Thread

Hi the MSM seems like it will be the perfect tool for the next stage of the project I am working on.  (The project was extended due to a fantastic reception of the first stage which included converting from a custom cms to Expression Engine, and stretching Expression Engine to the breaking point in places to provide very flexible functionality for site editors in an easy to use way)

The organization I am working for (in development (microfinance, multicultural education, and the like), not multi-level marketing as it may sound like) has a distributed network of independent centers which operate independently of one another, but must work together (a node doesn’t make a very good network and networking is core to the organization’s activities)

I created a website for the Tokyo node of this network, and now the organization wants me to create a website for the Asia Pacific region of this network, drawing information from the Tokyo node, and providing other nodes in the region the ability to have a site using expression engine which would also share information (and draw information from) the regional site.  The regional site will be in English, but the Tokyo site is in English and Japanese.  This is accomplished through the use of path.php variables and fields with short names such as pro_en_body, pro_ja_body for the programs weblog in the site.  I would like to provide the ability to also have other languages (this is crucial) to other sites in the network, but draw just the english content into the regional site.  It seems like this would be possible fairly easily in MSM but I want to confirm before I buy.

Could I for example, have a template in the regional site that drew the fields news_en_body, title, news_en_excerpt from the news weblog in all sites, while the news weblog in the Japan site would also have and use the fields: news_ja_body, news_ja_title, news_ja_excerpt and the Korean site would have news_ko_body, news_ko_title, news_ko_exceprt.  Other sites could potentially have more than the two languages, but as long as the fields drawn on by the regional site are there the regional site could draw on them.  Is this explanation accurate for what MSM can do?

Hey, Bob—

First, let me state that I am still getting my head around the high complexity that can be accomplished with the MSM, but needn’t be.  In your case I think it will be very useful.

Essentially, what you are asking for would be done with the site parameter.  This ultimately allows you incredible flexibility for cross-referencing information from different sites.  You would need to have your path.php variables in all of the path.php files I believe, and the appropriate custom fields for the appropriate weblogs.  The MSM is still so new that there aren’t tutorials on this kind of cross-referencing model, but have a read on that linked page, I think that you’ll see some of the immense possibilities that it allows.

Yeah, I’ve read the whole manual for MSM, the part I’m trying to confirm is this:

I can have different data models in the different sites I am pulling from as long as the fields I am using exist in each of the weblogs I am drawing from, correct?

Example

site2 news fields: a, b, c, d, e, f
site3 news fields: a, b, c, g, h, i
site4 news fields: a, b, c, j, k, l

site draws on all three of these sites, and can safely reference fields a, b, and c Correct?

btw, was going to add a forgotten thanks into that last message, but (in Safari anyway) the edit button gave me an empty textarea to type into instead of getting the text that I typed in previously.  (I recorded a movie of this, and have a 33 Mb quicktime file I can send you if that would be helpful)

If your question is:

{exp:weblog:entries site="site1|site2|site3"}
{foo}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

Will a tag like this parse the {foo} variable for each site’s weblogs as long as they each have a custom field with the short name “foo”, then yes, absolutely.  If you’re asking whether or not the fields are actually shared by the sites, then no.  “foo” on Site 1 would be in a different custom field group, and have its own column in the database versus “foo” on Site 2, etc.

Beautiful thanks, will put in my purchase today.