CMS with multiple site support

[DaveH]

I've still not found a decent CMS which supports multiple sites on single installation. Mainly for my mini-sites.

Any ideas? Think I'll have to invest in writing a bespoke one.

 

[aquanuke]

Not used any CMS for years but how about http://www.xaraya.com/ used to support multi site application on its original fork.

 

[itrends]

What about wordpress MU? Probably already tried that but thought I would mention.

 

[murph]

I use my own custom coded one as i never found anything that was simple enough! The biggest pain i found was updating every few weeks, so it forced me to design a really simple one for my clients that esentially is just a wysiwyg editor in-place.

 

[namdas]

I love drupal for this sort of thing - if you upload the new version (6) to a box, then park your domains on the same login its a breeze.

Basically create a directory in the /sites/ folder for each domain
eg:
domain1.co.uk/
domain2.org.uk/
domain3.net/
and create an empty file called settings.php in each directory. Give write permissions to the folder and settings file, then visit http://domain1.co.uk/install.php , fill in the database details and repeat for each site.

You can either give each site its own database or use one database and use prefixes like domain1_ or domain2_

If you want to share modules or themes across the domains put them in directories under /sites/all

 

[namdas]

Just to say also: although learning your way around a new cms can be a bit of pain, your basically swapping a bit of hard work now for lots later - if you code your own cms you are replicating a lot of work someone else has already done, and if you want to extend it you have to code it yourself.
With a CMS with a good community chances are someone has already made a module to do what you want to do.

 

[stevebrowne]

... although if you want to do something different or out of the ordinary, then it can be a lot quicker and easier with your own code...

 

[namdas]

sorry i have become a bit of an evangelist.. but i reckon i can do it faster with drupal than by hand 99% of the time

 

[davec]

I run a network of around 500 individual sites from a single typo3 core installation. Can be done in a couple of ways, seperate db for each site (which I use as some sites are several thousand pages in size) but running the same core installation, or if the sites are small you can run them all from one db, and setup domain records for each site in the backend.

It can be a little daunting for some and is quite a steep learning curve, but extremely powerful for sites of all sizes.

www.typo3.org
www.typo3.com

 

[bensd]

IMO it depends what size the site is. If you are talking about a typical minisite (3-10 pages) then i find it much easier to hand code in notepad.

 

[Admin]

Typo3 supports it but is a monster to get to learn and use.