My Lab is currently working on a news platform that will allow event visitors to contribute news about the event and read news written by other visitors.

Managing News provides an excellent fit for the second half of the system as it provides many of the features we need for news display -- a list of latest stories, automatic tagging, a map display, etc. For the first part of the system (news creation) we will likely use a derivative of Innovation News, a news creation system that we have developed in the Lab. (For the record, we are aware of Open Publish but have no plan to use it at the moment.)

My question is this: how do you see these two different platforms playing together? Would you recommend installing them as two separate sites that "communicate" with each other, would you recommend pulling the Managing News Features into our news creation platform, or would you recommend something totally different?

We currently think it makes the most sense to install the two different platforms as two different sites that work together, but worry that this might make interoperability somewhat complicated. As one example, this would require us to integrate some kind of single sign-on system so that user accounts for one site work on the other.

So what do you think -- we have a platform that is great for news display (Managing News) and a platform that is great for news creation (our own to-be-released, Innovation News-like system). How can we best combine these two platforms so that we can use the features of both?

Thanks!

Comments

john.karahalis’s picture

john.karahalis commented

febbraro on #open_atrium has been very helpful, answering all of these questions and more. Chat log is copied below.

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<johnopl> Hey everyone. I had a question yesterday, but
there wasn't much activity here. Is anyone around today?
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<pinglaura> johnopl: Now that phase2 took over OA, there
might be a different paradigm for getting support. New places? I have not had a
chance to investigate it.
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<johnopl> pinglaura: Thanks for the info. I thought this
might have something to do with the change of ownership. At the moment, I do
have a question that I would love to have answered before I start building on
top of your MN platform. What would the best next steps? I also posted a
Drupal.org support request.
<pinglaura> not my platform ;)
<johnopl> No problem. Do you have any advice? I don't
blame you, but I do sorta feel like I'm going at this alone... :-)
<pinglaura> i would look at the dedicated support
communities for those. OA has its own community where many questions about
features and spaces are answered and documented
<johnopl> Alright, cool. I don't think MN has a similar
community, but that does sound like a good start. Thanks!
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<febbraro> johnopl: I can try to answer your question
about MN, there is not a dedicated support site or IRC channel, but it is now
our (Phase2) distro as well.
<johnopl> Cool, thank you very much febbraro. I
basically have two questions:
<johnopl> 1) We have our own news contribution distro.
What is the best way to make this work with MN -- pulling MN Features, or
installing two separate sites?
<johnopl> and 2) What is the best way to extend MN.
Right now I have a copy of the installation profile and am building Features
into that.
<febbraro> For #1 I'm not really sure what your use
cases are so it is hard to say what the best method of integration might be.
<febbraro> For #2 I think just building compatible
features is the proper way to extend MN
<johnopl> Cool, so what I'm doing for 2 seems correct?
<febbraro> You likely dont need a cloned install
profile, you can just use the MN profile and add Features to that site.
<johnopl> Ah right right. The only problem is that we
hope to (in fact, are required to) distribute our modifications.
<febbraro> distribute the entire platform, or just post
the Features you've added?
<johnopl> Interesting, yeah. That makes sense. I worry
that we might need to make some (hopefully few) changes that are lower-level
than Features, but I'll definitely keep that suggestion in mind.
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<johnopl> For #1, I discussed this a bit further here:
http://drupal.org/node/1087006
<Druplicon> http://drupal.org/node/1087006 => Using
Managing News in a larger news system => Managing News, Miscellaneous,
normal, active, 0 comments, 1 IRC mention
<febbraro> Seems like the easiest integration is to have
the MN site ingesting RSS feeds from your contribution site
<johnopl> So two different sites. Yes, that's what we
decided on as well.
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<johnopl> We also talked about making this somewhat
transparent to the user -- making the theme the same, making them share a
domain, etc.
<johnopl> FWIW, I'm sure these are questions you will
start asking when it comes to making OA, MN, and OP play together. :-)
<johnopl> And Tatlr, of course.
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<febbraro> can you share the user/session table and have
them as sub domains of the same domain to get SSO, or use something bakery
<febbraro> bakery?
<Druplicon> bakery is a way to manage single sign-ons
across *.drupal.org infrastructure, but it will work for any family of sites
sharing a single second-level domain. See http://drupal.org/project/bakery
<febbraro> Yes, we have quite a few
OpenPublish/OpenAtrium combination sites.
<johnopl> Interesting. Yeah, that the kind of stuff we have been thinking about.
<johnopl> Interesting, interesting. Do you do it the
same way -- multiple sites with different subdomains sharing the user and
session tables?
<febbraro> When the same users are front end and back
end yes.
<febbraro> sometimes the OA instance serves a different
user group then the OP site.
<omega8cc> btw, there is also another option (however
not sure how mature) -
http://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/mar/02/simple-sign-openid
<febbraro> s/then/than
<johnopl> Interesting, I'll take a look at that.
<johnopl> Well it's good to know we're pretty much on
the right path here.
<febbraro> we've also used RPX for that too
<johnopl> Ah yes, we do plan on using RPX in some way.
Interesting.
<febbraro> but that is a service you have to pay for
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<johnopl> Right right, we did hit that wall a while ago.
<johnopl> Interesting. Very cool. Thanks so much
febbraro, this has been really, really helpful. :-)
<febbraro> np, good luck! Let us know how it goes.

john.karahalis’s picture

john.karahalis commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Thanks!