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By alanburke on
I'm in the creating a website for a large group of users, some of whom will be member of different groups.
Ideally, rather than each user have their ownblog, I would like to let a number of users co-author a blog for their own group.
What would be the best way about doing this?
I'm considering implementing this via Taxonomy somehow, but not quite sure where to start.
Any thoughts?
Alan
Comments
I needed to do something similar
I needed to do something similar and I achieved it using taxonomy. Create a "Blogs" vocabulary, with terms for each blog. Mark the "Blogs" vocabulary as being applicable to nodes of type "blog entry". When a user creates a blog entry they will be able to choose which blog the post should belong to. The nice thing about using a taxonomy term is that you get an RSS feed automatically.
In my case I needed to hide this choice from unprivileged users, so I created a module which added a "default blog" profile field that could be administered by privileged users. I also had to create a blog home page that summarised all blogging activity.
You can see my version of the solution here, in particular this blog that has several contributors.
I can probably give you the code for this module (for 4.6), but you would need some knowledge of Drupal internals to tweak it for your purposes.
Could you post the code to
Could you post the code to sandbox?
I think many people need this functionality and perhaps at some point it should be turned into an "official" module or even moved to core.
After looking at these examples
you could also achieve this functionality by creating several new node types by following these instructions. Then, by setting up roles for different groups, and only allowing a specific role to create/edit a specific "new" node type, members of a specific role would be able to post into a specific term, creating the effect of a multi-user blog.
This would not, however, allow for multiple users to author the same node, just for a specific set of users to post into the same term.
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
The problem with using roles
The problem with using roles is that right now they are hard to manage beyond a few. If we want to have dozens of blogs with multiple authors that would be a problem...
No argument here
That will get unwieldy. A nice feature in 4.7 is that you can view access control for one role at a time, which will simplify administering sites with large numbers of roles.
Cheers,
Bill
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
organic groups
You might also look at the organic groups module.
Does it support group blogs
Does it support group blogs ?
See the description
"Each group can have subscribers, and maintains a group home page where subscribers communicate amongst themselves. They do so by posting the usual node types: blog, story, page, etc."
As to whether or not this will suit your exact purposes, your best bet is to install it on a test site and give it a try.
I describe how to do this on my web site
It uses the Taxonomy Access Control module, and it's a bit of a kludge, but it works and it doesn't require any coding.
I can't speak to how it will scale for a large number of users/a large number of taxonomy terms.
http://www.funnymonkey.com/group-collab
On a related note, we have been sorting out the specs for a module we're tentatively calling the personal book module -- this module would allow for, among other things, multiple authors of a single node.
Cheers,
Bill
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
One Other possible Way
Now I haven't tested the other methods yet, and some of them, or a mix of the various suggestions, might suit me better.
While ruminating on this I came up with yet another way.
It is possible to view multiple blogs by construcing a URL such as
Yoursite.com/blog/1+2
which displays multiple blogs together.
By using path or alias, I can get a more friendly URL.
This might suit some people's needs.
The only issue that there isn't the option for the users to have a 'private' blog. ALL posts to their blog appear as posts to the common blog.
But that isn't an issue for my site [ your mileage may vary]
Thanks for all the help, and keep the suggestions coming if you have them.
Regards
Alan
Drupal development and themeing, Galway, Ireland
This does it the other way
This does it the other way around - shows all posts from multiple blogs. What if a user needs to contribute to multiple group blogs which should not mix?
Thats true.
That suggestion would not work for that case alright.
Its just that it would suit my purposes for the site I have in mind.
Drupal development and themeing, Galway, Ireland
This actually would work
on a site using taxonomy terms to categorize the posts -- if you had ten different groups, you could create a variety of terms (group 1, group 2, group 3, and so on). If group 1 had ten members, they could all put their posts into the "group 1" term -- then, when people browsed the specific term (taxonomy/term/x) they would see blogs from a bunch of different users. This could also be made prettier with a url alias.
TAC module could be used to control access to terms.
This solution would allow the same user to be a member of more than one group.
With that said, all of the suggestions in this thread are pretty viable solutions. It really gets down to a mix between personal preference and the specific goals of your site.
Cheers,
Bill
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
...not so easy
Unfortunately, this is not so easy. The problem is described in this issue: http://drupal.org/node/42618
Any ideas are welcome.
It actually would work as described
The link in your post goes to an issue for Organic Groups. The solution I'm talking about uses Taxonomy Access Control.
When you are setting term-based access using TAC, you have the option to grant "update" privileges for a term -- this privilege gives any member with "update" privileges the ability to edit any post within the term.
So, if ten users have the right to "create" and "update" into "Term X", they can all edit each other's posts. In this circumstance, I would create the "blogs" using the page content type.
So, using this, you can create a group of users blogging -- the rss feed would be generated for the taxonomy term ("Term X", as mentioned above. This requires more administrative set up, but provides a clean, usable solution.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Bill
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Yes, but it will not scale...
The problem with relying on TAC is it is tied to roles. This means having a role per group of authors. Even a dozen of those is a management nightmare - managing member assignments, permissions, etc.
That's why OG comes up at certain point, but it has its own defects which I mentioned in the filed issue (http://drupal.org/node/42618).
No argument here
To quote from earlier in this thread (http://drupal.org/node/40808#comment-75383)
and http://drupal.org/node/40808#comment-75324
And you are also correct in pointing out that OG has its own set of issues. IMO, Taxonomy Access will solve this with fewer headaches than OG, unless you want to hack either module to solve your precise need.
Cheers,
Bill
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
I have to do some hacking
I have to do some hacking for now, no question. However OG and TAC are really complementary and should be harmonized. The strength of OG is in flexible tools for managing group membership. Now it needs to be enhanced by the power of taxonomy, under a single access control system.
+1 This seems to have been
+1
This seems to have been accomplished on NYObserver and other sites, via a cck field for bylines.
Is there another solutions?