Club with multiple chapter subsites... will several chapter subsites be active at the same time? [#632472]

The docs state, "There can only be one subsite active at any moment. If multiple subsites are valid for some page, the one with the lowest weight is the active one."

For our club website we plan to have separate subsites for each of our chapters. We have defined a "chapter" content type node for each chapter, and each will have a menu link from our homepage. Each of those "type=chapter" nodes will be the chapter "homepage" and we don't expect any subsites under the chapters.

But I'm concerned by the doc statement that only one chapter subsite can be active at any moment. Of course we want members of various chapter to be able to access their individual chapter subsites at the same time. Will subsites work for this situation or will only one subsite be active at one time?

If so, will we be able to individually assign creation/editing/admin permissions for each subsite to separate members from each chapter ?

Comments

Comment #1

davyvdb CreditAttribution: davyvdb commented 14 November 2009 at 09:52

Status:

Active

» Fixed

I can't follow you here very well, but I learned one thing: that description from me was awful. I corrected it to

Each path/node/... can have only one subsite. If multiple subsites' conditions apply for the path, the subsite with the lowest weight is the active one.

Is that better?

Have you installed the module? Just test your scenario and a lot will be clearer then.

Comment #2

ldekay CreditAttribution: ldekay commented 14 November 2009 at 18:41

Thanks Davy - Sorry for the cloudy explanation... I'm new to Drupal and struggle with giving a clear explanation even to our other webheads.

Anyhow, I do have the subsets module installed, and the field for choosing a subsite is showing up in the content dialogs, but the only option is and I can't find anywhere to create/define any subsites. Is there something I need to turn on or create (like a subset content type)?

Let me try to explain our needs again so you can better understand what we want to do. The frontpage of the site we're developing (http://new.onc.org/) is the entry point for our state club. We have 11 area chapters that each want to control their own individualized website and membership records. But they will also want to share some content with other chapters. The state org. will also want to push some info down to the chapter sites and share the membership database.

'Subsites' sounds like a perfect fit for these purposes. My only concern with your original statement was that we couldn't have people hitting all 11 subsites simultaneously. But if I understand your rewrite, as long as each chapter is a single, unique subsite, any number of members of any chapters can look at their own chapter site (or even other chapter sites) at the same time. Is that correct?

The other options we've considered include:
- creating 'multisites', which involves completely separate databases, so the sharing of data and membership records would be painful at best.
-using the 'sections' module in conjunction with the context module, but your description of 'subsites' sounds much more simple and elegant. If I can only find out how to create/define our subsites!

I hope that helps clarify the issues.

Comment #3

davyvdb CreditAttribution: davyvdb commented 14 November 2009 at 19:32

Have you checked out organic groups?

Comment #4

ldekay CreditAttribution: ldekay commented 15 November 2009 at 06:51

We're looking at organic groups as the traffic cop to keep the content separated between the various chapter subsites, but we still need to create the subsites.

We have the subsets module installed, and the field for choosing a subsite is showing up in the content dialogs, but the only option is and I can't find anywhere to create/define any subsites. Is there something I need to turn on or create (like a subset content type)?