Thread

Trying to decide if I should use MSM or 2 completely separate EE installs. The sites are for one organization, but both sites are very different from each other:

Site A - Online version of their monthly magazine

Site B - Organization’s main/public site

The sites would share little info except it would be nice if site B could access, say the last 6 months of articles from Site A. Each site may even may need different 3rd party plugin functionality.

What are opinions on using MSM in this case? Or should I stick with keeping them 100% separate?

Thanks,
J.

I would choose MSM if you would otherwise need two separate licenses. That would cost you $100 less. But if you only need one license (not sure what de deal is here) I would go with a single install, sub root. And an index.php themes- and images-folder on both domains. No need to install EE twice if you don’t want to.

Thanks for the reply, Martin.

Not sure if you or anyone else can help, but in not ever having used MSM, from the technical aspect and the database side, I assume everything is on one database, but are all sites channels etc. stored together, or is there some degree of separation? Share tables, separate tables etc.? If for some reason, I needed to export one site or separate the sites, is that possible?

If a 3rd party add-on doesn’t support MSM, does that mean I just purchase it twice and add it to each site? Is the control panel separated to that degree?

Finally, if I have an existing EE site, can I import it to MSM, or does it have to start from scratch?

I wish EL had kept the pre-sales thread open, as I feel this is what this is.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dang, no one?

So, now that EL charges $49 a month for any support, does that mean I have to pay EL for the privilege to get more MSM info? Basically pay to ask for more info so I can pay to purchase a product??

EL, I humbly ask that you at least re-open the Pre-Sales area. How are people supposed to get in touch with you for sales questions?
I have an EE license already, I want to add another site, I would like a couple specific MSM questions answered that aren’t clear to me from the documentation. I am a customer who has paid money and wishes to spend more.

I have little experience with MSM. I can confirm everything is in one database. Some stuff such as member data can be easily shared and I would think that channels should be able to be shared too. Nut I’m not completely sure. There may also be add-ons for this purpose.

I feel the same way about the support not being a service anymore.

What you could try as an alternative is contact sales via e-mail with your questions.

Another option is this. You get a free support for a limited time (one month I think) if you buy something. I upgraded a license for $50 and got that. So that’s an idea.

Good luck 😉

My understanding with addons is that the ones that say they don’t support MSM do, in fact work on both sites. The difference being that they share settings across the sites rather than having separate settings for each. This may not be true for all, so you’d need to check with the addon creator for specifics - EllisLab does not support Third Party addons.

Sites do share databases, but you can pull things easily in to each using the site=“second-site” parameter.

I can’t answer the export database section, but you won’t need to start from scratch. You just drop MSM in and start adding extra sites.