I am in the planning stages of a new project, and would like some community advice/opinions.
The basic concept is nothing new:
- Single set of functionality (identical module code) shared between hundreds, if not thousands, of websites.
- Sites will have separate content & users
- Sites will have unique designs
I should mention that the sites will be fairly basic in terms of "Drupal" functionality:
- 5-6 content types
- blogs
- images, videos, other media
- a few users
I'm estimating that over a year, each site will generate upwards of 300 nodes - quite a small amount.
As I see it, I have two options:
1: separate Drupal codebase & database for each site; each site will be a 'checkout' of the same SVN repository, so each one will be easily updatable; will have to figure something out for database updates; update hooks may not always be possible/convenient;
2: multisite installation featuring all module code in the shared 'sites/all/modules' folder, and a site-specific theme in 'sites/sitename.com/themes'.
With multisites I can have a separate database for each site, but distributing updates this way will be quite painful. Alternatively, I can share all tables (between the sites) with the exceptions of node- & user-related ones, but this could be a headache (been there!).