Thread

I’m been a happy EE user for the past year and a half, and the new Multiple Site Manager looks very promising for my usage. I have a quick question that I need answering before I’m willing to invest in the added functionality.

I’ve been sharing weblogs (sections) across multiple sites for a long time using the old method. I use the same category group for those weblogs, which means I use the same categories on two different sites. From what I’ve read, when I set up a site using the MSM and move my weblogs that belong primarily to to that site (importing), then the category group is duplicated (which I assume means new category ids and everything).

Well, that may be bad, as I have several templates that pull entries from weblogs belonging to both sites (there is a topics or category section of each site that shows all the information from both sites - kind of like a content hub for the family of sites) by referencing the category ids that I’m after. I don’t think this would be possible if the categories are duplicated as my weblogs that live on different sites would be referencing different category ids (again, if I’m reading everything right).

So, is there any way to have two weblogs (each on a different site) reference the same category group? This may already be supported, but I can’t find it anywhere, and it is the only hurdle keeping me from upgrading. Thanks for your help in figuring this out.

Somewhat, Jacob.  Your weblog entries tags and such have a new site= parameter which lets you display from weblog entries on multiple sites.  And of course, the category_group= and/or category= parameters exist as well.  There is also a new relaxed_categories= parameter while allows you to tell EE to be able to dynamically restrict categories without them having to be in the same category group.  But you would need to turn on Category URL titles, and the categories would still be different (at least the URL titles—the names could still be the same).

I’ve amended my post above as when I woke up this morning I realized that I did not describe the relaxed_categories parameter accurately.

Derek,

Thanks for the response. It looks like the relaxed_categories parameter will handle most of the things I may need - I’ll just need to do a serious rethinking of how I handle my category pages. You see, I’m not able to use a lot of Expression Engine’s built in category functionality because my client site requires many of the sub-categories to have multiple parent categories (which isn’t possible from what I understand), and I’m not allowed to simply use the same category name in multiple places because the client fears that the people entering the information will select the sub-category in one place, but not in another - ultimately making it kinda messy and confusing for the end user.

So, what I have to do is set up an array that shows which category ids should be selected when any category shows up in the url (by using segments and a small php function) - I then feed the list of category ids (1|3|4) into my weblog tag - that way, I ensure all proper sub-categories show up regardless of the parent. I’m not happy with it, but it works.

Is there a way to have multiple parent categories?

I’m sorry if this falls outside the realm of the pre-sales forum.

Is there a way to have multiple parent categories?

No, a child category can only have one parent, so your solution of keeping it organized with PHP and setting the right tag parameters seems like a good one.

I’m sorry if this falls outside the realm of the pre-sales forum.

Not at all; it’s a perfectly legitimate question when considering a purchase.