Single Tiki or Multiple Tikis?

I need to set up 20 related Tiki "portal"-type sites where objects and content in each Tiki are accessible to, related to, and searchable by, users on all the other Tikis. (At least if a visitor registers on 1 site, all the others will recognize the login and password; and one shared directory, searchable by all of the sites, where admin/editor users can explicitly relate their content/objects created on one Tiki to content/objects on the other Tikis.) Each Tiki will be a portal in its own right, with its own distinctive theme and purpose, not necessarily heirarchical, but all related at the database level.

For example, I have one Tiki at AmericanTalkRadio.com, the central, shared portal. On this site I want to combine directory access, searching, and categories for all content on all of the Tikis. I want to show modules that reflect information and calculate stats gathered from all of the Tikis.

A second Tiki, at EveryAmerican.com, will introduce visitors to some simple audio posting features (do-it-yourself tools for newbies) like creating and posting audio to a blog, and how to add their content and objects to the directory and categories.

A third Tiki, at SenateRadio.com will feature shows and channels produced by US Senators, offering their assistants or interns a higher level of support and training to use the more advanced features needed to produce and manage a "channel" on an ongoing basis.

While each site will be customized for its own specific user base (and be its own distinct "channel"), all 3 sites will provide users the tools and training to:

1) Produce and broadcast/syndicate their own internet talk radio shows (talk radio show=one or a collection/sequence of audio files and related multimedia content/tiki objects); and/or

2) Produce and manage their own "channel" (channel=collection of radio shows, related multimedia content objects, and groups of users like subscribers and content producers/managers.)

On each of these 3 sites, in addition to a common set of features (wiki, blogs, directory, forums, etc.), a choice of customized tool sets will be offered, based on what the user wants/is authorized to do (registered, editors, admins, etc). But all three sites will generally offer the same choice of common features and customized toolsets, all of which are designed to enable the user to produce and manage internet talk radio shows.

THE QUESTION...

I suppose I could set up one Tiki, and set each site as its own category, which I guess would enable all of the above, but would it be better to just set up 3 separate Tikis and create relationships between them? I'm concerned with scalability for the future, to grow and add on sites endlessly to the frankenstein monster I am creating.

I have a number of projects with these same organizational requirements for connecting non-heirarchical "communities" of users. I am no coder or database expert, and need to gain a better understanding of how I should set things up now to allow for maximum scalability for the future to provide single-login, integrated directories, searching capabilities, object relationships, and subscribers/user groups across multiple Tikis.

Damian says: You can share the users_users table and the groups table between TikiWiki's in the same way as happens from mose server running tw.o and damian server running doc.tw.o, or hasnt anyone noticed that 😉 you can seemlessly login in tw.o and as you navigate to doc.tw.o you are already logged in and ready to go!
You can join Tikiwiki Wiki's together from the Admin -> External Wiki option, and then to display a link to a wiki page on another site use:
( ( othersite:SomeWikiPage ) )

Of course you can always use the Send pages options under the Wiki menu and use the Tiki wikixmlrpc 😊 Enable Communications Send/Receive on your Admin->Features menu.

Thanks Damian. Can you please clarify the following points:

1) Are there instructions somewhere for sharing the users_users table and the groups table?

2) Can I also share directories and objects across multiple TikiWikis? If so, how?

3) Is the External Wiki option any different than an abbreviation for a regular link?

4) Does the send pages feature make a duplicate of the original, or does it display the original? When the original page is updated are the changes reflected in the second instance?

5) Can I send other types of objects other than pages?

Lorinc suggests:
1) Are there instructions somewhere for sharing the users_users table and the groups table?
I would use mysql replication for example, this means a hierarchical setup, where one sql server serves as a core and the others take over contents of tables....

2) Can I also share directories and objects across multiple TikiWikis? If so, how?
Include more tables in the replication process, or cross-link directories from within those tikis..

3) Is the External Wiki option any different than an abbreviation for a regular link?
well, yes and no. the format for external wikis has also a "location" included: use ((ExternalWiki:WikiPageName)) format or ((ExternalWiki:WikiPageName|WikiPageDescription)) format; external links do not yet receive special icons to show that they are external...

4) Does the send pages feature make a duplicate of the original, or does it display the original? When the original page is updated are the changes reflected in the second instance?
it depends on how you configure it, append and diff are options too

5) Can I send other types of objects other than pages?
I wouldn't replicate data, rather use RSS and XMLRPC to include feeds of content-change

just my $0.02 cents 😊

Thanks for the info, Lorinc. Can you or somebody 🙄 steer this brave (but newbie) sys admin toward docs/tutorials or just tell me exactly how to do mysql replication, cross-linking directories, append and diff, and how to use RSS and XMLRPC in TikiWiki. I have searched this site and found very little documentation on these.

OR, would it be better for now to just use one big Tikiwiki and make each site its own category? I just need to know the best way to get this started so I don't waste time and find out later that I didn't set things up the best way in the beginning. Your expert advice to set me on the best path would be very much appreciated.

If there is no clear answer to this question, then it would help me to know the advantages and disadvantages of either path, or using a combination, or??

As of March 2005 I have now had a Multi-Tiki (separate databases for each tiki site, all sharing the same Tiki Application codebase) for 6 months or so, hosted by TikiHOST.net. They are a great host and the only one I would use for a multi-tiki.

Anyway, I found that it made more sense to use separate databases for now because it will be easier to combine databases later on, than it would be to separate the data later if I had used one database for all.

Also, the multi-tiki is an ongoing development effort, and, when combined with the work going on regarding User Page Groups things are heading in the right direction. In the end there are many ways to accomplish what I described above, and the more I learn Tiki "under the hood" the less I am worried about how to set things up, since its always evolving and expanding.