Using Total CMS across multiple RW project files...possible?

Classic
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Hi Total CMS experts, I’m just wondering if the following is possible:

I have built 6 websites (built with 6 RW project files) on one domain with 5 subdomains (one subdomain for each sub-brand). I’m using Total CMS across the site(s) so the client can update content themselves.

Here is the primary domain: https://twcrecoverylife.org

The subdomains can be accessed at the very top of each page (e.g. https://elevatelife.twcrecoverylife.org)

After building it with 6 projects, I found out that they want the content on some pages to be exactly the same as the content on other pages. For example, they want the content on About page for the main brand (i.e. https://twcrecoverylife.org/about/) to be the same as the content on the About page for all of the sub-brands (e.g. https://elevatelife.twcrecoverylife.org/about/).

I know that I can do this with Total CMS if all of this is contained in the same RW project file…but if it is spread across multiple RW project files, can I use the text macros in one project file in a different project file?

I tried doing with one text macro, but it looks like it doesn’t work
e.g. On the Together We Can website, I’m using this text macro on the About page: %cmsText(GlobalAbout1)%
On the Elevate Life sub-brand website, I tried to use the same text macro from the Together We Can project file but it won’t pull in the content from the Together We Can website.

Is this a lost cause? Do I have to combine all 6 RW project files together into one file in order for this to work?

@zeebe @joeworkman

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Might be a case for the new portal stack from Joe Workman: https://www.weavers.space/rapidweaver/stacks/portal

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Yes, I was wondering about the same thing! I wonder if Portal can be used across multiple RW project files…

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Each subdomain will have it’s own instance of TotalCMS and the data in the /cms-data folder for that instance. You cannot access the data from a different subdomain/domain directly via TotalCMS.
Hopefully that makes sense.

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It’s an interesting use case and would be curious to see if there’s a solution (I could see it being useful for national vs regional promotions or something).
In your specific case, something like an about Us page shouldn’t change much. Just copy and pasting across the 6 sites seems like the easier way to go…

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or using an offsite page type maybe

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Yeah, that’s what I suspected @swilliam

:frowning:

Oh well, that’s okay.

And @jabostick, that’s true…they could just copy and paste across six websites for simple content like this…but they also want the News page and the Team page (which will both be built with TCMS blogs) to appear identical across all six sites, which will be a lot more work to reproduce.

So I guess it’s either Portal stacks, or I just have to combine all 6 project files into 1 :sweat:

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Here is a stupid question… Why use 5 different subdomains for each brand? Why not have them all under the same domain? mycompany.com/brand

My gut says that would be better for SEO anyways.

1 Like
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This is what the client wants…they want each brand to have it’s own website under different subdomains.

I’ve started merging all 6 projects into one big project file. It’s tedious, but I think it’s working…But one issue has come up: how do I turn off the logo hyperlink in Top Bar? Is there a way to unlink the logo? @joeworkman

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I’m not following the “merge into one project” thought. The RW project won’t solve the issue you asked about. If the “sites” end up in subdomain s each instance of TCMS will be separate. The best method would be as joe suggested and have the sites in sub folders of the main site.

You do not need to merge the projects to accomplish this. I often separate large sites into multiple project files to make it faster to edit them.

Logo link: don’t use the built in logo functionality, just add an image there instead and you could link it wherever you want on a page by page basis. Drop zone is one way to do this.

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Hi Scott, sorry if i wasn’t very clear :slight_smile:

By “merge”, I meant that I dragged and dropped the pages from all the other projects into one massive project (i.e. I started out with 6 seven-page projects, and now I have one really big 42 page project). This means that it’s a big of a pain for me to open, edit, and publish, but I think this is the only way of connecting all 6 websites to the same cms-data folder on the server (which is what everyone is telling me).

And yes, each sub-brand website resides in a sub folder of the main site. The subdomains are mapped out to these sub folders (i.e. https://elevatelife.twcrecoverylife.org points to https://twcrecoverylife.org/elevatelife/

And your idea for the logo link is great! I’ll use the drop zone instead of the built-in Top Bar logo.

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Sounds like you are in the right track. You didn’t have to combine the projects though, you could have just set up the publishing and folders as necessary to publish in the sub folders of the main site. I do this all of the time with really large projects.

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Thanks @swilliam…I had originally set up the projects to publish in subfolders of the main site, but I wasn’t able to get the websites in those subfolders to connect to the cms-data folder in the root. So I just ended up combining all 6 project files into one. It was a bit of a pain, but it’s all working great now :slight_smile:

Thanks again for the suggestion to replace the built in logo with the drop zone…it works like a charm :+1:

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Glad to hear you got it sorted

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