multisite drupal

I've noticed that the vast majority of problems people have getting multisite Drupal to work comes from not understanding this one concept:

/**
 * The configuration directory will be discovered by stripping the
 * website's hostname from left to right and pathname from right to
 * left. The first configuration file found will be used and any
 * others will be ignored. If no other configuration file is found
 * then the default configuration file at 'sites/default' will be used.
 *
 * For example, for a fictitious site installed at
 * http://www.drupal.org/mysite/test/, the 'settings.php'
 * is searched in the following directories:
 *
 *  1. sites/www.drupal.org.mysite.test
 *  2. sites/drupal.org.mysite.test
 *  3. sites/org.mysite.test
 *
 *  4. sites/www.drupal.org.mysite
 *  5. sites/drupal.org.mysite
 *  6. sites/org.mysite
 *
 *  7. sites/www.drupal.org
 *  8. sites/drupal.org
 *  9. sites/org
 *
 * 10. sites/default
 */

Drupal will guess what website you're looking for based on those rules. It will find the closest config file based on those rules. Your config folder must be named just like one of these. You can't name it "drupal" or "mysite", or Drupal will never find it.

If you're getting errors about database misconfigurations, if you have more than one domain showing the same Drupal site, or if you can't seem to get it installed at all, check the name of your config folder…

Like most Drupal hackers, I love to hate jQuery. The primary reason for this is that the version of jQuery included in Drupal core is always several versions behind where it should be. Unfortunately updating it is a serious undertaking, usually reserved for the next Drupal version. To get us by between releases, there's a module called jQuery update. It's pretty rad. It replaces the core jQuery dependencies with a newer jQuery version. It has one caveat though:

The tricky step with this module is that you will need to *replace* the jquery.js file in core with the jquery.js file included in the jquery_update directory...

In Drupal, messing with core files is poor form. Not only does it mess up the upgrade path, it causes all sorts of discontent in a multisite environment. And I spend most of my time in a multisite environment.

my fix for jQuery update in multisite drupal after the jump.

I love the Drupal CMS. One of my favorite features of Drupal is the ability to do a multisite install. This site and my other blog, i <3 stella, are hosted on the same box, using the same Drupal install. Several sites can share one codebase. Updates are easily rolled out to every site simultaneously. Overall, it's a wonderful idea. But I have some problems with the implementation...

drupal secure multisite tutorial after the jump.