Integrating Several Drupal Sites

Question

Three associates and I want to integrate our individual Drupal websites so that a user can move fairly seamlessly between them. We're all new at Drupal, so our planned approach avoids "doing it the right way" by combining modules and database tables.

Rather, we plan on simply having each site's menu system include links to the other sites, and load the selected site via Iframes so that the overall user experience is more like that of a single, integrated system. We'll adopt a common theme for all sites, and pass the user id through the HTML call (and then process it via normal Drupal code) to avoid the need for more than one logon.

My question is this: what are the negatives of this simple approach and are they so severe that a more traditional site-integration approach should be used. Thanks very much.

Answer 1

Once you start throwing things into frames your users/visitors will loose the ability to bookmark the correct page. For example, if they find a page they like and book mark it, they will get 'www.site.com/index.php' rather than 'www.site.com/article/article.php?Id=12345'. When they come back, they'll be getting the default page of where the frame lives at rather than the expected page.

Since all three of your sites are based on the same data scheme, it would probably be better to 'do it right' the first time around rather than hacking something together that in the end will cause more headaches than solutions.

Good luck on your project and hope this helps some.

Answer 2

To be honest, that sounds like a rather nasty can of worms you're looking at opening there. The mere mention of IFrames has me shuddering!

It seems to me like you'd be better off simply having one Drupal instance, with you and your associates as different content authors on the same site.

If you're looking at having the same theme across the three integrated sites, how will the users know which one they're on? And if the aim is to tightly integrate them, why not have the four of you simply contribute to the same core site?

Answer 3

If I had to make the decission, I would use the drupal multisite feature. You can even use the "single sign on" module to get all your users logged in to all sites. It is a bit of work, but I think it is well worth it.

Answer 4

Thank you all very much for your thoughts. It looks like we'll be doing it "the right way".