Sorry if this has been discussed before... I just spent the last two hours going over the queue and trying to figure out if somebody addressed this issue or not. Found plenty of similar things, but not quite the answer I need for this issue. Honestly, I got a bit lost. So here goes ...

My site has a combination of forums that belong to a group through og_forum and a few other general forums that don't have a group, like "support" "Q&A" "site news" etc. I would like the user to be able to post to both his group and those wide-site forums through "create content", but - the problem is that users often use that to submit to a group without selecting that group's audience, which has already resulted in some privacy and copyright issues. I've already added a banner ontop of the forum create content page to warn the users, but that doesn't quite help, users just don't read instructions that way.
I don't know exactly how, but I would like that if the user is posting to a forum that belongs to a group with og_forums that the audience of that group be automatically selected or at least the user be notified again before submitting the forum topic.

Thoughts? solutions?

Comments

rconstantine’s picture

rconstantine commented

This would be addressed by the issue found here: http://drupal.org/node/183249 and here: http://drupal.org/node/128266, and I think elsewhere as well.

Basically, there is a difficulty in setting the audience after a submission that needs to be worked out, possible together with the OG module itself.

Meanwhile, might I suggest that you move your site-wide forums into a special group? If you use my 'multiple mandatory groups by role' module, you can make it so that every user is subscribed (even retroactively) to the 'help', or 'site info', or 'support' group that you make. Just 'edit forum' each existing site-wide forum and give it a new parent (your new group). And if you make it a closed group and don't list it in group lists, users won't really know it's a group. You just add a link to the group to your menus.

There still remains the problem of creating a topic when not in a group context, since the audience will still not be set. You can use my 'content type by group' module and disallow forum topic creation at the site-wide level. Then, your users will have to be inside a group to post to that group. Not ideal, but currently the only solution that ensures that the audience is correctly set (provided you do your audience settings right; i.e. hide from users, but make required).

Sorry the functionality you want isn't here yet, but it is planned. I just need to make money right now. I hope to get to things soon, but it might not be until February or so. :-(

fiLi’s picture

fiLi commented

I see.

Thank you for a very comprehensive answer. I'm not sure the solution you suggested is the right way to go for my site, as I want the forums to be crawlable for search engines and open for anonymous without subscription, and I have other content that isn't group related.

I understand your time pressure, it's okay. I'll wait patiently and use the current wonderful functionality.

One more question if I may (I can open a new issue, if needed) :
Is there anyway for me to put a block visibility PHP code that would know that I'm currently within a forum that belongs to a group? I would like to add the group blocks to the forum topics that are related to a group. I understand that might be a bit of a problem if there are more than one groups associated with content, but maybe there is somesort of solution people are using I'm overlooked on having the users browing group forums to feel like they're still in the group page.

Fili

rconstantine’s picture

rconstantine commented

About your 'one more question': When I browse group forums, the group context menu remains where it should. Is yours going away? I don't know why it would disappear. Then again, I am using the content types by organic groups module, which replaces the og context menu with its own version and it's possible that I enhanced it in some way, though I don't recall doing so.

fiLi’s picture

fiLi commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Your comment helped me realize something I did caused this to happen.
Thanks for a great useful module and your help.