One user/post database, multiple sites

[ChrisHasenpflug]

Hi folks,

I'm going to be converting to vB for a network of sites. All of these sites will use their own design and marketing tactics. However, they all use the same database. Same users, same forums/subforums, same posts. Only difference is the templates and the content in their CMS.

I'm currently working through this in a dev enviroment and its not as easy as I had hoped (we currently do this with UBB just fine).

First thing, when setting up the second site I couldn't go through the install since the tables were already created. But I was able to login and view the posts since the DB was setup for site 1.

Problem 1: site2 has the title of site1. This is (I assume) because the site name is actually stored in the database. Uh oh! This won't do at all, how do I get around that?

Problem 2: Templates are stored in the database. Any changes to site2 will be reflected on site1 and viceaversa.

How do I make this possible?? Thoughts?? I'm and experienced php & mySQL programmer, but I haven't sat down with the vB code yet to hack through it. Hopeful somebody can give me some pointers!

Thanks in advance!