Distributed user updates for subsections question

OG is a fantastic module, but it can be a little overwhelming at first. One thing you might want to do is visit http://groups.drupal.org and poke around if you haven't already. It might help the pieces fit a little better.

Now lets see if I can address some of your questions:

> When I login as gthomson, I was thinking it would let me add SchoolPost entries, but it says I must join a group first. As a central admin, how would I join gthomson to the group so that he can submit SchoolPost entries?

Yes-- the whole point of groups is organize users into them. So you must join a group first (although it's news to me that it applies to user 1). If not done so automatically at installation, you should enable the 'group details' block at admin/build/blocks. Then when you visit an og group page you'll have the option to 'join' available right on the page (if you've configured it such that users can join themselves and its not an admin only thing).

> I was expecting (wrongly probably) that the SchoolPost that I added as the admin would be listed similar to a blog entry almost on the SchoolPage entry. But the only way I can get to the SchoolPost entry I entered is by bumping up the node ID on the URL (haven't figured out how to do clean URLS yet - using Win2008 Web Server edition for this setup)
Is this where the 'og_views' piece comes in to give me a way to list the SchoolPosts on the SchoolPage node? I haven't worked with regular Views, yet.

There's quite a few options with og, I'm not sure of what they all are by default. They key is, you have to complete the schoolpost form from within the group context (while on the group page, you need to use the 'create schoolpost' link).

In other words, 'node/add/schoolpost' is not the same as 'node/add/schoolpost?gids[]=1' -- the latter of which has a group context. Simply creating a "schoolpost' page does not mean it's automatically associated with a group. Once the post has a group associated with it, it should appear on the group page similar to the way blogs work. If not, you may indeed have to enable one of the provided views for that functionality.

Alternatively, iirc, you can enable the 'groups' audience field to appear right on the node add form so it can be selected at creation time. I think you also have an option to require nodes be associated with a group.

> Am I right in thinking, that if I want to enable this kind of setup for, say, 30 schools on a district web site, I would be setting up, at a minimum, 60 content types - 2 for each school (one for a node, and one for a post for each school)?

No-- you actually only need 1 content type in addition to what drupal provides by default (technically, you don't even need that, but it gets confusing if you don't use a separate one for the group node).

I created a single "group" content type (yours might better be called 'school' instead of 'schoolpage'). Each school, will have 1 node of type 'group' (or whatever you called it) that acts as the home page for the group. You don't need to create additional content types for the posts-- you can simply use the default 'page' and 'story' types. If a page or story is created from the 'group details' create content links they will be associated with the group.

> And if I set things up in this way, and then add in the subdomains module, a school secretary could add ongoing info which would display as a subsection on the district site, and also be dual-purposed, and display on their more full-blown school site, which might show as being a different subdomain specific to the school?

The subdomain module should just organize your group content into subdomains. For example, if one of the schools is named 'school1', then the group home page will be at 'http://school1.example.com' as well as all the content pages (ie school1.example.com/node/nid). This module has a bit of an advanced installation, so you might be better off using something like 'http://example.com/school1' type URLS (which is very easy using pathauto & tokens).

Where the school secretary will be allowed to post will be a function of what permissions you give them-- it has nothing to do with the subdomain or pathauto modules.

Hope that helps some. OG is quite a complex module with lots of features but you'll grok it-- just hang in there.

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