Running multiple forums on one install?

[Gumboots]

The OP asked this question over at SMF too (for obvious reasons) and one of the devs there just had a quick play with the concept on a day off. He was surprised at how well the quick trial worked out, although there are still issues to resolve. I can link that in here if a bit of cross-pollination would be useful, but don't want to tread on the team's toes. Your call.

[thecoalman]

I'm confused. Isn't this where permission and groups come in to play? You set which group can see which category/forum f.e a member in group A has access/visibility only to Category/Forum A and member in group B has access/visibility only to Category/Forum B

Multi site uses the same code base, e.g. you could have 20 different forums on 20 different domains with one set of files assuming they are the same server. The exception of course would be they would have their own cache, files, styles folder etc. and of course their own config.php and database Not sure how or if this would work on shared hosting but easy to do on VPS or better with Drupal and WP because they support it out of the box. Certainly can be done with phpBB right now but you'll need to mess around with server config.

Other than easy file updates there is some other benefits, you can for example easily use OPcache since there is only one instance of the php files that need to be loaded into RAM. I would imagine this is what a lot of these services that run managed sites do.

[ghulst]

Yes, I did post this on the SMF forum as well, for obvious reasons. These are the two platforms I have been using and I would like to end up with just one with a standardized forum setup for multiple sites. The test there looked promising, but at the same time is not a running solution yet either.
I doubt there will be hundreds flocking to a multisite solution, but so far I have had quite a few responses from people saying they do run multiple forums. So I am not alone apparently.