Hi, I'm going to turn this into a bit of a support forum, so let me know if I should take this question back to, say, the support forums :-)
My scouting site, under development, is:
http://www.pqpack621.org.
I'd love to get a sense of what works for the other scouting sites out there.
I'm new to Drupal, and I came to it in the middle of setting up a site for my son's Cub Scout pack. I'm hoping that each of the den leaders will be able to post their meeting and event announcements. I'm gradually adding in modules that I think I'll need.
the question:
I'd like the dens to be able to see their own events, but also be able to see the pack-wide events. I was planning to build some filters onto the individual Den pages so that the event listings would have the right stuff. But it sounds like Organic Groups handles some of that.
On the other hand, I don't need the groups to be "organic" - packs are small enough that I can manage membership, and with our scouts being this age (6-10 years), I'm not interested in random people joining the site.
Thanks for any advice, and I'd love to see what folks are doing out there.
Cheers,
Andrea
Comments
It sounds like what your are
It sounds like what your are asking for is Organic Groups. My personal experience with it has not been good, but I really haven't put a lot of stress on it. There is a module called OG Calendar that might handle your events. There's also other OG-centric modules.
OG experience
Has your personal experience with Organic Groups been negative, or just not that much experience?
I'm being cautious because I OG looks like one of those huge modules that will add a lot of complexity, and I want to keep the administration simple enough for when I hand the site off to the next "pack webmaster" to volunteer.
I have the core behavior (Tigers stories and events show up on the Tigers page) already, just using Event and Views. But OG might do it more cleanly.
Thanks for the feedback!
Not Much
It's been mostly "not that much experience", but that which I've had has been less than positive. The one big issue I have with the module is that once it is installed and enabled, you cannot remove it. It modifies Drupal's core behavior.
I had a site where it was installed and enabled and not being used. When I upgraded the site, I decided to not reinstall OG, but none of the previous content would display. When I finally reinstalled OG, all of the content came back.
Also, on another site I currently maintain, it was setup and put into operation, but nobody used (or uses) it. So now I'm sitting here with an installed module and a couple of posts kind of out in limbo that I can really do nothing with, but they must remain.
It's not necessarily that the module is bad or evil or broken. It's just that it's a one-way street. Once it's there, it can never be removed, even if you don't need it. If you think you need it, you won't really know you don't need it until after it's installed and no one's using it.
If, however, you get it installed and setup in such a way that people have to use it (like the way groups.drupal.org is setup), then it seems to do it's job quite well.
www.soarol.com
I run a scouting unit website hosting service based on Drupal. You can check it out at www.soarol.com.
I solved a couple of your issues with the following
- I created a taxonomy to contain Pack groups: Leaders, Committee, Den 7, Den 5, etc....
- Then created my own module that added a Filter Block based on this taxonomy
- The Filter block sets a cookie in the user's browser that is then remembered thereafter
- Works for Announcements (Flexinodes) and Events
- Thus any parent can click the Den their child is in, presto, other Den announcements and Events vanish but the Pack remain
There is a demonstration at www.soarol.com/demo.html to see it in action. You will need to enable the Content Filter via Control Panel/Features and then add some taxonomy terms Control Panel/Filter Groups to get a full demo.
I think it fits
I have played a little with drupal with organic groups and I think it is perfect for a scouting group. My problem right now is that I would like some "security"; so people from one group cannot see nodes nor events from another one. Is there a way to do so with organic groups?
Let me explain a little better: if the group-leaders are talking about money, a bad behavior of a boy/girl, etc....; nobody from de parents group under no circumstance should be able to see it. Is there a way to do so?
thanks
Yes, You Can . . .
From my experience, OG can do what you are asking for, i.e.: create groups that users have to be a members of in order to be able to see the content. One of the sites I mentioned in my comment below is setup like that. Just because a user has an account on the site does not mean they can access any of the content in any of those groups, and just because they are a member of one group, does not mean they can access any content in any of the other groups. All users must request permission to be a member in each group and each moderator can allow or deny access to their particular group. You should set up a test site with OG installed and play around with it and see what you can and cannot do with it.
I made an error
both my "test" users where in the same group, so they obvioulsy could see the same things. It works ok now. Thanks and I think it is perfect :)
Every time I look into how
Every time I look into how to make the site more - hmm - lets say section specific - I always end up either with
use OG
or
use taxonomies and a combination of taxonomy access etc
and I've never been able to make up my mind which I want to do :)
At present - I have a vocabulary with terms for each section plus a term for the group.
But - this is a little awkward - if you want an event (that is run at group level) to automatically appear in all the sections calendars you need to add each section term in addition.
I get the feeling from here that OG probably is the way to go.
If I get time I'll look into punting my site over to a test server - give it a go :)
Upsidedown hierarchy instead?
My current view is: OG is great, but only when you have an "organic" situation. I think that most Scout Groups don't have this. ie they already know how their sections are arranged. It seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. On top of that, I'm convinced that taxonomies are what makes Drupal stand out, so to not make full use of them would be a shame.
My idea for the problem Chris has identified is an Upsidedown hierarchy. I'll explain...
Take this situation:
Group(1)Scouts(2)
Cubs(3)
Beavers(4)
This is the normal hierarchy (with tids in brackets). However as Chris has noticed, this allows you to pick
a) a single section eg Scouts - /taxonomy/term/2, or
b) only group items - /taxonomy/term/1 or
c) group plus all sections together - /taxonomy/term/1/1.
This doesn't give the correct behaviour.
You could use /taxonomy/term/1+2 to get Scout & Group activities, but...
I think that if you build this instead:
All(5)Scouts(2)
Group(1)
Cubs(3)
Group(1)
Beavers(4)
Group(1)
then Group items appear in /taxonomy/term/1, Scouts in /taxonomy/term/2 etc.
The important bit is that Scouts & Group activities now appear at /taxonomy/term/2/1 and everything is in /taxonomy/term/5/2.
However, my disclaimer is that I'm new to these things. The above was a random thought that maybe useful. On the other hand the alternative is that it will serve to correct my understanding from the replies it might generate! Please let me know everyone!
David
I'll have to look at
I'll have to look at that.
The only thing I really am not sure of is if a term can appear twice in a heirarchical taxonomy. Have to admit I've not tried.
A term can appear more than
A term can appear more than once, and it can be done in two different ways.
If you set the hierarchy of the category to single, you can just add terms with the same name where you want them. If you set the hierarchy of the category to multiple, then you can also add a single term to many different categories.
The difference obviously being that if you add a post to a term in the single hierarchy method, it only shows up in the one category. In the multiple hierarchy method, however, it can also show up in all the categories (which would really only be one category displaying in multiple locations).
http://www.pqpack621.org/ is
http://www.pqpack621.org/ is running WordPress - too bad.
Organic Groups are great in Drupal 6.
I'm using Organic Groups, plus these contributed modules, on a District website to provide hosting for Unit websites:
* og_calendar
* og_forum
* og_minutes
* og_rsvp