e. register those domain names, let all those domains sit in the same directory as the main domain.

Install Joomla CMS in your domain in the root directory or the folder you want, point the other entire domain names to the root or the folder you installed Joomla.

Create a Section and Category for your new Domain, add article to your new domain section, category. Set one of your articles as front page and make sure it’s like link to the main title menu.

When you create the menu item, it should automatically create a menu module for it, if there is no menu module, go and copy one of the main modules and rename to the new domain menu.


Set the main template to a template that you are not going to use at all for your websites

On the index page of that default domain, add this redirection link to the index.php file.

<?php

$domain = $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"];
if (($domain == "baby.com") ||
($domain == "www.baby.com")) {

header("location: http://www.baby.com/home.html");

}

?>

<?php

$domain = $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"];
if (($domain == "fashion.com") ||
($domain == "www.fashion.com")) {

header("location: http://www.fashion.com/fashionhome.html");

}

?>

If you have multiple domains, add more redirection link to point to those domains. As you can see from the above example, Joomla was installed on www.allwebsites.com, on the index.php page of the default domain, the first redirection is says if a user type www.baby.com or baby.com, it should redirect to www.baby.com/home.html. Same applies to fashion.com

The link says home.html because I have setup my Joomla to use user friendly names on my url.

Point your domain to your web browser and voila you have multiple websites created with one Joomla Installation. Now you can just use one components for multiple stuff, create forum, by the way I do not need any special component to do this, thanks

[loophole]

I have a similar setup with several domains. It works beautifully, until the cache is enabled. Once that happens all the domains pull up the same main website.