I'll try to keep this brief. I just lost a post here because I waited to long to click submit and now must start all over again.

There are things about JMS that I believe I have a correct understanding of, but need to be certain. I will post those things below. There are things that I do not know, so I will simply explain what I need after that and then ask if JMS has those capabilities.

Things that I believe I understand but would like confirmed:

1. Users are shared between the slave site and master site. Users are even shared between slave sites.
2. Content can be shared between the slave and master site only if it is from a component that JMS has listed with a shared check mark see here
3. Slave sites can have different layouts and different content on different pages, it is the information that gets shared and not the layout.
4. If a certain component and its information is shared, then it is shared and it will show up both on the master site and the slave site.

Now here is what I am working on: I have several slave sites that will act as small websites for clubs or organizations. I would like these clubs to have their own content on their homepage. If the club president writes an article to place on the homepage I would like to make sure it does not get replicated on other clubs' websites. Similarly, if I have a module at the top that shows the highest rated photos, I would like that module to show only photos that come from that specific club. (The master site will show the highest rated content from ALL the slave sites).

So my questions, in order to achieve what I am looking for, are as follows:

1. Even though all content is shared, can the content that users upload affect their site only (i.e. articles that are posted to the front page stay on that clubs front page, photos uploaded by users of that club show up in that club's modules, etc).

I have attached a file to help illustrate a little bit about what we're looking for along with some questions in red that will hopefully make answering this post a little easier.

1) Users can be shared between the website that you have defined as shared.
Not necessarly with the master.
You can also greate different group of websites that only share the users together.
If you say that
Website 2 share the users with website 1
and website 3 share the users with website 1
then website 2 and 3 also share the users together.
The reason is that you share the MySQL tables with the website 1.
Website 2 and Website 3 does not have the users but have a mysql link (view) to the website 1.

2) The content of a website is generally located in the DB.
As each website has its own DB or the same DB with different table prefix, then the content of each website is independent.
The look (/templates directory) can either be shared or specific to each website.
So you can share the same set of look available and select a different default template.
Event when you are using the same "shared" template you can also have specific parameters (params.ini) for the slave site.

4) When sharing some extension, in this case the content of this extension will be the same between the website.
With the "Article Sharing for JMS", it is also possible to read the articles coming from other website and display them with the look of the slave site where it is displayed.
Again, the sharing depends on the way that you share the slave sites.
The master is not necessary shared.
If you have a look with the tutorial video 16, the master is not shared.
Only the slave1 and its children slave sites.

Concerning the club, as the content of each website is totally independent, the club can effectivelly write its own home page and define and setup modules.

The master will NOT show the highest rated content when you consider the club website are totally independent to allow them have their own content.
If you want to have the highest rated content from all the slave site, you probably have to write a specific "multisites highest rated module".
Today, only the "Multisites Content Modules" that include a "multisites latest news" and "multisites newsflash" is able to read articles coming from several website and display the result as merged from the different website. It only works for Joomla 1.5 as well as the "Article Sharing for JMS"

1) False.
When an extension is shared, that means that a content written in a shared extension affect all the slave site. (ie if you share a forum the whatever the website where a post is written, it is displayed in all the website that share the forum).
Concerning the "Article Sharing for JMS" or the "Multisites Contact" they does not works like the "sharing of extensions". The are able to read articles or contact from any website defined in JMS Multisites.
So for the article, it is correct that when you write an article, it is only saved in the website where it is written. You need in this case the "Article Sharing for JMS" to be able display this article in another websites.


So you have to understand that there are 2 types of sharing:
- Sharing of extension that is present in the core of JMS Multisites and that allow sharing the whole content of an extension. The sharing of the users is using this facility.
- Additional products like the "Article Sharing for JMS" and the "Multisites contact" are able to read articles or contact from any website defined in JMS. In this case read "shared" articles or contact as you can read from any websites.

More pre-sales questions....

1. Joomla sites already exist - total of 6, same database, different prefixes, no jos_ prefix. How easy is it to now install Jms Multisite?

2. Is it possible to share a custom HTML module from the master to all other sites?

3. Are all extensions shared, or can they be installed on sites selectively?

4. I have Akeeba installed for each site now. How does Jms Multisite handle a restore?

Thanks for your help! (I promise to work through the documentation now!)

1) Install JMS Multisites consists in using the Joomla installation procedure.
Once JMS Multisites is installed, this mean that you have now a master website.
If you have 6 websites, you can create 6 master totally independent like today.
If you want convert existing website as slave site of a master, this require manual operation and is more complex as you have to compare the extension present in each website to verify that they are all present in the master with exactly the same version.
We can help you doing that with our billable support. This may require several hours.

2) No the custome HTML module can not be shared between websites.

3) Only a limited number of extension can be shared.
www.jms2win.com/component/content/article/135
The sharing of extension is generally decided when creating the slave site.
By default the extension are not shared.
So you can have slave site that share and other slave site that does not share the content of an extension.
See the tutorial video 16 that explain how to share an extension. It shows the case for the sharing of users.
www.jms2win.com/en/tutorial#jms12x-16

4) JMS Multisites does not provide any backup/restore application.
We recommend using a linux tar command and PHPMyAdmin export/import to perform the backup restore.
We never succeed in using Akeeba backup correctly. That does not mean that it does not work but was not able to make it work correctly with JMS Multisites.