Installation Instructions

• update the site short names and host names in config/config.hosts.php and config/config.hosts.local.php
• update the database credentials in config/db/db.*.php with each environment’s database info
• change the directory names of config/site_1 and config/site_2 to the short names of your sites. Duplicate the directories for additional sites.
• update the config/site_x/env/env.*.php files with path and url settings for that site and environment. Repeat for other sites. Note: the site_ and parent_ variables for your parent site will both have the same values.
• update the following lines in config/config.master.php:
  • update the path to the config folder on line 54
  • update the name of your admin.php file on line 101
  • update the path to your third_party folder on line 116
  • update file upload directory paths on line 135
  • update the path to your templates folder on line 184
  • update the path to the config folder on line 280

Caveats

• Site paths, urls, and protocols must be hard-coded because the current host may not be the host of the site you’re editing (example: you're on site1.com uploading an image to a Site 2 upload directory). Luckily, these values rarely change so you can usually set it and forget it.

Notes

• current_url & current_path should only be used when targeting the currently loaded site (so not for upload directories, because not all upload directories point to the current site)

• the folder structure for all environments must be the same. If PROD is

   /site1.com/public_html/
   /site2.com/public_html/
  

  then LOCAL, STAGE, and DEV must be that way too. Symlinks are a great way to deal with this issue.

• only the site_name variable needs to be defined in each child site's admin.php and index.php files

• The site the system folder lives on is referred to as the "parent site", and variables are named according to that convention.

• The site you are currently on (specifically, the domain you are on), is referred to as the "current site". So if you're on site1.com editing content for Site 2, the "current site" is still Site 1 because that's the domain you're on.

• Each site uses 3 files for config: env, db, and config.

  • env sets up the current site’s settings, like Environment, URL, Path, Parent URL, and Parent Path.
  • db is for the DB settings for that environment. Since all sites use the same DB, these files are separate from the site-specific files
  • config is for site-specific config overrides. They’re loaded at the end of config.master.php.

Troubleshooting

• if you get stuck, enable debugging in index.php and admin.php. That'll usually tell you where the problem is.