Multiple installs integrated with same WordPress installation

Question

Hi,

I want to run a small network of Q&A integrated with the same Wordpress installation.

I have couple of questions regarding this.

First is: will be any user setting separated for each Q2A subsite (beside the ones which are common as user, email, passowrd) ? Or all the settings are common ? I noticed there are still some qa_user tables created

It should be ok so I actually install just once the Q2A (using the same folder for all subdomains) and duplicate the tables (so multiple Q&A running but each one having separated categories and posts) with new prefix (qa2_, qa3, aso) ? Or will be a pain when I need to upgrade to newer versions ?

If is OK on what things I should have care ? I am listing here some of them:
- I should duplicate the install tables with new prefix (qa2_, qa3_, aso)
- qa-config.php should switch the QA_MYSQL_TABLE_PREFIX based on hostname
- I suppose most of the settings can't be actually shared as they are within qa_options and qa_widgets and all this will should be duplicated for each Q2A
- separated css and images files for each Q2A (this can be achieved by some fancy .htaccess)

Thank you.

Answer 1

The only user settings that will be separate are those related to user activities on the Q2A subsite, such as their points and votes.

The problem with using a common folder for all subdomains is that each Q2A subsite will need a different qa-config.php file. But it sounds like you want hack qa-config.php to look at the hostname in the incoming HTTP request, which should work fine, since Q2A does not store any data in server files.

For the different CSS and image files, you can just create a number of different custom themes in the qa-theme directory, and choose the appropriate theme in each Q2A subsite's admin panel.

Just an idea - you might want to consider using categories instead.

Comments

Thanks Gideon.

If I go with a common folder for all subdomains you don't think will be a problem when upgrading the installation to newer versions ?

---

Related to using categories. I guess is not possible to have each category on a dedicated subdomain, right ?

---

I'm afraid it's not available out-of-the-box, but could probably be done by modifying the Q2A core - get started by searching for qa_q_request...

---

Thanks Gideon. I like the way Q2A works and the fact the development is constant.

---

Hi Gideon,

To update the qa_q_request to point to subdomain instead of domain I need to get the "base domain". How can I get that ?