Subdomains
Firstly, search seems to be down at this time so apologies if this has been asked before.
My boss is involved in local politics and has expressed the desire to set up a community political website for our area. The catch is that underneath the general site he wants to sub-divide down into groups based on the political wards, with ward-specific news and discussion.
I'm thinking that a good solution would be to have the general site operating on a given domain, with each ward-specific section operating on a subdomain named after the ward, for example:
ward-X.localpoliticalsite.com
ward-Y.localpoliticalsite.com
ward-Z.localpoliticalsite.com
(where ward-X, ward-Y, ward-Z, etc, are actually ward names).
I have only used Drupal for basic single sites before. Would the best way to set this up be to define wards with Organic Groups and then point the subdomains at the appropriate groups with the Subdomain module? There could eventually be around 50 ward subdomains to handle if the concept proved popular. Am I correct in thinking that I don't need a multisite installation to accomplish this?
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
You could do it with a
You could do it with a multi-site setup, but you don't need a multi-site setup for this.
I would make the decision depending on how integrated you want the content and especially the users to be, if you want high integration I would go with "Organic Groups" or "Domain Access".
"Domain Access" (http://drupal.org/project/domain) will give you the ability for an outward appearance as if there were multi-sites, with the convenience of single database and administration interface.
See also http://www.bobbymods.com/collaboration-groups-multi-sites-organic-groups... .
BobbyMods
Thanks for the reply. This is
Thanks for the reply.
This is meant to be completely integrated (these aren't separate sites; they're just sub-divisions of the main site) so I think Organic Groups definately looks like what I need. I'm still confused as to what the best way to set up the subdomains is though.
For example, if I wasn't going to be using subdomains, I might have my groups addressed like so:
www.localpoliticalsite.com/ward-X
www.localpoliticalsite.com/ward-Y
www.localpoliticalsite.com/ward-Z
How do I easily set up "ward-X.localpoliticalsite.com" to act like "www.localpoliticalsite.com/ward-X" though? Is that what Domain Access can do?
Importantly, I need to be able log in to the site at ward-X and then visit ward-Y or ward-Z without having to log in again. Sessions need to persist across subdomains.
I don't see the need for a
I don't see the need for a sub-domain structure, but if that is a requirement, then "Domain Access" may be a better choice.
Domain access uses a common database, but to the outside world it looks like multiple sites.
There is no need for a sub-domain with organic groups, just rewrite the group url with the path module IF needed (subdomain module).
If you are going to use OG then;
can be achieved by using the subdomain module or doing a
.htaccessredirect.Using OG sessions are persistent because there is only one domain.
With "Domain Access" you would use something like http://drupal.org/project/singlesignon.
Good Luck.
BobbyMods