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By Doug_M on
Hi, I'm new to Drupal and am trying to figure out the best way to utilize it for a site that would have multiple sub-sites. Each sub-site would share the same theme, header, footer and mega menu. However each sub-site would need their own sidebar menu (perhaps more than one page-depending) and would have editor/publishers that would only have rights to their sub-site. The number of sub-sites is about 40 with at least an equal number of editor/publishers.
Using the multisite method would make it easy to separate editing/publishing permissions but difficult to maintain the common mega menu/header/footer.
In a single site I have looked at a few modules that help with permissions but I haven't found a decent solution for having a different sidebar menu per sub-site. One method would be to have all the sidebar menus added to the content type I am using and then change their visibility, say on taxonomy or something. I don't know what the performance would be but it seems like a poor solution. Another would be to create a separate content type for each sub-site that only has the appropriate sidebar. But 40 content types when most of these sites will be near identical in layout etc also seems a poor solution.
In my first experimenting with Drupal I created some sample pages for one sub-site (note that I am using that term as my own and really these are just nodes) and using Customize Page I assigned the sidebar menu I wanted. Then when I did the same for a different sub-site and changed the menu I discovered it changed them for all nodes (expected behaviour but at the time I didn't realize that).
So what I am looking for is some enlightenment :) and perhaps a more elegant solution than what I've discovered so far.
Thanks,
Doug
Comments
I would start by using
I would start by using organic groups as a way to organize the sub sites. It will allow you to make a "home page" per group/subsite and limit who can add/edit content in a group.
As for the menus per subsite, how do they differ?
Organic Groups doesn't seem
Organic Groups doesn't seem to be about editor/publisher permissions but more about communities for posting comments. Sadly this will be a dull government intranet site with no such interaction.
The side menus for each sub-site will be completely different per sub-site. Imagine a company with 40 departments. Each department has its own corner of the company intranet with their own group of pages. The mega menu at the top are company-wide links (links to each department mostly) but the sidebar menu only has links relevant to that specific department (or its audience). So if there are 40 departments there will be at least 40 different side menus.
Thanks,
Doug
Organic Groups does allow
Organic Groups does allow editor/publisher permissions. You can make each group (subsite) private allowing you to control who is a member of the group. Using group roles (say editor and publisher), you can assign these to the group members and set permissions based on group role on what they can do. When subsite specific content is added, it would be added to a group/subsite.
So one possible approach the the menus is not to use a menu at all, but use views to list the titles of the content in the current group.
Ah, that sounds great (OG). I
Ah, that sounds great (OG). I'll give it a spin. The views instead of menus won't work for this scenario as sometimes titles will not be what is wanted for a link and not every page will be on the menu. Plus the "clients" will want granular control of the sidebar menu.