Run multiple domains with different traders, designs, and rotation stats on a single gallery database. Sites can even run on different servers.

The setup: One master site collects galleries; slave sites use the master's database. Changes on the master automatically propagate to all slaves.

In practice: Install the script on all domains. Site 1 is the master with the full gallery database. Sites 2 and 3 are slaves using the master's database. On each slave, go to Rotation - Settings, specify the master's MySQL database, and click “Link to This DB”.

Benefits:

1. No need to copy thumbnails or galleries across sites; everything syncs automatically.
2. Sponsors are shared across all sites.
3. 10 sites on 1 database create less load than 10 separate databases.
4. Configure content and crop profiles only once, on the master.
5. Custom galleries on the master display with each slave's design.
6. Deploy flexibly—master and slaves on different servers. Even separate MySQL and CMS servers.

Limitations:

1. Gallery statuses are shared; you can't have different statuses on slaves.
2. Custom gallery template names must be identical across slaves.
3. Each slave links to one master; a master can have unlimited slaves.

Shared (master + slaves):

1. Complete gallery database (statuses, titles, descriptions, tags)
2. Tag database and tag cloud

Separate per slave:

1. Click, impression, and CTR statistics
2. Category descriptions and custom variables (categories themselves are shared)

By default, slaves use master descriptions. You can enable “Separate Desc” on a slave to add custom descriptions there instead, saving database space.

Multiple niches from one master:

If your master is multi-niche, quickly create niche sites from it:

1. Install the script on a new domain
2. Link to the master
3. Activate only needed categories on the slave

How: Go to Rotation - Settings - Linked DB, select external database, and specify the master's credentials.

If you store thumbnails locally on the master (default: scj/thumbs), tell the slave where to find them. On the slave, go to Rotation - Settings and set Alt Hosts to the master domain (just the domain, e.g., master.com).

Here's why: on the master, thumbnails are at /scj/thumbs/. When a gallery is grabbed, thumb 123 is saved as scj/thumbs/123.jpg. On the slave, specify Alt Hosts = master.com, so URLs become http://master.com/scj/thumbs/123.jpg.

Note: Anti-hotlinking is usually enabled (correctly). Ensure the master allows hotlinking from the slave. Contact your admin if needed.

To use slave domain instead of master domain (http://slave.com/scj/thumbs/123.jpg vs. http://master.com/scj/thumbs/123.jpg):

Same server:

Create a symlink: /home/slave.com/scj/thumbs → /home/master.com/scj/thumbs. Don't set Alt Hosts. URLs stay as /scj/thumbs/123.jpg and load normally.

Different servers:

• Create a DNS record (e.g., img.slave.com) pointing to master.com
• Set Alt Hosts = img.slave.com
• Thumbnail URLs become http://img.slave.com/scj/thumbs/123.jpg, loading from the master via DNS

Master and slave can be on different servers. Two notes:

• Ideally, they're in the same data center for speed.
• MySQL may restrict connections to localhost only. If the slave can't connect, ask your admin.

Slaves have their own statistics for thumbs, but when a slave is added the statistics are copied from the master. If you want to start rotation on the slave from scratch - you can reset all statistics in rotation - special.

To create a site identical to the master except for design: on the master, set Rotation - Settings - Own thumb stats = “Use master” and Own descriptions = “Use master”. This creates a complete copy with different templates, letting you run hundreds of trading sites on one server.

When master and slave trade with each other and use category thumbnails, consider Rotation - CMS - Tube Settings option “Category thumbs: Thumb number”. For the slave, set it to 2-3 instead of 1 so sites initially look different. Later, when slave CTR diverges from master, change it back to 1.

By default, slaves link to galleries on themselves. Master and slave can use different templates to display the same gallery differently:

http://master/gallery/cool/index.html (master's design) http://slave/gallery/cool/index.html (slave's design)

Sometimes you want slave links to point to the master (to boost master PR). Simply changing the template link to http://master/gallery/GALLERY_SLUG/index.html won't work—it redirects without counting clicks.

Instead, route traffic through the slave's click counter:

1. Change the template link from:

/gallery/GALLERY_SLUG/index.html?<!--THUMB_LINK-->
to:
/scj/cgi/out.php?url=http://master/gallery/GALLERY_SLUG/index.html&link=images/<!--THUMB_LINK-->

2. Or change the rewrite rule from:

RewriteRule ^gallery/([^/]+)/index.html$ /scj/cgi/out.php?link=images/%{QUERY_STRING}&url=content&slug=$1 [L]
to:
RewriteRule ^gallery/([^/]+)/index.html$ /scj/cgi/out.php?link=images/%{QUERY_STRING}&url=http://master/gallery/$1/index.html [L]