Elefant 2 can be made to run as a multisite setup, where each site has its own database, configurations, upload folder, etc, but share a common document root folder.
Note that no data or users are shared between the sites except the Elefant source itself, and any layouts and apps that you have installed.
This is possible through dynamically setting the ELEFANT_ENV environment variable. In your Apache VirtualHost block, add a SetEnvIf line as follows:
NameVirtualHost www.mainsite.com
<VirtualHost www.mainsite.com>
DocumentRoot /var/www
ServerName www.mainsite.com
ServerAlias www.site2.com www.site3.com
SetEnvIf Host ^www.(.*).com$ ELEFANT_ENV=$1
</VirtualHost>
This tells Elefant to load an alternate config file for each site (e.g., conf/mainsite.php, conf/site2.php, conf/site3.php) to override the main conf/config.php settings.
The next step is to duplicate conf/config.php to create the alternate config files.
When editing a site's custom config file, here are the settings you'll want to customize:
site_name = "Site2 Inc."
email_from = "joe@site2.com"
default_layout = "site2"
navigation_json = "conf/navigation.site2.json"
filemanager_path = "files/site2"
access_control_list = "conf/acl.site2.php"
master[file] = "conf/site2.db"
Note that you will need to create the alternate files and folders that you point the settings to.
You will also want to restrict individual site admins from accessing certain features, such as installing new apps or modifying themes, since those files are still shared between the sites. Here is a sample admin role that will work for this:
; <?php /*
[admin]
default = On
designer = Off
translator = Off
; */ ?>
You should now have a working multisite setup using a single Elefant installation.
Next: Database configurations