assumptions:
- one domain, multiple sub-domains
- power to manipulate dns
general requirements:
- each site has a different administrator (drupal user other than 1)
- more sites are created by drupal (http://groups.drupal.org/aegir-hosting-system ???)
- usertable needs to be sharable among sites
- content needs to be sharable among sites
- http://site.sub1.domainname.tld should be 'aliasable' as http://www.example.com
about administration::
each site should be 'administered' by somebody else. this somebody, let's call her localhero for now, should not be drupal user no1 but have some role delegated that makes her superior to other users of that site.
the power of localhero allows her eg. to:
- change the theme of the site
- select which content to include
- block users
...
about site creation::
assume the site http://domainname.tld exists and has an authorized called 'mr_average'.
mr_average then should be able to create a site http://somesite.domainname.tld.
further assume mr_averages site http://somesite.domainname.tld has a user 'youngerbrother', youngerbrother then could easily create a site http://site.somesite.domainname.tld and so on.
there is a fascinating project 'aegir' ( http://groups.drupal.org/aegir-hosting-system ) available which promises to make this possible. but it targets hosting companies and therefore allows completely different setups once a site was created.
this is overdone for this idea and therefor i do not know if it is the right choice?
about content::
the main requirement here is for the ability to share the content among all sites.
ideally localheros power enables her to select wether to share own content with *.somesite.domainname.tld or not. same to the content localhero wants to promote on http://somesite.domainname.tld. she should be able to select if she likes to promote content from *.somesite.domainname.tld or *.domainname.tld. she may even be able to use only content associated with a certain taxonomy.
there is this article about this topic: http://devbee.com/managing_multisite_content_from_ .
what makes me doubt is that harry says: "At this point, you'll want to disable creation of content from within each of your subsites.". this would be very bad 'cause we need to know which site created the content.
about usertable::
users from site1 should be able to login to site2 but be marked as 'foreigners'. localhero may grant or revoke rights to foreigners.
about aliasing::
well after localhero got used to beeing an admin, she should be able to rename the site which was formerly known as http://site.sub1.domainname.tld to http://www.localhero.com to feel even more power.
approaches:
A) select, tweak modules and contribute patches to achieve all (most or some ;-) goals.
B) strip down requirements to accomplish at least some goals with available modules
for those who followed me so far: it is aimed to become somekind of a pub or places network. i would love to try out some concepts of the very-local-internet and even in some future earn money by that.
some ideas and concepts are outlined (in german) at http://www.bruesselerplatz.de
(this article was originally posted as http://www.bruesselerplatz.de/node/188 )
/markus
Comments
puh too many domain and sitenames in this article
anyhow, i'll try to sum up my experiences with the fabulous "domain access" module suite. my sandbox is http://chillKraft.net - just to add one more url to this thread ;-)
looks like agentrickard, the author of domain access had some quite similar goals in mind while setting that stuff up - lucky me!
domain setup works like a charm.
node distribution works great too. the distribution concept is more a "push" one than what i need but one can simply use the "distribute to any site" option and then add some taxonomy glue to give the localhero the chance to pull in the proper content for her site.
this is where it needs some customisations. i could not work out a way to give one user the power to rule one domain. not shure yet if that idea does not live in the concept of domain access or if i simply am too dull to work it out.
permissions in domain access are setup in a way that regards the whole amount of sites? well, have to investigate further. what i would appreciate is a way to dynamically add a site specific role to a user. like an anonymous user becomes an authorized user with login, an authorized user assotiated with the site she logs in could become a "local". this way the localhero could define whatever an non local but loged in user (authorized) is allowed to do on her piece of land and what the neighbour (local) may do.
cu,
/markus
===================
markus schulte
markus@bp11.de
www.bruessselerplatz.de