I’m increasingly confused about the change in policy.
There hasn’t been a change in license policy. The only change is that the old method of running multiple domains is no longer supported.
1) I can run as many domains as my server will handle using the old and now unsupported way.
Yes.
2) To do it the supported way, I have purchase a license of MSM, which will count towards any volume discounts.
Yes.
3) If I want to manage more than three sites with MSM, I have to purchase additional licenses (of what, exactly?), which do not count towards the volume discount. Or does it mean that if I want to handle more than three sites with MSM on a single install of EE, I’ll need to accumulate as many MSM licenses as needed to “cover” all the sites and these licenses do count towards the volume discount?
You purchase Additional Sites for the Multiple Site Manager. Individual Site purchases do not count toward the Volume Discount Program. You only need one Multiple Site Manager per EE installation. That gets you 3 Sites total where a Site is a discrete set of weblogs, templates, and associated preferences on your installation. You can purchase Additional Sites as needed.
I think (mind you, THINK) I understand this. If I’m right, instead of complaining…. it’s a great deal.
Let’s look at it this way: I have, say, 5 sites on my server I wanted to run. All are personal licenses. Before, I could try to do the old way, which seemed a bit flakey. Or I could buy 5 personal licenses. Now, I buy ONE personal license, the MSM, and two of the site licenses. Instead of coughing up 500 bucks, now I have to pay 100 for the personal license, 80 for the MSM, and 50 for the two extra sites. That gives me 5 “seperate” sites, all personal license, all for the price of 230—less than half the cost of buying 5 licenses before.
So it’s not that bad, really. If, that is, I understand it properly. A big if….
I think (mind you, THINK) I understand this. If I’m right, instead of complaining…. it’s a great deal.
Let’s look at it this way: I have, say, 5 sites on my server I wanted to run. All are personal licenses. Before, I could try to do the old way, which seemed a bit flakey. Or I could buy 5 personal licenses. Now, I buy ONE personal license, the MSM, and two of the site licenses. Instead of coughing up 500 bucks, now I have to pay 100 for the personal license, 80 for the MSM, and 50 for the two extra sites. That gives me 5 “seperate” sites, all personal license, all for the price of 230—less than half the cost of buying 5 licenses before.
So it’s not that bad, really. If, that is, I understand it properly. A big if….
I think (mind you, THINK) I understand this. If I’m right, instead of complaining…. it’s a great deal.
It was obvious from the date of the announcement that going the MSM route would be less costly than doing multiple installs, but not inexpensive enough to significantly cut into the sales of full versions, but to state the obvious—MSM or not—EE’s pricing puts it out of reach of some potential users.
The sky isn’t falling and I’m tired of repeating myself, but I can’t afford all the license fees to switch to a fully supported configuration and I know of other EE users who are in the same boat. In my case, there are more than just pecuniary factors at play, but the net result is that I will not continue to run EE in multi-site mode and instead migrate any “excess” sites to EE Core or back to Drupal.
The sky isn’t falling and I’m tired of repeating myself, but I can’t afford all the license fees to switch to a fully supported configuration and I know of other EE users who are in the same boat. In my case, there are more than just pecuniary factors at play, but the net result is that I will not continue to run EE in multi-site mode and instead migrate any “excess” sites to EE Core or back to Drupal.
This is an interesting perspective. Here’s another take though. Apple has a version of its operating system called Mac OS X Server. What it really does is leverage a great deal of the Unix underpinnings of Mac OS X and makes it easier and more powerful to run certain services on it, like web servers and directory services. Makes what is already possible more doable and gives new abilities too. They also officially support running Mac OS X Server for these servers and services, instead of trying to support people editing configuration files and using the Terminal/NetInfo.
The Multiple Site Manager is very similar. ExpressionEngine is already able to run many sites and subdomains by default. However, you have to be knowledgeable to really get it running well. We do not intend to change this ability, and we have stated as much. However, what we have done is released the Multiple Site Manager, which makes it more doable, more powerful. And in the future, it is going to make running multiple sites even better with new features. This is why we have called it an Expansion. It expands what is already possible with ExpressionEngine but makes it better. Also, since this is a much better and improved way of doing multiple sites, it is now the officially supported way of running multiple sites on one installation for our company. Going by our support record, we likely will still help you out doing it the old way (as Apple’s support forums/resources help Unix geeks), but there is always a need for an official stance to keep ourselves from being abused.
Now, we had long, hard discussions about pricing this. In our view it is a premium product and there were dozens of ways to price it. We decided on what we felt was a good balance between our interests and yours. If everyone was ecstatic with the pricing, then there is an adage that you have priced yourself too low. If one goes compare the price of OS X to OS Server, you see a similar jump up in price.
If you think that us releasing this new expansion and pricing it to be a premium product, while not removing the original ability, is reason enough to move away from ExpressionEngine and EllisLab, than that is your perspective and I doubt I can argue against. Kind of confuses me though.
If you think that us releasing this new expansion and pricing it to be a premium product, while not removing the original ability, is reason enough to move away from ExpressionEngine and EllisLab, than that is your perspective and I doubt I can argue against. Kind of confuses me though.
Like I said, I understand your business rationale. You can’t make everybody happy, that’s all there is to it. There is a misunderstanding with regards to my situation and intention, though. EE is a great product and I’m not turning my back on it.
However, as you rightfully pointed out, EE’s old multi-site capability has some serious shortcomings and I have been fighting them every step of the way. Ultimately, I compromised my own design objectives for the sake of moving all my sites to EE. In addition to that, I’ve long struggled with emulating features that are trivially available in Drupal and accepted a loss of features and usability as a price of admission to EE.
I’ve recently begun a process of assessing what I’m using my sites for, what I’d like to use them for, and if EE was or is the most appropriate software to run each site on. There are complex decisions involved, but coincidentally for each of my EE installs there’s one site that’s proven to be a good match for EE and I’ll leave them on their full install of EE. For some sites Drupal was the better match and these I’ll move back; for the remainder, I can either wait until the old multi-site feature breaks or I’ll remove the headache of maintaining a smokescreen between multiple sites by moving extraneous sites to EE Core.
To be absolutely clear about this, EE is a great product. However,there’s the adage “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” EE is not the best choice or even a permissible choice for all uses and the details surrounding MSM have brought this into focus for me. I was wrong making the design fit the tool, rather than using the tools best suited to implement a design. To be even clearer, I’m not moving some tiny sites nobody ever looks at to EE Core or off EE altogether because you introduce a premium product and yet retain an original capability, but because neither MSM nor multiple installs solve all my problems or solve enough of them at a price I can afford.
I think (mind you, THINK) I understand this. If I’m right, instead of complaining…. it’s a great deal.
Let’s look at it this way: I have, say, 5 sites on my server I wanted to run. All are personal licenses. Before, I could try to do the old way, which seemed a bit flakey. Or I could buy 5 personal licenses. Now, I buy ONE personal license, the MSM, and two of the site licenses. Instead of coughing up 500 bucks, now I have to pay 100 for the personal license, 80 for the MSM, and 50 for the two extra sites. That gives me 5 “seperate” sites, all personal license, all for the price of 230—less than half the cost of buying 5 licenses before.
So it’s not that bad, really. If, that is, I understand it properly. A big if….
After I finally understood the licensing structure of the MSM, this is how I understood it as well and it makes complete sense to me…however, I don’t run 50 other websites, so I can see that side as well.
I think (mind you, THINK) I understand this. If I’m right, instead of complaining…. it’s a great deal.
Let’s look at it this way: I have, say, 5 sites on my server I wanted to run. All are personal licenses. Before, I could try to do the old way, which seemed a bit flakey. Or I could buy 5 personal licenses. Now, I buy ONE personal license, the MSM, and two of the site licenses. Instead of coughing up 500 bucks, now I have to pay 100 for the personal license, 80 for the MSM, and 50 for the two extra sites. That gives me 5 “seperate” sites, all personal license, all for the price of 230—less than half the cost of buying 5 licenses before.
So it’s not that bad, really. If, that is, I understand it properly. A big if….
After I finally understood the licensing structure of the MSM, this is how I understood it as well and it makes complete sense to me and seems like a good deal…however, I don’t run 50 other websites, so I can see that side as well.
After I finally understood the licensing structure of the MSM, this is how I understood it as well and it makes complete sense to me and seems like a good deal…however, I don’t run 50 other websites, so I can see that side as well.
The issue that I have is not that I run 50 other websites but that,
Thus, when you end up with a set of 10 or so template_groups as 10 or so subdomains, the cost is prohibitive; then multiply that by 3 domains and you’ll see what I mean.
My original question concerned whether I can use MSM to drive the 3 domains AND use the old method to set the 10 template_groups as a 10 subdomains ..
and none of that is about more than 3 websites ...
