# Multisite installation ... in subdirectories?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/multisite-installation-in-subdirectories/151794>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [May 18, 2020, 7:15am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/multisite-installation-in-subdirectories/151794 "2020-05-18T07:15:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jashankj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jashankj/32/179611_2.png) [@jashankj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jashankj)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2020, 7:15am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/multisite-installation-in-subdirectories/151794/1 "2020-05-18T07:15:50Z")

</div>

Hello!

I’m setting up Discourse in an environment where I need several distinct forums, and where the set of forums needs to be flexible to change over time. (Yes, I do need multiple forums; they serve distinct communities.)

The answer seems to be a multi-site installation, and I’ve made that work: I currently have a working configuration for multi-site, with split data and web containers, per [Multisite configuration with Docker](https://meta.discourse.org/t/multisite-configuration-with-docker/14084). (I have two hostnames, `$hostname.$domain` and `discourse.$domain`, which has worked in my testing so far.)

However, there’s a catch: I don’t have easy DNS control, so I cannot readily add multiple “real” hostnames. All the documentation I’ve thus far seen suggests I require this for multi-site, and a quick dig through the mechanism by which multi-site support is implemented suggests this is the case.

My ideal layout would be to have each forum sit within its own subdirectory; so `discourse.$domain/forum1`, …, `discourse.$domain/forumN`; and equally ideally, being able to serve those fora from the one web container, as existing multisite mechanisms do.

Empirically, I can successfully lift the “primary” forum into a subdirectory, moving it to `discourse.$domain/forum`, according to [Serve Discourse from a subfolder (path prefix) instead of a subdomain](https://meta.discourse.org/t/subfolder-support-with-docker/30507) — but this seems to tie the web container to exactly that subdirectory and, in my experiments, badly upsets multi-site.

I’ve also tried shenanigans like massaging the `Host:` header going into the web container, based on the path at the host’s frontend web server, to no avail — I get a weird blend of multiple forums.

So: is there a neat way to do this? Can I get away with only one web container, a la multisite? Or will I have to wear a second web container? Will that behave badly given those containers would both be pointed at the same data container with no knowledge of the other? Or am I completely up the tree?

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/multisite-installation-in-subdirectories/151794)._