Hi there wizards!

I am a little confused about the "fresh", "replic" and "share" types of templates that are avaliable when making new sites in jms multisites 1.3, and would be VERY happy if someone could spell it out to me -- with an eye to my objective. What kind of slave sites would be best for my objective? (Reading the manual didn't help me. Perhaps I am slow...)

Anyway, my objective (and background) is the following:

I have a site (representing/serving an organisation) with 20 subdomain slave sites (representing geographical departments of the organisation) wich I now, after migrating to joomla 2.5, want to change into subfolder slave sites. Originally I wanted to manage without jms multisites because I thought that the fewer extra extensions the better. I thought the new ACL system om joomla 2.5 would be enough. But it seems impossible as some of the extensions I want to use doesn't come with user groups, such that I can restrict some content, folders, files, documents, images etc. to some user groups and let other be shared among all user groups. So then it seems I am "stuck" with the great and powerful jms multisites.

Joomla migration of the master site was done by the SP Upgrade: cyend.com/extensions/extensions/components
I guess I will also will be able to get hold of the subdomain slavesites content (in joomla 2.5 "format") by the SP Upgrade "Database transfer" tool (by changing the Database Tables Prefix in the component's options).

Having all the DB tables ready I should then be ready to make the slavesites. But what kind of slavesites should I choose, and with what settings? All sites in the same database? Are there other jms multisites resources I need?

As I said, I want users in the different slave sites to share /have access to some content of the other slave sites and also of the master site, and also to have some content restricted to their own site. This applies e.g. to DOCman documents and files, images, calendar events, weblinks etc. as wel as to joomla articles, both in the production (preferably from the front end) and in the consumption of content.

EDIT: I forgot to mention another requirement:
All the slave sites are to have their own logos. They are all slightly different variations of the master site logo. The template I am using have the possibility of making overrides. Are site template overrides for the 20 slave sites something that possibly can be controlled from the master site?

Any thoughts are welcome!

Thanks!

1) Fresh mean that you create a fresh (empty) website using the "Joomla web installer".
So you receive a website without any content.

Replic mean replication. So you copy an existing website to get a copy (a clone) of the website.

Share mean that when you you duplicate the website, some content remain shared.
This is mainly the users that are shared in the rules proposed.
See also the tutorial video 16 that show the how to share the users.
We provide a rule to help you doing that.


1) Change subdomain into subdirectory can be done with the JMS "alias" field.
You can continue to use the subdomian and also create a link (an alias) into a subdirecotry that point to the location of your subdomia.

If you want to create slave site into a subdirectory that represent a department or organisation that have their own images, document, images, ... you can effectivelly do that and the approche to have a subdomain is also correct for me.
The choice of subdomain or subdirectory is mainly a point related to Seanch Engine and the ranking of the website.
Subdomain are generally considered as totally independent website for Search Enine.
Subdirectory will be considered as the same website.

2) When you mentioned migration, I suppose you mean Joomla 1.5 to 2.5.
If yes, you need to also migrate the slave site to ensure that they use the correct DB structure. The joomla 1.5 and 2.5 DB structure is different and not compatible to each other.

In JMS 1.3, you have the "maintenance" menu that can help you identifying the difference in the DB structure. It is possible to select that you want to compare a slave site DB structure with the master DB structure and potentially as the "maintenance" to fix the DB structure.
Perform a backup before applying any DB structure modification.

3) Concerning the number of DB, this depends on the number of expected slave site, the number of tables used in a slave site, the expected size of the DB, ...

If you have a very few number of website lower than 100 (here 20) and that you have very few number of table, a single DB can be acceptable.
Also check the setting of your MySQL and in particular the maximum number of files that can be opened simultanously. This is a parameter that is important to perform the backup of the DB.
If you have 20 websites that each require 1,000 tables then, as MySQL use 3 files per table, this give a total number of files that can be opened simultanously = 20*1000*3 = 60,000 files.

So the choice of 1 DB per site or 1 DB for all sites is driven by backup and also load balancing and maintenance.

A single DB is easier to manage and also easier to backup when it is not too large.

With the "Partial User Sharing", you have the possiblity to partially share the users between the website but also have the possibility to use different ACL depending on the website. That mean that User 1 can have a setting to be registered in one website and be a publisher in another website and an administrator in a third website.
Perhaps that it would help you have different ACL profile for the users to give access to some part of a website. Just by providing different ACL group.
So you could create ACL group that provide access to DOCMan and another one that forbid the access.
Remark: The Joomla ACL has some limitation and in particular to the modules and plugins.
It is not possible, like for the component, to restrict the access to a specific module or plugin.

4) Website can have their own look.
They can have their own joomla template or logo, images, ...

You can also decide to use the same (shared) jommla template and use our free "Search/Replace" plugin to manage the minor variant. (ie. change the logo image depending on the slave site ID).

Thanks for answer! I'll look further into this.

I am still at sea, so I'd appreciate some more help

I have tried to make new slave sites using the different site templates that came along with the installation of JMS. All of the templates seems to duplicate the joomla files into deploy folders -- while i thought the whole idea of JMS was to use one and the same joomla installation to run multiple sites?

My present live site (joomla 1.5 running jms version 1.2) does this with only config files and folders for each site in a multisite folder....

Verify that you have the symbolic link enabled and verify with a SSH terminal that what you see is not a symbolic link.
Some FTP tools let you imagines this is a physical directory instead of a symbolic link.

An SSH terminal and the "ls -l" command can help verifying if this is a symbolic link or a physical directory.

Normally, you should hae symbolic links.