[Ohiosweetheart]

Ok here's a good one for anyone who wants to take a stab at it.

I received this email yesterday morning from a customer at my design site.
Tell me what I think I already know........... or surprise me!

Peggy,

I have not purchased the license yet, as I need some help. 

I'm not sure how to get done what I need to get done, thus I have found my
way to you.

I need a main forum, i.e. software development, running at it own domain.
Then I need a second forum, i.e. vBulletin development, running at it's own domain,
and another, i.e. PHP development at it's own domain.  I want all posts to
the PHP and vBulletin forums to also go to the main forum, software development.  

I also want the reverse.  If there is a post on the main forum, software
development, that related to the VB development, then that post would also
go on the VB Development forum.

Continuing in this vain, I would like to have a forum, i.e. Ohio PHP
Development, that feeds into the PHP development forum
and the main software development forum.

If a guest registers at any one of these, I want them to have access to all.

Does this make sense?

Please let me know.

Thank you.

[Code Monkey]

License issues there. That asside, that would be a major hack and require a ton of work at great expense. I can never understand these requests since it's not really an advantage to have the same content on multiple sites. In fact, it can get you tagged by google for duplicate content.

Anyway, it could be done but it would be a lot of work. Doesn't vbfans do something like this?

[Ohiosweetheart]

Thanks CM, I didn't think it could be done without alot of work, and it's definitely not something I want to mess with. I told him I'm a designer, not a coder

[Bimple]

multiple sites using the same database is possible and easy to do, however you must purchase separate licenses for each site.

[Ohiosweetheart]

that we know Bimple... but it goes way beyond that. He wants it so that a member has to register only once to be a member of all the forums, and a bunch of other stuff

[protoss]

He's going to end up with a huge headache, Administration wise.
I've seen a hack for database sharing but that was under the same domain.

[Stoosh]

a big problem is overlapping in the databases, you may get the same entry from both boards

[Eric]

I wouldn't advice this approach neither, multiple scripts writing to a db can end with bottle necks, doubles as said above... and if the db has a problem or host for example.. all your sites are down. Nice firework
H could write a script that when a new member signups up, it make the membership in all databases... that would be possible I think code wise, preventing to ign up for each and every single part. He would have a unique login for all the parts.. but I wouldn't dare go further then that.
Now to get posts cross posted can be done via rss but no clue how you could make it so that each reeply will end in the correct thread.... didn't see any script yet able to identfy origin and look at destinaion if already existing thread or not....

[Ohiosweetheart]

no he doesn't want posts cross posted. His main thing was making it so that when someone registers at one of the sites, they're a member of all of them, and don't have to register again and again.

thanks for the info everyone!