Several WordPress sites to share plugin data - wordpress

I am wondering if there is a way to have two WordPress installations with separate databases or table prefixes, but install a plugin and use data generated by it on both websites.
For example, if I hade website1.com and website2.com. Website1 has s1 table prefix, Website2 has s2. At this point, they are still two separate websites.
Now, I'd like to install a plugin which, of course, comes with its own set of tables and whatnot. Is there a way to share that data between these two websites? Make s2 point to s1 tables just for this purpose, or create a third prefix and point both websites to it?
Or is there a completely different approach I'm not thinking of? Is this at all possible?

Possible? Yes, absolutely. The plugin could create its own database table and both sites would need to query this table to get whatever data they need from it.
The how-to-do-it part is up to you. Writing a plugin that creates a database table isn't difficult (in your case, you don't want it to use the prefix of either of your sites to make it evident that this plugin's database table is site-independent). Check the official documentation, there's a working example there on how to create a database table on plugin activation. Now, having your two sites get data from it is where the fun begins and that is also up to you to sort out. The $wpdb object will be useful in this particular case.
And yes, you can have two WordPress sites share the same database without using multisite. Just make sure both setups are on separate folders and that each site uses their own database table prefix and you're good to go.
Happy coding!

Related

Search multiple plone site indexes

I need to implement a central search for multiple plone sites on different servers/machines.If there is a way to select which sites to search would be a plus but not the primary concern.Few ways I came upon to go about this:
-Export the ZCatalog indexes to an XML file and use a crawler periodically to get all the XML files so a search can be done on them,but this way does not allow for live searching.
-There is a way to use a common catalog but its not optimal and cannot be implemented on the sites i am working on because of some requirements.
-I read somewhere that they used solr but i need help on how to use it.
But I need a way to use the existing ZCatalog and index and not create another index as i think is the case with using solr due to the extra overheads and the extra index required to be maintained.But will use it if no other solution possible.I am a beginner at searching so please give details as much as possible.
You should really look into collective.solr:
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.solr/4.1.0
Searching multiple sites is a complex use case and you most likely need a solution that scales. In the end it will require far less effort to go with Solr instead of coming up with your own solution. Solr is build for these kind of requirements.
As an alternative, you can also use collective.elasticindex, an extension to index Plone content into ElasticSearch, for this.
According to its documentation:
This doesn’t replace the Plone catalog with ElasticSearch, nor
interact with the Plone catalog at all, it merely index content inside
ElasticSearch when it is modified or published.
In addition to this, it provides a simple search page called
search.html that queries ElasticSearch using Javascript (so Plone is
not involved in searching) and propose the same features than the
default Plone search page. A search portlet let you redirect people to
this new search page as well.
That can be and advantage over collective.solr.

How to handle non tabular data?

I have site terms, about and contact modules on my website. I want to be able to change these items via CMS and not via changing .ASPX pages every once in a while. My question is how to store this data ? I used to store this kind of data in SqlServer but i always thought it is an overkill since data is a single row with different columns especially when in some cases i just need one column.
How do you handle this issue ?
I have used a poor-mans CMS in the past for this type of thing by reading an xml file, however, Umbraco is an excellent CMS you may want to look at.

Field data in one table, not many. for drupal7

I am working with the commerce module to create an online store. I am modifying the products .install file to create a content type (as I have been told this is required) and as part of that content type, I need to create lots of fields. The list will be around 50-60 different pieces of information.
Ideally I would like to store these in a single table with the productID at the beginning and all the other information along, but this doesn't seem to be the case; all the fields are stored in different tables.
I noticed that the "Address" module that is also used with commerce creates a field-type that has about 15 different values all stored in the same box. How is this possible? I noticed that if I set the cardinality up to 5 for example, it creates different rows. I just want a table with the following:
ID - value1 - value2 - value3 etc etc.
I also don't need any modules/extensions as this all needs to be written in the files. I also don't think that changing to the mongoDB ( I think ) is an option, so what are my options in this situation?
That's not how the Drupal field system works I'm afraid, one field == one table (well actually 2 tables if you include the revision table for each field).
The Address module uses hook_field_schema() to define several columns for that particular field (have a look in address.install and you'll see what I mean).
So if you want to put everything in one table you'll simply have to define your own field type (see the examples module, specifically field_example for help with that).
Bear in mind though that the number of columns you define in hook_field_schema() will be static once the module is installed, and the only way you're going to be able to increase/decrease it is with an _update hook for your custom module.
Also, if you're hacking at files that are included in the Commerce module...stop!: Commerce is still very much in it's infancy and you will likely have to update it soon...once you've done that your code changes will be gone and there's a good chance your site will be in an inconsistent state.
The whole point to Drupal is that everything is hooked/farmed out so that it can be altered by other parts of the system. There's nothing you can change in product.install that can't be done by implementing a Drupal hook in another module.
If you're unsure, post another question detailing what you're trying to accomplish by directly editing a contrib module file and one of the Drupal gurus on SO will point you in the right direction :-)
EDIT
Just to say I've been working with Ubercart in Drupal 7 for quite some time now and find it a very, very good solution (a lot of Commerce contributed modules are still in dev/alpha/beta; this is less so for Ubercart contributed modules). It might be worth a look.
Some more info
I think you've basically got two options here but either way you'll need to create a custom module (excellent set of instructions here).
Option 1: Create a custom field
If you're a Drupal coding beginner I'd suggest this is probably the easiest way to accomplish what you want, but it's still not totally straight forward. Grab the field_example module from the Drupal Examples module link above and have a look in the .install file, specifically the field_example_field_schema() function. That defines the columns that will be in the table for that field. Then have a look in field_example.module...pretty much every function that's commented with Implements hook_x is one that you're going to want to copy into your module and tweak for your own needs.
I think this will be easier because Drupal will handle the table/form field creation for you
so you don't have to mess with the database, schema or form APIs.
Option 2: Create a custom module
This option involves implementing your own table (like you suggest in your comment) where the primary key would be the entity ID of the product and would also contain all of your custom columns. (See the Schema API documentation for help with this).
Then you'd implement hook_form_alter() to add the form fields necessary for a user to input the data, and then implement hook_node_insert() and hook_node_update() to persist this data to your database table. It's quite hard to go into any more detail without actually writing code and it's quite a bit of code!
Hope that helps, sorry I can't be any more specific but it's not easy without knowing all the ins and outs of the situation

Using Solr for multiple sites

I have setup a Solr server, now, I have two sites that I want to index and search using SolrNet.
How do I differentiate the two sites' content in Solr?
You may want to take a look at this document: http://wiki.apache.org/solr/MultipleIndexes
I think the best approach is to use Multiple Solr Cores.
Another option is you can simply add a new field that indicates the item's Web site. For example, you can add a field called type.
Searches on website1.com would require you to filter on the type field.
&fq=type:website1.com
That way you only need to deal with one core and one schema.xml file. This works if the pages of both sites have a very similar field set, and it will make it easier to search across both sites if you plan on doing that.
http://wiki.apache.org/solr/MultipleIndexes#Flattening_Data_Into_a_Single_Index

moving database schema over to drupal

I'm creating a web application and I just want to know how to think about Drupal's db coming from an MVC background.
I have tables to represent people's data such as SSN, First Name, Last Name, Zip Code, Address, Language, Location. Now on the front end I want to create a form to populate this information for a bunch of subjects (people). I have my database normalized so the Zip Code has its own table (with a foreign key link to the person table). The "person" table has stuff such as First Name, Last Name, Address etc... and the "language" table will have the different language abbreviations (again with a foreign key back to the person table).
I would like to know how to move something like this to drupal's schema. I know I could create my own tables and link them back to the "node" table and then I guess build my forms to accept user input...but is this the suggested way to do it? I was looking at webform, but it seems this should be used for simpler forms where the database isn't normalized and everything is just stored in one large table. I'm not sure, but I would definitely love to hear what you guys think...and if you could point me to some resources that'd be great.
Drupal is flexible enough that you can create whatever tables you want and then write code to link them back to the node table. However doing this will mean that you end up with a lot of code which is very specific to your schema, and is not very interoperable with other Drupal modules.
You will find that you get on better with Drupal if you mostly do things the Drupal way. And only go for a very customized solution where you are doing something which isn't covered by standard Drupal modules.
For example you may find that the profile module fits your needs as far as standard information about people goes. The location module (specifically user location) will cover users addresses. By using these modules you are more likely to find other modules which work with them in future and overall you will find you have less code to write.
One thing you may find useful is the migrate module for getting your existing data into Drupal.
It sounds like you're just storing information and the subjects (people) won't be users of the Drupal site.
Leveraging the node and CCK modules to make this happen would remove most of the development work. For example, each of your tables (e.g. Person, Zip Code, Language) could be represented by a content type with a number of fields. The foreign keys would be represented by node reference fields. So the Person content type may have one or more node references to nodes of type, Language.
The migrate module seems well used (626th most popular of 4000+ modules used in at least 10 distinct Drupal sites), but it may be easier to whip up your own migration script, but I'm not familiar with either your situation, your familiarity with Drupal's API, or the migrate module.
Node reference fields display as links to the referenced nodes by default, but can be themed to load and display the referenced node instead (e.g. displaying Language information in a Person node). There's a handy screencast that illustrates how to go about theming node reference fields to load and selectively display the referenced nodes' contents.
Coming from an MVC background you may not like how Drupal stores data in the DB.
Profile module was mentioned, but I find I get more flexibility with Content Profile and CCK combined.
I've written some migration scripts before from Coldfusion to Drupal, and it's not too involved.

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