Presentation for Environments for Humans’ 2011 Engine Summit. Discusses use of ExpressionEngine's Multiple Site Manager expansion.

1. Some rights reserved
Multiple Site Management
Engine Summit June 7, 2011
Environments for Humans
with ExpressionEngine

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Web Designer Writer Instructor
http://emilylewisdesign.com
Author, Microformats Made Simple
http://microformatsmadesimple.com
Contributing author, HTML5 Cookbook
http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920016038
Email: emily@emilylewisdesign.com
Blog: http://ablognotlimited.com
Twitter: @emilylewis

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Today, you’ll learn
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• What Multiple Site Manager is
• Benefits of MSM
• Use cases for MSM
• How to install MSM and create new sites
& challenges with
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Multiple Site Manager
• Allows you to create and maintain multiple sites
from a single EE install
• Expansion from EllisLab introduced in v1.6 and
available for v2+
• Available with non-commercial ($79.95) and
commercial ($199.95) EE licenses
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The Rules
• The EE/MSM license holder has to own all sites
• All sites have to reside on the same server
• Sub-domain/domain directories have to be able to
access the main EE install directory
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The Benefits
• Content, templates and members can be shared
across all sites
• Each site has its own system preferences and
specialty templates
• Fast and easy site duplication, with options for
selective duplication
• Extensions, modules and plug-ins can be shared
across sites, with site-specific settings*
• Money-saving
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The Problems
• Installation-wide updates affect all sites.
• If something goes wrong with an installation-wide
asset, it can affect all the sites.
• Be aware of extensions
• Test carefully for scalability
• Make sure you check licensing
• Does it have site-specific settings or only global?
• No automated way of exporting a site out of MSM
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challenges

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The Details
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• Members
• Member groups
• Add-ons
• Find and replace
Installation-wide resources Site-specific resources
• Member group preferences
• Specialty templates
• Themes
• Member profile templates

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Do you ...
• Want a centralized install for multiple sites?
• Want a single control panel as a Super Admin, but
still limit site access to other member groups?
• Need to establish consistency in branding with
shared templates for different sites?
• Want to share content across sites and reduce
redundancy?
• Want to have independent forums, but with a
shared member base?
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Global offices
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in thewild

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Academic schools
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in thewild
EE Podcast Episode #34:
MSM Sites with John Rogerson
http://5by5.tv/eepodcast/34

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Personal sites
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in thewild
+

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Getting Started
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woohoo!

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Installation
1. Purchase
2. Download
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Installation
3. Extract .zip*
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• EE_MSM_2.1.0/system/expressionengine
• /controllers/
• /language/
• /libraries/

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Installation
4. Upload files to /system/expressionengine/ directory
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/controllers/cp/sites.php
/language/english/sites_lang.php
/libraries/Sites.php
/controllers/cp/sites.php
/language/english/sites_lang.php
/libraries/Sites.php
Local Web server

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Backup database!
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Setting up MSM
1. Log in to control panel
2. Admin > General Configuration
3. Select “Yes” for enabling MSM
4. Submit
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Creating a new site
• New “Sites” button
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Create a new site
1. Select “Sites” button
2. Choose “Edit Sites”
3. Select “Create New Site”
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Create a new site
• Site label = name of site in control panel
• Site short name = value used in code references
• Site description = optional description of site
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Create a new site
• You only get the chance to import during the
creation process not during editing
• Import = moves the data from your original site to
the new site
• Duplicate = copies the data and/or preferences
from your original site to your new site
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Did you backup
your database?
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Create a new site
1. Select the appropriate import/duplicate options
• Channel
• File upload preferences
• Template groups
• Global variables
2. Submit
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You are here
• Breadcrumbs
• Sites button
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Configure site
1. Admin > General configuration
2. Enter URL for site root
3. Submit
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Configure site
1. Design > Templates >
Template Manager
2. Choose/create
template group that
contains home page
3. Select “Edit Group”
4. Select checkbox for
site home page
5. Update
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Set up public access
• Can use domain, sub-
domain or sub-folder
1. Create directory under
/public_html/ for new site
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Set up public access
2. Copy index.php from
original site root not from
system directory
3. Save to new directory just
created for new site
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Set up public access
4. Edit index.php
• $system_path = path from new site directory to
EE system directory
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Set up public access
4. Edit index.php
• $assign_to_config[‘site_name’] = Site short name
• $assign_to_config[‘cp_url’] = Site control panel
• $assign_to_config[‘site_url’] = Site URL
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Save templates as files
1. Are you in the right site?
2. Design > Templates > Template
Manager
3. Select “Global Template
Preferences”
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Save templates as files
4. Select “Yes” for allowing templates to be saved as files
5. Enter path to new site directory, where templates
should be saved
6. Update
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Global variables
• MSM comes with 3 global variables:
• {site_id} = the site’s ID number
• {site_label} = name of site in control panel
• {site_short_name} = value used in code references
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Sharing content
• To pull content from one site
into another, use the site variable
with the site short name as the
value
• site is available on all Channel
and Comment tags, as well as
RSS
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{exp:channel:entries site="default_site" ...}

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Sharing content
• You can also specify several sites with the site variable
• Each site short name is listed, delimited with a pipe (|)
• You can also exclude a site using not
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{exp:channel:entries site="default_site|blog" ...}
{exp:channel:entries site="not blog" ...}

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Sharing content
• You can also use site short name with the orderby
parameter
• Add the site short name as a prefix to the field you want
to order on
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orderby="blog:title|default_site:description"

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Sharing templates
• You can embed a template from one site in a template
from another by prefixing the template group/
template with the site short name
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{embed="default_site:global/nav"}

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Resources
• EE Documentation
http://expressionengine.com/user_guide/cp/sites/index.html
• Building a Sub-Folder Site in ExpressionEngine MSM
http://www.designlitm.us/articles/building_a_sub-
folder_site_in_expressionengine_msm/
• Splitting a Site out of an ExpressionEngine Multiple
Site Manager Installation*
http://www.train-ee.com/courseware/free-tutorials/comments/splitting-a-
site-out-of-an-ee-msm-installation/
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Questions?
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emily@emilylewisdesign.com @emilylewis

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Thank you!
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