Success!

[Kevin Jardine]

I was able to install this code on my Windows localhost setup.

In addition to Marcus' instructions, I found this site useful:

http://apptools.com/phptools/virtualhost.php

One thing I that I *think* I see is that although the sites share the
same code base, they each have their own set of database tables.

If true, this makes a scalable Ning-like approach reasonably easy to
do, but eliminates other "network of networks" approaches that use the
site_guid of entities to create a level in which it is possible to see
content from multiple sites at once.

A bit disappointing but presumably it means that Marcus could do this
without major changes to the existing Elgg core code.

The presence of the site_guid implies that Elgg was designed from the
beginning for a "network of networks" approach but for some reason
this has never worked in reality.

Or am I missing something, Marcus?

Kevin


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[Marcus Povey]

Hi Kevin!

Thanks for the success report!

> One thing I that I *think* I see is that although the sites share the
> same code base, they each have their own set of database tables.

This is correct, it will create a database per site.

>
> If true, this makes a scalable Ning-like approach reasonably easy to
> do, but eliminates other "network of networks" approaches that use the
> site_guid of entities to create a level in which it is possible to see
> content from multiple sites at once.
>
> A bit disappointing but presumably it means that Marcus could do this
> without major changes to the existing Elgg core code.
>
> The presence of the site_guid implies that Elgg was designed from the
> beginning for a "network of networks" approach but for some reason
> this has never worked in reality.
>
> Or am I missing something, Marcus?

You're not missing anything Kevin :)

Doing multisite the way I have done here is a compromise, but I
believe it's a good one.

First of, doing it this way means - as you suggest - that we can
achieve most of what we want without extensive core code modification.
It also gives greater options for scalability, as well as increased
security and fault resistance through compartmentalisation.

From memory. the site_guid was put in very early on but we never
really got to building out the necessary functionality... I believe
it's still on the back burner so may be fully implemented in future (I
am aware of a couple of third parties looking into this although I
don't know how far they've got).

My itch didn't need networks in networks, which is another reason I
did things this way. Networks in networks do introduce other questions
- for example, how permeable do you make the dividing wall.

I've been thinking about this a bit, and I think that NinN's could be
better achieved through a wider mechanism of network federalisation -
this would let administrators decide what to make available, and not
limit you to federalising between "multisite" networks... all elgg
installs could work this way.

Marcus

[Kevin Jardine]

Remembering way back to our pre-Elgg 1.0 discussions about federation,
it seems to me that most of the federation discussions had to do with
federating search.

And I agree that this can be done without sites sharing tables or even
databases.

One interesting approach for MySQL is Sphinx:

http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

I like the idea of separating the search engine from any particular
Elgg install. Not only would this help with federating multiple sites
(not all of which would need to be Elgg installs) but it could improve
performance as well.

It seems to me that Sphinx might be a natural fit with your multisite
approach.

Kevin

[Dhrup]

I feel really silly.. not patching my vhosts.conf and (Win/XAMPP) etc/
hosts properly ;-( broke my whole XAMPP totally and got so distracted
b/c i needed to get back and be able to continue other tasks.. I guess
I'll have to wait a little longer before I can finish play around with
creating the MPM multisites..

[Marcus Povey]

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Hash: SHA1

Interesting...

Yes, search is certainly a part of it, but there is also activity,
logon, data etc which should also be looked at.

Many of these have solutions already (oauth/openid, activity streams etc)

Marcus

> Remembering way back to our pre-Elgg 1.0 discussions about federation,
> it seems to me that most of the federation discussions had to do with
> federating search.
>
> And I agree that this can be done without sites sharing tables or even
> databases.
>
> One interesting approach for MySQL is Sphinx:
>
> http://www.sphinxsearch.com/
>
> I like the idea of separating the search engine from any particular
> Elgg install. Not only would this help with federating multiple sites
> (not all of which would need to be Elgg installs) but it could improve
> performance as well.
>
> It seems to me that Sphinx might be a natural fit with your multisite
> approach.

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[Dhrup]

Hmm.. Sphinx does seem rather powerful.
I was introduced to this my some consultant
we had hired to help us fine-tune our larger
(the largest in the world lolz ;-)
Elgg-based site

My success with MP-Multi is not yet quite 100% there ;-(
Vista/hosts does not seem to like my
127.0.0.1 *.mp17b
I could code each MPMulti subdomain individually
127.0.0.1 sub1.mp17b
127.0.0.1 sub2.mp17b
etc
but that would be cheating and not realistic.
I found out that this seems to a windows thing.
I'm running Vista/XAMPP for my development..
maybe.. I'll grab one of other PCs or laptops and convert from windows
to pure Linux (My faves - Ubuntu, Kanotix) to be able to grab 100%
control
over the DNS and zones etc.

On Apr 22, 2:56 pm, Marcus Povey <mar...@dushka.co.uk> wrote:
> Interesting...
> Yes, search is certainly a part of it, but there is also activity,
> logon, data etc which should also be looked at.

> > One interesting approach for MySQL is Sphinx:

[Marcus Povey]

> but that would be cheating and not realistic.
> I found out that this seems to a windows thing.
> I'm running Vista/XAMPP for my development..
> maybe.. I'll grab one of other PCs or laptops and convert from windows
> to pure Linux (My faves - Ubuntu, Kanotix) to be able to grab 100%
> control
> over the DNS and zones etc.

Not every name server can support wildcards, and I'm not surprised
that windows has trouble!

Good to know anyhow :)

Marcus

[Dhrup]

I first just coded into the win/Vista etc/hosts and XAMPP httpd.conf
and hit the MP-Multi no workie ;-(
Next i checked my code to make sure..
tried again..
still ;-(
Then I Googled and voila !
Everyone else seemed to know that it not work for Windowze..
Needs a 3rd party *real DNS ;-)