How do I set up "groups" on my web site?

Posted by Walt Esquivel on November 7, 2006 at 5:00pm

Hi all,

I want to set up group subscriptions at subdomain groups.mysite.com while allowing the main part of my web site to offer basic info about my organization at mysite.com. A perfect example is groups.drupal.org and drupal.org.

So, I visited groups.drupal.org's About this site page and, under "Code", read that the groups.drupal.org site "runs a Drupal 4.7".

Does this mean that groups.drupal.org has a separate Drupal 4.7 installation from drupal.org? In other words, do I need two (2) uploads of Drupal 4.7 to my web server, that is, one 4.7 installation for OG running at subdomain groups.mysite.com and another 4.7 installation for the main site mysite.com?
Furthermore, do I need two (2) databases or just one (1) database if there are two (2) Drupal 4.7 installations?
And if there are two (2) Drupal 4.7 installations, that means I need to upgrade the two (2) separate installations and always make two (2) separate backups correct? And if #2 above is "yes", then two (2) separate backups of the two (2) databases as well, correct?

Perhaps this is very intuitive for most Drupal developers, but it would be nice if an explanation of the actual groups.drupal.org set up steps and backup steps could be included on the groups.drupal.org About page.

Thanks in advance,
Walt

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

Comments

a try

Posted by moshe weitzman on November 9, 2006 at 1:30am

answering your question really requires explaining of broad swaths of drupal. but here goes ...

yes, g.d.o has different code and different DB from drupal.org. thats done because dries wisely doesn't want my mistakes taking doen his web site. and he wants us to be able to update our sites independantly. but your case is very different - you control both sites. in that case, you create only headaches by running two drupal sites. i suggest you run one. the only trick is the subdomain. not sure how important that it.
if the subdomain is really important, then you probably do need to run two drupal sites with different databases. the code can be symlinked between the two if you don't want to truly diuplicate the files but thats a minor point.
yes, you need two of everything.

your questions are not so much about groups.drupal.org but about how and when to use the multi-site feature of drupal. thats a topic for the drupal.org handbook. it is also quite a site speciifc decision, and there is often no right answer.

Thanks Moshe!

Posted by Walt Esquivel on November 9, 2006 at 4:43am

Just wanted to express my gratitude for your reply. With regard to how groups.drupal.org is set up, your explanations are important to me and helped clarify things in my head.

Thanks for the reference to multi-sites and the handbook. The reason I posted under the "groups.drupal.org" group is because I specifically wanted to learn more about how groups.drupal.org has been set up.

I'm going to think things through a bit more when it comes to subdomains. The main reason I gave for using the groups.mysite.com subdomain is because it tidies up where all the group activity is going to take place, much like that which happens here on groups.drupal.org. How important is it for me to keep the groups.mysite.com subdomain? Well, not critically important, so I'll need to evaluate things a bit.

Thanks again!!!

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

More specific use case

Posted by robertdouglass on November 9, 2006 at 5:57am

Hi Walt,

I'd say you need to sort out exactly how you'd like the site to work with regards to subdomains, etc, and then describe it in detail here. There's a recipe for just about anything you want to do, so don't be afraid to dream ;-)

One alternative to offering a subdomain would be to simply segregate all groups activity to a different "section" of your site. You could configure it to not show groups activity on the existing parts, and not show the existing parts on the pages that have to do with groups. The "sections" could be done with theming, using a visual change to segregate the two functions of your site (groups and non groups). Of course, it all depends on how your site works now, and which modules you have installed, etc.

So more info about your site is also important.

-Robert

A potential solution

Posted by Walt Esquivel on December 20, 2006 at 4:17pm

Adrian provides a potential solution for me to easily set up and host groups.mysite.com with his MultiDomain, UserDomains, and OGDomains modules.

Here's some basic info in which he writes:

I plan on extending this module [MultiDomain] with two additional modules [UserDomains and OGDomains] that build on the same functionality in the near future. My primary goal in writing this has always been to write the UserDomains module, which will allow each user to choose his or her own domain or sub domain to host their content on. This would allow all my users on Oasis Magazine to have their own personal sites in the format of http://mysite.oasismag.com. There's no actual requirement for only sub domains to be used, as it is completely possible to use real domains too.

The next module I plan on developing is the OGDomains module, which will allow each organic group, provided by the organic groups (og) module, to provide it's own domain or subdomain. An example of this would be http://south-africa.drupalgroups.org, for instance.

I'm looking forward to testing the above modules. Thanks Adrian!!!

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

How do I set up "groups" on my web site?

Comments

a try

Thanks Moshe!

More specific use case

A potential solution

Groups.drupal.org

Group organizers

New groups

Group notifications