Hi. I'm new to this forum and would just like to say how impressed I've been with the whole mojoPortal experience so far! I have only tried mojoPortal recently since it was featured in a newsletter from my web host Pipeten. I managed to make a single-site install using 2-3-9-0-mssql-net40 and everything worked absolutely fine!I even managed to upgrade to 2-3-9-3-mssql-net40 without any problems!
My next task was to try to add another site. Because of webhosting restrictions I am running in Medium Trust, so I understand that I can't run multiple sites on a single web installation. My intention is to run multiple installations of mojoPortal on different domains, but use just one MSSQL database.
My first attempt didn't go so well & I just ended up with the second site displaying the content of the main site. In trying to get things sorted I somehow caused errors on the server & pipeten automatically pulled my main site down. Luckily both sites were 'trials', so I'm probably best wiping the database & starting from scratch.

The documentation states the following:

Considerations for Multiple Physical Web Sites (Multiple Installations of mojoPortal)

If using multiple mojoPortal CMS installations with a single mojoPortal database, configure the second physical web site (installation) with the same database connection string as the first site. The host name you entered for the new site must point to the new site through DNS. mojoPortal uses the host name to determine the siteid from the database; if no host name is configured, the content will appear the same for both sites, since mojoPortal always defaults to the first site when requests arrive from an unconfigured host name.

The first site is the master site as it can control what features are installed in the child sites. If using multiple physical web installations and one database, it is probably best if only the first site has the web.config setting "AllowMultipleSites" set to true.

Can I confirm that I understand this correctly? Once I have set up the first site correctly, if I want to add another installation on a separate domain this is the order I do things:

1. Add a new site via the admin panel of the first site.
2. When the site is added I go to the Host Name Mapping tab & 'Add Host Name' for the new domain (do I need the www. at the beginning?).
3. Then I ftp the new installation onto the new domain (with the correct config settings etc).
4. Then I run setup on the new installation & because I set the domain in the Host Mapping on the main site it recognises the domain & starts a new site instance in the database?

I'm thinking that my mistake was running setup before doing the Host Mapping.

Does this sound right, or am I missing something?

Thanks,

Craig

Regarding your question about whether you need www, there is a good explanation about host names in the first section of the article Adding a Host Name to the Hosts file for Local Testing

The short answer is the www.somdomain.com and somedomain.com are just host names, you can create as many host names for a given domain as you like using DNS A records like foo1.somedomain.com foo2.somedomain.com whatever.somedomain.com

But for a given site it is better for SEO to pick one and force a specific host name

Hope that helps,

Joe

OK, I've managed to get myself slightly confused now!

Having checked with my webhost (Pipeten) it appears that modifying Host Headers is achieved by adding a Domain Alias within the Pipeten control panel. Say for example if I had domain2.com I would set up an alias to my main site domain1.com. This would mean that any requests to domain2.com would automatically be routed to my domain1.com installation (ie I wouldn't need a separate mojoPortal installation on domain2.com?). So long as I have the Host Name correctly configured via the admin page on site1 the domain name would be recognised & site2 content would be displayed.

Do I understand from your comment that multisites on a single installation is now possible on Medium Trust with .NET 4?

It is also my understanding that folder based sites for multiple installations is only possible when using child folders on the original domain (eg domain1/site2/default.aspx).

Say that I would prefer to run separate installation of mojoPortal on different physical domains (one reason why I would like to do this is so that I can also have non-mojoportal content on these domains). Is this possible?

ie     domain1.com    -> Main site running mojoPortal installation 1 (multisite true)
        domain2.com    -> running mojoPortal installation 2 (physical files on domain2.com), but connecting to the same database.

Thanks for your patience!

Regards,

Craig

OK. I was just going by the paragraph on the 'Hosting Multiple Sites on One Installation' page where it states under limitations:

"If your hosting provider enforces a Medium trust policy, hosting multiple sites on 1 web installation will not work correctly but you can still use 1 database as long as you have separate physical web installations at the same host."

So assuming that I want two separate installations (the master site1 on domain1.com & the second site on domain2.com) presumably I don't have to do anything with Host Headers on domain2, otherwise a request for a page on domain2 would never get to the physical files on domain2 (it would be forwarded to look at the files on domain1)?

All I'd need to do is setup the Host Name Mapping for domain2.com as site2 (via the admin page on site1)?
 By doing this, when the database is accessed by domain2.com it would know to feed content for site2?

Thanks,

Craig

No problem. Am I right in my understanding of how to achieve two separate domains with separate installations connecting to one database as per my last post? I've just had to completely delete the installations from both domains & also the database because site1 was completely freezing... Possibly because I messed up the multisite installation & effectively had two domains (each with different user.config files) trying to access site1 & confusing things? Luckily both were test site, so nothing important was lost!

As an aside, if deleting a site & starting again is it only the Data/Sites folders that contain different data from a fresh install, or is data written to other folders during the setup & during subsequent customisation?

Thanks,

Craig

Hi Joe,

BRILLIANT!

I've got both sites up-and-running with separate installations on different domains using the one database. I take your point with memory allocation & I'll see how things go, although it seems fine at the moment.

I found that I had to run /setup/default.aspx on the second site, otherwise there weren't any site files in the /Data/Sites directory on Domain2.

Thanks for your help. It's certainly a learning process & I'm amazed that you have the time to help users out so quickly & so well!

Regards,

Craig