Thread

I am a total newbie, so I apologize if these questions has been asked before. This is what I need to know before I purchase EE:

I need 3 weblogs:

Nr 1 will have one topic (e.g. *dogs*) with gallery. It has to be a login/register form on the front page (index) before people can enter the site.

Nr 2 is a *personal* blog. I need a login form here too (only for a certain member group like “personal”) on the index/front page.

Nr 3 is a *design/art* page where a certain group can login/register on the front page. I may want to have available templates for sale, not sure of that yet. At least I will need a gallery here too.

So my questions is:

1. What package do I purchase? (Personal/Commercial)

2. For 3 weblogs I will need “Multiple Site Manager” too, right? Or does this come in Full version EE itself?

3. Is it possible to have the index.php on *all* 3 weblogs as a login/register page? (See example *form*: http://oliverlove.com/)

4. And if so, what do I call the “Main index page” if I have to use Index.php for the form in all the blogs? Is there a tutorial/plugin…etc somewhere for this *form* shown above?

5. Is it possible to have e.g. http://www.somelink.com/blog1 for blog Nr 1.
  http://www.somelink.com/blog2 for nr 2 etc…..or does it have to be http://www.somelink.com/site/blog1 if the installation is on http://www.somelink.com/site?

And the last:

6. Can member group in “Personal” also be signed/added in to the *dog* member group? What I think I mean is can a member get access to all the blogs when signed in with the same username?

Maybe it sounds confusing, but I hope you understand what I mean:-)  I am a little confused too:-)

Hope to hear from you soon! Can`t wait to get my pages up running:-)

MissJ

That is a bit confusing.  Let me parse it down some.  You only need one copy of EE, I’m thinking.  All these weblogs and sites are related/same templates, right?  For the most part?  All off the same domain name?  If so, only one copy of EE.  If you are sure you are selling stuff, then it needs to be commercial.  Otherwise, you can upgrade to commercial later. 

As for member groups… you probably only need one login page—and then test to see what member group people are in before giving them access to the page. 

Question 5—it should be possible with template groups to do what you want. 

6—Hmm.  You can give Personal all the rights of Dog member group if you want, but no, no secondary member groups yet. 

Hope that helps!

That is a bit confusing.  Let me parse it down some.  You only need one copy of EE, I’m thinking.  All these weblogs and sites are related/same templates, right?  For the most part?  All off the same domain name?  If so, only one copy of EE.  If you are sure you are selling stuff, then it needs to be commercial.  Otherwise, you can upgrade to commercial later. 

As for member groups… you probably only need one login page—and then test to see what member group people are in before giving them access to the page. 

Question 5—it should be possible with template groups to do what you want. 

6—Hmm.  You can give Personal all the rights of Dog member group if you want, but no, no secondary member groups yet. 

Hope that helps!

Let`s see if I get this straight myself:-)

First, here is my example/domain: http://example.org/mjs/

I was hoping I could have http://example.org/personal and
http://example.org/dogs

and not http://example.org/mjs/personal

if possible. (They will all have 3 different css` but the same templates)

So, ONE innstallation of Personal EE AND Multiple Site Manager is what I need? And I can manage them all from one page?

And, where do I find the form template for the login/register/notify etc page as seen in the example?

Phew…..trying hard here, thanks for any help!!!!

Can someone please answer my questions so that I know what to do? Will EE work for my project or do I need to find something else. I undestand that I can have one copy of EE, but that`s all I know so far.

And here is something I don`t understand. (From the post above): Just one login page?.....How do people know what site/blog they login to when I will have 3 blogs with different links (personal, dogs, design)?

I need a login page on the front of *each blog*, isn`t that possible? (So that people can login to the page they are viewing.I don`t want to add people signing up for the “dog blog” and send them to the “personal blog” for e.g).

Thankful for any help and suggestions!!

It sounds like you are a bit confused, or I am.

You only need the multiple site manager if you run mulitple sites! that is basically sites on different domains (even then the MSM isn’t needed, but it makes things easier to manage).

Most sites have one login page, and you can manulally assign a member to one specfic group which means you can hide specific content from them. Or you have some kind of splash page which gives them a choice of three sub sites to visit?

What I don’t understand is you seem to want one domain, but have three entirely independant sections? In that case maybe the MSM is suitable for you, but it’s quite unusual to have one site that has three independant sections that have no relationship to each other.

Have a look at the user documents for how the login form works http://expressionengine.com/docs/modules/member/login_form.html

Thanks!! Yes, it sounds confusing, sorry about that.

I have one domain: http://example.org/
On this domain I can have as many sites I want. I only have to add the name on my site. Like this:

1. e.g.http://example.org/mjs   (personal site) - (site 1)
2 e.g.http://example.org/dogs   (dog site) - (site 2)
3. e.g.http://example.org/design   (design site) - (site 3)

a) They *all* need a loginform on the front page/index:
  When the link is e.g.http://example.org/mjs, people can log in to mjs/personal site.
  When the link is e.g.http://example.org/dogs, people can log in to the dogs section etc.

b) I need a Photo gallery on 2 of them.

c) Every site will have their own group of templates; (design (css), index, archives, links, entries etc….)

d) I need to manage them all in one place (from 1 control panel) and 2 people will have access to it.

So, can I buy 1 licence/copy of EE Personal for this or do I need 3? (One for each blog/site)

And to be able to manage them all from one control panel I will need the MSM?

Thanks for your help:-)

Sorry for being so confused regarding this! Maybe I should just get 1 copy/licence of EE and go from there.
Thanks for helping me:-)

Have you tried contacting the sales team at EE, i’m not really sure why they haven’t responded to this post yet, but they usually are very quick over email.

It would be possible to do what you wanted with just one install of EE, by setting up a different template group for each “site”.  But this would mean your members are shared over each site.  You would also lose that extra level of templates since you are using the template groups to setup each site.

I don’t know much about the MSM, so i can’t comment on it’s features or how it effects EE licensing.

However there is an old (unsupported) way to have mulitple sites with one license of EE which you might want to investigate…
http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Running_Multiple_Domains_or_Subdomains_or_Subsites/

You could always try buying just one license for now, try it out and get used to EE, and then buy the MSM or additional licenses as you need them.

Have you tried contacting the sales team at EE, i’m not really sure why they haven’t responded to this post yet, but they usually are very quick over email.

It would be possible to do what you wanted with just one install of EE, by setting up a different template group for each “site”.  But this would mean your members are shared over each site.  You would also lose that extra level of templates since you are using the template groups to setup each site.

I don’t know much about the MSM, so i can’t comment on it’s features or how it effects EE licensing.

However there is an old (unsupported) way to have mulitple sites with one license of EE which you might want to investigate…
http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Running_Multiple_Domains_or_Subdomains_or_Subsites/

You could always try buying just one license for now, try it out and get used to EE, and then buy the MSM or additional licenses as you need them.

Thank you Joobs! No, I haven`t contacted them, I thought they would respond to these questions here. But it`s ok. Those who are going to set this up for me have put a lot of stress on me to find a system that will work the way I have tried to describe and I have little knowledge of what`s “behind the web pages”. I only make the design to it.

I was contacted by Drupal and they told me that this was possible with their system, but now I have read lots about EE and it just makes me more confused to begin to understand another system. I`ve also tried the Core version just to get used to it. Anyway, I`ll read the link you gave me and I hope I`ll understand more about this:-)

Thanks a lot for your advice!:-)

Hi, MissJ -

I am sorry this got overlooked.  It would be better if you could email sales with the details of the project; how the sites inter-relate (if they do at all) and if you own all of the sites.  From there we can help advise on the best way to handle and any license issues involved.

Thank you!

Hi MissJ,

The Multiple Site Manager is meant to power related internet properties owned by the same company or individual. Here are the three primary questions to ask that will help you know if the MSM is right for you or if you should go with separate installations.

1. Do you own all the sites that will be MSM Powered? If yes, MSM is a good fit.

2. Should all the sites share the same member database? MSM is meant for related Sites. So even if Site A & B are totally separate visually, they will still share the same memberbase. You can have people who register for Site A be automatically redirected to Site A on login and never see Site B, so its possible to separate them. But if long term the Sites need to grow separate from each other, then MSM isn’t a good choice. MSM assumes all your sites will share members forever and ever.

3. Will all the Sites share the same license type? MSM requires that all the Sites share the same license type. You can’t mix Commercial and Personal licenses on the same MSM installation. So if you have 4 Personal Sites and 1 Commercial Site on MSM, then all the licenses need to be Commercial. This is still cheaper then buying 4 Personal and 1 Commercial licenses, its just something to be aware of.

Recommendation: Based on what you need I’d go with a single EE Personal license to start with. Most of your questions you’ll be able to answer better for yourself as you begin to work with EE. Its possible, as others have suggested, that the MSM is simply overkill for what you want to do. I say start with a single EE license/installation and build out one of your Sites as a way to learn EE.

MSM makes it very easy to “split” a single installation into multiple Sites so if you create two of your Sites using EE and find you want better separation you can achieve that with MSM at a later date anyway.

Thank you Leslie for your answers:-) It was very helpful.

Yes, I do own all the sites.

And no, they will not necessarily share the same member database, but if one member of A wants to join B, it should be possible to add them to both sites.

Yes, they will all share the same licence type, peronal licence.

I thought I would need one licence for one blog/site. And since I am going to have 3 sites, I thought I needed 3 licences. But I will try with one single installation first as you suggested and go from there. I just hope it`s possible to separate the blogs and that each site can have its own set of preferences, templates and weblogs.

Thanks again for your help!

Sincerely, MissJ