AlterBrains

Hi,

I have a main website which I have already done up. And I would like to create 15 subdomains(school branches) which will have a completelu different look from the main website but will look similar to the other subdomains. However even though the design will be similar for the 15 subdomains, I would like to differentiate them using different color schemes for their respective backgrounds and menus. The menu items and article titles will be the same for all the sub domains but the content in each article will be changed to reflect its own branch. The subdomains will also share a bottom segment which contents will be the same for all the 15 subdomains.

So I have two questions:
1. Since I have already downloaded and setup my main website, will it affect if I download the mightysites component on my main website (which is already complete) or should this component be installed only in a brand new clean application? or should I set up another new joomla installation for just for my subdomains and just link the subdomains to my main website using external urls?
2. Do you think mightysites will be able to help me with my requirements stated above. The key thing i am looking for is I would like to get the 15 websites up as soon as possible and hoping that your application can greatly help me in reducing the amount of work required for this.
Would greatly appreciate a quick reply as I would like to go ahead and purchase it.
Thank you so much for your time

1. You can safely install MightySites in current main site, it won't be changed.

2. MightySites can help you to run all these sites from single hosting account of main site, so all sites will have same files.

All subsites should be parked domains for main site.

You will be able to quickly setup these 15 subsites by cloning database tables of main site (in either separate database or same database but with different tables prefix) and customizing each subsite as usual (edit template, modules etc.).

Please ensure that your Joomla template doesn't store its settings in files but in database (database is used by Joomla as native way of storing template settings).

Optionally you can share menu items in all sites or articles in all sites, so ALL menu items or ALL articles will be same in all sites.

I can recommend to share articles only, so each site will be able to have different menu items but you will be able to edit all articles from main site.

In case of sharing articles and using separate database for each site please ensure that MySLQ user of subsite has access to database of main site.

Hi,

As most of the content from the main website will not be used on the 15 subdomains website and the database is already quite heavy in the main website, I would prefer not to clone the database of the main website but create a new database for the subdomains and have that database cloned 14 more times instead. Is that possible?

How do I check if the template settings are stored in the database. I am using a premium template and I normally change the settings for css and index through their files using FTP. So if the settings are stored in the file (which I am assuming mine is, though I am not really sure), how do i move it to database?

You can clone any database tables: you will configure settings of sample database and next clone it for each of 15 sites. Or you can also clone database of any existing subsite.

Please create a ticket in our Support Center and attach this template, we will check how it works.

Please note that changes to index and CSS files of template will be used by all sites. But MightySites has an option to load custom CSS files for any site, so you still will be able to customize CSS of each site by having a separate CSS file for each site.