Single Tenant or Multi Tenant

When you Install OpenScholar, one choice you must make is to install Multi or Single tenant.

Q: What's the difference between single-tenant and multi-tenant installations?

Briefly, multi-tenant allows for users to create virtual sites on their own. Single-tenant is much like a standard drupal installation.

One key feature that sets OpenScholar apart from other Drupal profiles is the "Virtual Site" (vsite) system. Virtual Sites turn one Drupal installation into a self-service site builder-- Similar to services like Drupal Gardens, Google Sites, or Wordpress.com, but with a lot more features, and open source! For example, browse http://scholar.harvard.edu/websites to see a live example of 1 Drupal install which hosts about 1,500 virtual sites, each with unique theme, enabled features (apps) and more customizations.

Also, you can use OpenScholar just for it's site-building tools, without turning on Multi-tenant. This means that it the site functions much like a standard Drupal installation, but with a easier admin interface and built-in polished apps to handle common use cases like listing publications, a people directory, etc.