How to determine best fit for web structure

storello's picture
Submitted by storello(5)26 October, 2010 - 16:43
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I'm new to Drupal and floundering a bit trying to figure out how to get started so please accept my apologies in advance of this generic question.  The site I want to build will be divided into geographic regions and I expect users will only want to see the information about their region most of the time.  Each region would then have groups for various types of performance arts and venues.   Users would probably like to keep drilling down into the site or adding groups to their account until all they see is information that interests them.  An example of the structure would be:

Region

  Philadelphia, PA

    Music

      Classical music

         Chamber music

   Theater

      Musicals

  Greenville, SC

    Music

etc.

I don't expect users in Philadelphia to look at the Greenville region unless they are traveling or looking for a specific artist from another region.  I started reviewing Commons with the idea that I could create groups for all these entities and allow users to become members of the groups at will.  The problem is that there could be hundreds, if not thousands of groups.  Since users will rarely check other regions or need to do a cross-region search, I'm thinking it might be best to divide the site at the region level with the Spaces module.  Each region site would then contain groups for the top 2 levels, then taxonomy terms such as "Chamber Music" to search for even more targeted information.   The 2 main applications for the site will be news and calendar listings which would only be entered by editor level users.  Registered users would be allowed to participate in a group discussion such as this.  

 

So, to make a long story short, I'm not 100% sure if Commons is my best choice.  A generic Drupal 6 or 7 with add-ons such as the Spaces module might be a better starting point.  I also worked with Drupal Gardens but without date/time fields, I cannot create schedule information, which is critical to the site.

If anyone has suggestions for a good starting point, please let me know.

Thanks!

Comments

jay
jay1 year 28 weeks ago

Did you consider..

.. using Subgroups?  See http://drupal.org/project/og_subgroups

Does this accomplish your objective?

bcarroll
bcarroll1 year 28 weeks ago

It looks like

...subgroups is still in dev status for version 6.  Have you tried it yet?  If so, how did it work for you?

jay
jay1 year 28 weeks ago

I've done some preliminary testing, and..

Here's what I've discovered:

  1. It does provide interesting flexibility in how you define group hierarchy, e.g. access to content, and user group membership.  You can propagate down or up - your choice.
  2. I think it handles this by replicating the association of content nodes with groups - e.g. if you've set it up to "propagate upwards", and you create a node in a subgroup, it adds the node to the list of group content items in the parent group.  Therefore, it shows that content in the parent group when you access the parent group home page.
  3. The UI handles group/subgroup management as a tab in the content tabs across the top of a group home page.  You can edit the subgroup association to set where you want a group in the hierarchy (and make a log comment about why you did it this way).
  4. There's no "automatic" listing of group hierarchy on the group home page - i.e. no folder/tree type navigation of group hierarchy.  You essentially have to find the group in the (flat) list of groups on the /og page, and when you visit that group, you can see in the breadcrumb where this group fits in the hierarchy.  This could stand some improvement.
  5. There's a couple of spelling things that arise from the module author not being a native english speaker. (These can be overlooked, and somebody should send the author a patch.)

Bottom line: It works, but the UX could stand some tweaking.

bcarroll
bcarroll1 year 28 weeks ago

great!

Thanks for the detailed reply!

hari123
hari12314 weeks 5 days ago

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