Thread

Hi, thanks all for your help in this forum and answers to my previous questions. I am ready to pull the trigger there is one more question I have. As of today we only plan to run one site, but within 6 months or so I expect we would be ready to run a second site. My question is should I buy MSM now or is it okay just to wait?

I’m concerned that the install/upgrade process to make MSM work would be complicated and require some kind of migration of data and/or confuse the content authors (non-tech folks) with a whole new swath of UI with respect to getting to the particular site they want to publish on. In other words is there another learning curve/training session needed to get them deal with multiple sites. Ideally me as the über-admin would be the only one who is aware of the multiple sites, and the I could just give separate URLs to the content authors that correspond to the separate sites and they would be none the wiser. Make sense? Could you explain how this works?

Also, assuming it is easier to buy it all up front, I don’t seem to be able to add MSM and EE to my cart. Do I need to make two transactions?

Thanks,
Gregory

You can always add the MSM later, so I would recommend buying it when needed.

The installation is a matter of uploading 3 files then setting up your Site.  =)  The only change to the CP would be the addition of the Sites tab and a few preferences in Admin, as well as a breadcrumb with the current Site’s name.

What happens when you try to add both EE and MSM to your cart?

Oh my bad on the cart thing. I didn’t follow all the way through to see the continue shopping link.

So could you answer the question about the user experience for the authors? Since the core version doesn’t have the ability to allow multiple user logins, I am not sre how that looks. Will an author be associated with one of the 3 possible sites and then only see pages and panels associated with their limited privileges and particular site?

Ah, I thought you were only asking how the membership experience would change. =)

Here is how the membership system works.  Membership is installation-wide. But you set up membership groups with the appropriate permissions for your site.  How, a member registers and you put them into the member group with the correct permissions.  You can find a list of those permissions here.

In the control panel, you can restrict what that member sees through those preferences.  On the public pages, you can use template access and/or membership conditionals to control what data any given member or member group can view.

Also, have you watched the ScreenCast? Towards the end it shows you how you set permissions per group, per Site. =)

You can try out the back-end of the MSM, as well as the membership management, with the 30-day hosted demo which would definitely be worth it for you to do. =)