Wish to make some forums & other content prominent / default per domain

I wish to do the following in Drupal 7:

Allow educator.domain.com, student.domain.com and other subdomains to share content / forums but an "add content" click would default to the particular domain from which the request came such that users usually don't have to look through a list for the desired . At least as importantly, I'd like the same relevant content to show up at the top of a listing or by itself on the front page and similar areas for the subdomain from which it came.

I see that Panels and Views might be able to do this but they or their required modules, like Ctools and Entities are not final yet, so things aren't stable. If this is the only option, I'm not sure how this content would be tagged such that Panels and Views can pick it out and put it into a particular area.

Thanks for reading. :-)