Multiple Sites, RootNodeDepth, and $module_result.path

Tuesday 19 May 2009 4:41:25 pm

I am setting up a site with multiple domains on eZ Publish 4.1.1. I have my siteaccesses set up correctly so that each siteaccess has its own set of INI files and its own design folder. My problem is that I want each site to have its own root node be a different place in the content tree, e.g.:

Home
  |
  --Folder A [node 100]
    |
    --Article 1
    --Article 2
  |
  --Folder B [node 200]
    |
    --Article 3
    --Article 4

I would like www.siteA.com to start at node 100, and www.siteB.com to point to node 200. Simple enough, I set the IndexPage property for each siteaccess to either /content/view/full/100 or /content/view/full/200. However, that wasn't enough make the site work the way I'd expect. When I browsed to Article 1, for example, I was still seeing "/Folder A/" in the URL. So I added "Folder A" to the PathPrefix for that siteaccess, and the problem went away...

<b>The Problem</b>
But I'm still seeing unexpected behavior. For example, the $module_result.path array for Article 1 still contains "Home". That array is used by the default ezwebin page_head.tpl to create the reverse-listed <title> tags on the site - I'd like to keep using that, but I have to manually strip out the first entry of the array every time I use $module_result.path. That seems wrong.

In addition, when I fetch my root node by the following method:

{def $root_node=fetch( 'content', 'node', hash( 'node_path', '/') )}

it returns node 2, the "Home" node, instead of node 100.

<b>What I Tried</b>
I read in another forum post (http://ez.no/developer/forum/suggestions/a_way_to_change_the_root_node_of_a_siteaccess/re_a_way_to_change_the_root_node_of_a_siteaccess__9) that I should set RootNode (in content.ini) as well as RootNodeDepth and DefaultPage (in site.ini) as well as removing RootNodeDepth from override.ini. Elsewhere in the forums it sounded like RootNodeDepth was the answer to my problem of "locking" a siteaccess into its own section of the content tree. I tried the following:

(site.ini.append.php)
[SiteSettings]
IndexPage=/content/view/full/100
DefaultPage=/content/view/full/100
RootNodeDepth=2

(content.ini.append.php)
[NodeSettings]
RootNode=100

That had no effect, and there's actually a documentation comment indicating that DefaultPage does something entirely different: http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/4_0/reference/configuration_files/site_ini#comment20548

To complicate matters, RootNodeDepth, RootNode, and DefaultPage are not in the 4.0 documentation at all. Can anyone please tell me what I should do to limit each siteaccess to its own section of the content tree the way I've described above?

Thank you!

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Wednesday 20 May 2009 1:12:36 am

I have a multisite setup like you are trying to set up.

Short answer - its not that simple. You cannot rely on ini settings only, multiple templates have to be modified.

At first I also thought setting RootNode will do it, but no, setting RootNode to anything else than 2 will mess up the system. Nobody is really sure what it is for, I think, but it should not be touched.

RootNodeDepth is not enough either. It is not available on some pages, and then you get the real root, mightily confusing users.

I have each subsite as extension, there is a folder for each subsite that has folders for content (subsite root), users, media and design (contains copy of site settings object)
Here is rough overview of settings overrides i have for one subsite (you will have different node id's of course)

browse.ini
AliasList[]
AliasList[content]=148
AliasList[users]=149
AliasList[media]=150

content.ini
[NodeSettings]
SubsiteRootNode=148
SubsiteUserRootNode=149
SubsiteMediaRootNode=150
(these values are added by me and used in templates where necessary, instead of relying on RootNode and RootNodeDepth, which dont work like i said)

design.ini
[SiteLookSettings]
SiteLookObjectID=252
(used to locate subsite copy of site settings object)

site.ini
IndexPage=/content/view/full/148/
DefaultPage=/content/view/full/148/
RootNodeDepth=3
DefaultUserPlacement=149

After that you need to modify pagelayout, search, menus, path line, browse template.. maybe something else im not remembering right now.

My setup is 3.9 based, maybe something is improved since but i doubt.

Now, ez publish would be a fantastic system if RootNode setting functioned as one would expect it to function..

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