multi-site is listed as c5 core feature.
not additional modules or paid feature.
so, imho, there should be a guide doing multisite install on the install docs.
if you look at the thing you'll see all the good bits are nicely centralized in the /concrete directory.
how you choose to use that architecture to centralize your server is up to you. if you want to know how we do ours, yeah - join the hosting partner program.
It's as much to protect you as it us. We already provide free support on concrete5, we're unable to provide free server management support.
thanks for the feedback though, I'm sure if you dig around you'll figure out how to do what you want.
Really? Isn't the point of an open source community that we help each other build things that are useful?
I installed Concrete5 on my home server specifically to examine the multi-site features only to discover that I have to pay $185 to find out how. Or am I missing something?
If you are looking for widespread adoption of what appears to be a great, simple CMS, then reasonable multi-site installation can be a BIG tie breaker for you. No other systems really do it in an easy way.
I'd encourage you to make the "how-to" of a multisite installation publicly available, and let the developer community assist each other with issues through the support forum.
Helping one another is great, but I don't think that means "frz always picks up the tab." A lot of work has gone into concrete5, as you can tell. Our position is we're certainly doing free as in "speech," and we've done a whole lot of free as in "beer". If you'd like some pretzels or a meal to go with your free beer and speech, I'd like some cash to pay the bills with.
If someone /else/ had taken the time to write these whitepapers and I had used our brand protections around "concrete5" to demand they be sold, I'd agree, that'd be pretty cheesy.
But if you want to compare:
ExpressionEngine is not free, and in addition to their core license they sell a "site management console." They are still open source.
MySQL is opensource, it is not free unless you're a college.
on and on and on...
To be honest, there's no magic wand in there, we just describe a unix setup with some clever scripting and symlink. It's not even like we've crippled the good stuff out for some enterprise version like magento just did. (they're open source too)
If you're not interested in the /other/ benefits of joining the hosting partner program, I'd be happy to sell you the two white papers and code samples in there for $95. paypal franz at concrete5 dot org.
To reiterate, I see this type of setup as something only someone in business would need to do, and I don't think I need to lose money so others can make it.
First off, thanks for the work on the Concrete5 system. Obviously without that we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I guess my point was that I agreed with the original post, in that multisites is advertised as a core feature, but the only way to discover how it should be done is to buy the documentation.
Commercial add-on modules to open source products are common (esp with Joomla), but this seems different. I migrated from Joomla to Drupal largely because of the strength of the developer community and their willingness help.
I like the Concrete5 system for its simplicity and ease of use. Consequently, I would love to see it succeed and have its adoption spread. Providing useful instruction to developers is one of the sure-fire ways to do that. I am very new to Concrete5, but I have found the lack of documentation to be a challenge.
Thanks again for your development. I just thought I would offer an opinion in case others felt the same way.
It's not always a popular thing to talk about money but it's still quite useful to have some of it.
I completely get your point, just one question:
How should the core team (and people like me) earn money? I've put quite some time into Concrete5 as well but almost got no money back..
Asking for free stuff is quite easy, building/writing it not really.
We might have to start a discussion about ways how to earn money with Concrete5. If I get a good answer to this, I'd write at least two tutorials each month..
Yeah i hear ya.. and thanks for speaking up, I'm with remo, I wish this was star trek and everything were free... without the unitard outfits tho..
I dunno, the reality is - multisite configurations are complicated beasts that require system administrator types who know what they're doing. Even with our whitepapers, there's gonna be questions, there's gonna be system/use specific challenges. By charging for access to the whitepaper, and clumping people willing to pay in a private forum where they can discuss openly with one another, we reduce the number of people who can get deeply in trouble and then ask for help here in the public forums, where we feel at least somewhat indebted to try to help...
Well, I'm a sysadmin and a PHP developer and I would just like to know if this was indeed planned in the system.
Noticeably the site is configured in "/config" . In Drupal for example, they use "sites/default" for the default site and "sites/monsterunderyourbed.com" for specific site configurations. Which makes it perfect for ISPs and other hosting partners to script around with.
Are there any such hidden options, so I can use the same root directory for all installations or would I have to create a bunch of symbolic links to emulate a separate "configuration environment" for each site?
I run a football club with 39 teams at all ages from under6 to Seniors. I have started to deploy concrete5 so that the individual team managers can run their own 'micro-site' without me having to do all the work.
Would a techno-idiot like me be capable of doing what is necessary to have all my managers starting off from the same place? If so I am almost willing to pay for the documentation, but I'm a bit worried that it will be too tech for my capability.http://u9leopards.hawkwellfc.com... is an example of the sort of thing I expect the managers to do.
our hosting partners get access to a white paper on how we centralized our own install, and yes, it involves symbolic links.
a single install running multiple sites is also quite possible, and really just comes down to how you want to architect the sites as much as anything.. a developer guide for that would be much appreciated.
yes, we've setup environments like that - no its not a simple switch to flip and it will likely require some technical know how about webservers depending on what the URLS should look like
I'm sure you're best kept in the hosting program! The concrete5 Team manages those servers and you're good to go. I'm sure it's much cheaper than paying a sysadmin to do all the custom work for you ;) + They will update your installation which is included in the price as far as I know.
The main problem with hosting multiple sites and implementing CMS systems is upgrading.
How does C5 stack to other systems in terms of upgrading multiple sites? Is it strictly the "concrete" directory that gets changed, or is it more?
Let's just put it this way, I'm considering C5 for a project that will need to run multiple sites with a common upgrade and I will be extending it as well.
Upgrading PHP program installations can be a pain in the ass, especially if you have a lot of sites.
yes, the core files are in /concrete and as a developer if you need to rethink any of those you can make the same file a level up and concrete5 is smart enough to use your file instead of the core. For small version updates, thats often all that changes..
That being said, sometimes bigger version updates require database changes, or do touch the default themes/content we ship with. In those cases you'll have to do some site specific tweaking.
Silly question here but when you talk about multi-sites, are you also refering to installing C5 on addon domains and sub-domains?
I am having issues with installing in sub-domains and addon domains (page not found when trying to access dashboard) and not sure if this discussion is linked to my situation.
I have a question related to this feature.
Multi-site means that I can have, trought the same database, more sites and use each blocks, themes, single pages like a platform component shared within all? Or I must have a database for each site and use the scripts provided from the support for create the right env?
if you want to have a few domains pointing to a single concrete5 install, and for those domains to stay in the URL field when you visit through them, check out the domain mapper in our marketplace. It's not really a multi-site manager, you're sharing the same users and file assets, but its great for problems like a corporate public site and extranet powered with the same backend.
if you want to have many concrete5 sites for your clients but still be able to manage upgrades easily, and you're doing your own hosting, you want the concrete5 for cPanel/whm app: http://www.concrete5.org/services/msm-information/...
For those of you who are interested in this topic, the following blog post describes how I approached this challenge given the tips in this thread and elsewhere:
how you choose to use that architecture to centralize your server is up to you. if you want to know how we do ours, yeah - join the hosting partner program.
It's as much to protect you as it us. We already provide free support on concrete5, we're unable to provide free server management support.
thanks for the feedback though, I'm sure if you dig around you'll figure out how to do what you want.