Multisite Overview - Vanilla Success
<main> <article class="userContent"> <p>Large communities sometimes need to be sub-divided. Multi-forum management provides solutions to better manage large forums.</p><p>Vanilla’s cloud solution offers a number of configuration settings for enterprise-grade deployments.</p><h2 data-id="single-community">Single Community</h2><p>This is a classic forum setup. It is the equivalent of 1 installation of forum software. It can have any number of <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/8-category-configuration-management" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"><strong>categories</strong></a> arranged in a hierarchy. </p><p>Each <strong>Single Community</strong> needs a <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/3-setting-up-your-custom-domain" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">domain or subdomain assigned</a>.</p><h2 data-id="hub-node">Hub & Node</h2><p>The Vanilla Hub is intended for cases where dozens or hundreds of separate self-contained communities are required. New instances of Vanilla can be spawned within seconds through the Admin Dashboard or via the API.</p><p>This type of implementation allows you to set up one community as a template, then create Nodes that are copies of this setup.</p><p>For most purposes, each <strong>Node</strong> is a <strong>Single Community</strong> with the added ability of being <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/52-multisite-sync" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">synced</a> with changes made on the Hub. Each Node is otherwise independent - <strong>separate</strong> user lists, private message exchanges, and activity streams</p><p>Read more about Hub and Node:</p><div class="js-embed embedResponsive" data-embedJson="{"body":"Overview The Vanilla Hub is intended for cases where dozens or hundreds of separate self-contained communities are required. New instances of Vanilla can be spawned within seconds through the Admin Dashboard or via the API. This type of implementation allows you to set up one community as a template, then create Nodes that…","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6030677\/uploads\/947\/TM5DAO1BWY5V.png","url":"https:\/\/success.vanillaforums.com\/kb\/articles\/295-hub-and-node","embedType":"link","name":"Hub and Node - Vanilla Success"}"> <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/295-hub-and-node" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"> https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/295-hub-and-node </a> </div><p><a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/3-setting-up-your-custom-domain#hubnode" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">You can read more about Hub and Node custom domains here</a>.</p><p><a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/52-hub-sync" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">Read more about the Hub Sync here.</a></p><h2 data-id="subcommunities">Subcommunities</h2><p>A subcommunity artificially divides a <strong>Single Community</strong> <em>or</em> a <strong>Node</strong> into different areas by making each of the <strong>top level categories</strong> into subcommunities.</p><p>Subcommunities are particularly useful for creating a sub-community for a language or product line. Unlike categories, Sub-Communities can have their own home page, locale and announcement messages. Members can easily navigate from one Sub-Community to another without losing their reputation points and Ranks.</p><p>Each subcommunity (and its' top level category) must have a unique URL path prefix. For example, an English language subcommunity will have the the URL prefix of <code class="code codeInline" spellcheck="false">/en/</code>. So the english subcommunity of <code class="code codeInline" spellcheck="false">forums.example.com</code> would be available at <code class="code codeInline" spellcheck="false">forums.example.com/en</code>.</p><p>While in a subcommunity, categories and discussions will be filtered to that subsection of a forum. Category Lists, and the Recent Discussions page will be filtered to only show content from that subcommunity.</p><p>All subcommunities are still part of a single “instance” - the user list (and therefore moderators / admins), private messages, and activity stream are <strong>shared</strong> across all subcommunities. For a more detailed list of what <em>is</em> and <em>is not</em> shared across subcommunities see the <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/53-subcommunities" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">Shared Content</a> list in our Subcommunities document.</p><p>A common way of combining this feature with the <strong>Hub</strong> is to create a <strong>Node</strong> per product, and use subcommunities for each locale within that product.</p><p><a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/53-subcommunities" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">See main subcommunities article</a>.</p><h2 data-id="architectural-considerations">Architectural considerations</h2><h3 data-id="cluster-management">Cluster management</h3><p>Our physical server assets are arranged into clusters. Each cluster can hold many Single Communities, or a single Hub + its Nodes. They cannot be mixed.</p><h3 data-id="scaling-capabilities">Scaling capabilities</h3><p>Because each Node is a separate entity, there are significant scaling advantages to choosing a hub setup over a single community + subcommunities setup.</p><h3 data-id="member-authentication">Member Authentication</h3><p>Another consideration is how to setup forum member registration and login. Here are the three use cases we typically see:</p><ul><li>Members authenticate via single-sign-on (SSO) to any of the forums</li><li>Members authenticate via SSO only to some of the forums</li><li>Members authenticate manually using Vanilla’s login page or with social logins</li></ul><p>In most of our multi-forum implementations, authentication occurs via single-sign-on where members are already authenticated to your website or application and are able to access Vanilla seamlessly. </p><p>If SSO is not required, members will register and sign in to each community using Vanilla’s registration or a social login such Facebook Connect of Microsoft ID. If you are not using SSO, subcommunities may be a better option for you if users need to sign in to multiple sites with 1 set of credentials.</p> </article> </main>