Hi,
I've been playing around with Organic Groups, and they appear to do part of what we require. However, what we really need is the ability to link groups in some way.
The way the requirements have been described to me, it looks like subgroups. However, flexible linking between groups is perhaps more what we need.
We want groups for regions and groups for organisations, with the ability to link the two. So anybody looking at the New York group would be encouraged to join groups for organisations based in New York. And anybody looking at an organisation's group in New York would be encouraged to join the New York group.
As far as I can tell, we could use the CCK module to add a link from one group to another. But it doesn't look like it will let us link to multiple groups easily, or easily add two-way links (ie. linking an organisational group to a regional group should also add a link in the other direction).
I guess we could do something with vocabularies, tagging groups with regions. However, that's not going to link to a regional group and I'm not sure how I'd implement that.
I guess we could create a page for each region and have groups add their listing to that page, but that would get very messy very quickly and there really should be a better way.
Has anybody achieved what we are aiming for? Is there a way of doing it that I haven't thought of?
Comments
i'm working on something
i'm working on something very similar and was thinking of going the vocabulary route where I'd create a vocabulary list dedicated to Groups and each term is a city. would that work for you? You would then need to create a custom view/page that listed all Groups with a taxonomy term for New York for example. thoughts? mc
That's roughly what we've
That's roughly what we've gone for, I've created a vocabulary for "group topic" and one for "group location". I've left group location as free-tagging for now, so groups can be NYC, New York, USA, etc - depending on how wide an area they cover.
It means there's no way for the local marketing group to advertise the fact that there is a more general local group, but other than that it's working well. And my end-users seem to be happy with my solution, which is the most important part.
Desperately need help on related problem
I am at my wits end ... I am using OG and recently added OG Forum. But I couldn't figure out how to tie the Groups I have created to the forum. I see the same "forum" link and when I tried to configure the forum, I can't find anything different to before I've installed OG Forum, i.e. I can't find a place where I can tell the forum to only be visible and be posted to by member of one of the Groups.
I've asked quesitons here with no replies. I have emailed Drupal but they ask me to come back here. I really need to get this figured out but I am not a programmer, just a web designer who needs to do this on one of the site.
Please help! Or direct me to some place that I can find help (BTW, I've tried the handbook but there is no instructions relating to this ... if there is, please can someone point me to it??)
Thanks a million.
Petre
og_forum issues
That's nothing to do with what we're working on, but I've done some work on og_forum myself so can answer.
og_forum is designed to create a new forum for every organic group. It isn't designed to provide OG-based user access to existing forums. In fact, it's designed in such a way that it doesn't work alongside standard forums.
If you require multiple forums per group, then there is a patch for the 4.7 series module for this http://drupal.org/node/68295. However I haven't actually tested this.
If you require users to only see forums in groups they are subscribed to, see http://drupal.org/node/72374#comment-129446.
I hope this clears things up a little.
That's what I want to do - I've no existing forums
Thanks, larcrich.
What you describe is exactly what I want to do. I have set up 4 groups, and I want to create a new forum for every group. I don't have any existing forums. How do I create a forum for each of the groups?
I've gone to the second link you provided and have a look, but because I have nearly no programming skills, I couldn't quite understand what I am suppose to use the information (I don't actually understand some of it). This sounds stupid, but I am learning at the moment, and being thrust into this situation where I need to get this configure quickly. That's why I am aksin high and low for an answer.
You are the first person who actually even answer my question. So thanks, really. But it would be really helpful if you can tell me how to create the forums for each group. Or do I have to set up the groups again from scratch??
Thanks for any please you can provide!!
I've got a little further but still have problems
After my last post, I went and try again to figure things out according to your answer. I found that now I've enabled og_forum, when I create a new group, there is a Generic Discussion Forum automatically under it.
I logged in as a member of another gourp (not the new group I've just created), and sure enough, I couldn't see the post in the new forum. However, when I went and post new forum topic, I can actually choose the new forum to post to. If I don't select my own group as the audience and click submit, I got an error mesasge. But when I logged in as admin, I saw that the post has actually gone into the front page.
This is where I am at so far. I will do some more testing. But can you tell me whether I've done anything wrong here? Or is this what the http://drupal.org/node/72374#comment-129446 link is about??
Thanks again, lardirch. I am hoping that eventually I will see some light here!!
Audience based on vocabulary
Have you found any way of posting new stories to an audience defined by that category system? ie. can you select all groups from New York as the audience, or do you still have to do it manually?