Possible for two XF sites to share the same sub forum?

[RobinHood]

I'm wondering if it would be possible for two XenForo sites to share the same subforum?

For example, if I had two websites catering to different groups of people, but I wanted the classified advertising section to be the same for both sites. So the sub forum is viewable on each respective site, but the user doesn't have to visit or even necessarily realise there's a another main forum elsewhere that can also access it.

This is prevent users who want to reach each target audience from having to create and maintain duplicate threads on each site.

I'm considering using something like XenSSO to enable single sign on for both sites so there wouldn't be duplicate users.

I'm guessing this might not be possible, or eat least very easy, for a number of reasons, but I'd love to hear what you guys have to say about it.

 

[CTXMedia]

No, it wouldn't be possible - not even using the SSO add-on as the user login cookie isn't "global" so you'd be logged in at one site or the other site, but not both.

 

[RobinHood]

What if there was an add on that communicated between the databases of the two sites and duplicated every action within the sub forum of each site and recreated it in the database of the other site immediately?

So essentially the sites would still be completely separate, but the chosen sub forum would be exactly the same in the database for each site?

 

[CTXMedia]

You're not going to get this sort of thing in the XF core - it's too specialist a need. I also suspect the technical challenges of doing this from with XF or via an add-on would be cost prohibitive too.

Maybe look for a classifieds script from another company and ask if it can be hacked to accommodate XF login cookies/user accounts?

 

[MGSteve]

I'm wondering if it would be possible for two XenForo sites to share the same subforum?

I've been thinking of setting that up for my forums as it could be quite useful to share parts of the forum across all the sites.

It should be reasonably easy to do - in theory, you'd just have it as one whole database and control access to the various seperate forum areas by user groups and the usergroups would get set automatically when the page loads, as the server would obviously know which site was being loaded.

I just haven't got around to doing it yet.

 

[RobinHood]

You're not going to get this sort of thing in the XF core - it's too specialist a need. I also suspect the technical challenges of doing this from with XF or via an add-on would be cost prohibitive too.

Maybe look for a classifieds script from another company and ask if it can be hacked to accommodate XF login cookies/user accounts?

I wouldn't expect it to be a core feature, I imagine it might be quite a challenge for someone. Then again I'm not a coder so I don't know what the best way to tackle this might be.

For what I'm looking to do, you might be right in suggesting I hunt down a dedicated classifieds system to try and integrate with the XF login system. I'll certainly consider that.

I've been thinking of setting that up for my forums as it could be quite useful to share parts of the forum across all the sites.

It should be reasonably easy to do - in theory, you'd just have it as one whole database and control access to the various seperate forum areas by user groups and the usergroups would get set automatically when the page loads, as the server would obviously know which site was being loaded.

I just haven't got around to doing it yet.

Awesome, glad to hear that someone else is looking to do the same thing. I suppose that makes more sense having it has a seperate database. Keep us updated with how you get on!

 

[MGSteve]

Having it as a separate database would make it near impossible to share sections of forums, it would basically need to be one install, one forum but setup to run many different forums off one db & one install with permissions used to determing which forums the user sees.

 

[RobinHood]

Right, gotchya.

So both sites would really have to be setup on the same database from the get go then to avoid having to merge them at a later date? Or would that not be too much of an issue once you've figured out the details?

Do you think this a project you'll consider tackling at any point in the next few weeks/months/longer?

 

[MGSteve]

Right, gotchya.

So both sites would really have to be setup on the same database from the get go then to avoid having to merge them at a later date? Or would that not be too much of an issue once you've figured out the details?

Do you think this a project you'll consider tackling at any point in the next few weeks/months/longer?

tbh, if I did, I don't know if I'd release it anyway - if I did, I'd have to support it and spend time making it easy to administer. Still, I could work with a mod developer who's prepared to do that I guess.

But either way, it probably won't be for another month or two (or four) at the moment, got too much else on.

Lastly, it would mean merging sites would be a nightmare as you'd end up with potential username clashes. I haven't worked out a way around this yet - not too much of an issue for me as I'd be adding new sites to the 'network', rather than existing sites - but yes, it would complicate adding existing sites into the system.