# Splitting a site into two parts

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/splitting-a-site-into-two-parts/269649>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [June 26, 2023, 3:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/splitting-a-site-into-two-parts/269649 "2023-06-26T15:09:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![MikeNolan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mikenolan/32/297597_2.png) [@MikeNolan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MikeNolan)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2023, 3:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/splitting-a-site-into-two-parts/269649/1 "2023-06-26T15:09:14Z")

</div>

I have a site, [lists.tssi.com](http://lists.tssi.com). It currently supports two essentially independent Discourse communities (migrated from Mailman), handled using groups and categories. Let’s call them x and y.

I want to split it so that the two groups are fully independent. (Yeah, that means more work for me, but I’m OK with that.) The primary reason for doing this is I want to open both communities up to non-member readership, but I think that would be easier if they were fully independent. I don’t think people in community X want to read a lot about what’s happening in community Y, even though they’re similar. (Both are college sports oriented sites.)

One way to do it would be to define the sites as [x.tssi.com](http://x.tssi.com) and [y.tssi.com](http://y.tssi.com) and another way would be to define the sites as [x.lists.tssi.com](http://x.lists.tssi.com) and [y.lists.tssi.com](http://y.lists.tssi.com).

Either way, [lists.tssi.com](http://lists.tssi.com) would act as a gateway to the two communities, with a common front door in Nginx.

As far as I can tell, either method should work in a single container, cloning the database so that they are fully independent. (I set up my testbed server using the [x.tssi.com](http://x.tssi.com) and [y.tssi.com](http://y.tssi.com) method, so I’m sure that works, I’m a bit less sure of the [x.lists.tssi.com](http://x.lists.tssi.com) and [y.lists.tssi.com](http://y.lists.tssi.com) approach, though I think that might be easier for my users to understand and would more readily support additional communities that may be added.)

Once I split them, the users who are part of one community will either be deleted from the other community’s database or just set to inactive. I may also delete all the other site’s posts and categories.

Any recommendations on which way to proceed? Any gotchas to be aware of?

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