Organic groups and org structure...

Posted by aitala on January 13, 2010 at 6:02am

I am assessing using the Organic Groups module for a .org website to replicate some of the 'structure' of the org. I am not sure this is the way to go and could use some advice... here's the setup...

The basic org structure is...

Regions - represent the geographic areas in the USA, numbered 1 through 13. I am thinking of using OG to represent each region as a separate group. I also need to add the region number to each group node via CCK - I don't expect that node ID # will always equal region #. Also what happens if someone edits the group node or removes it and creates another one?
Clubs - kinda obvious. Each club is a node and is in one and only one Region. Each club has a number 1 through n in a particular Region. Thus Club A is in Region 1 and is club number 1, while Club B is in Region 2 and also be club number 1, Club C is in Region 1 and has club number 2, etc. When creating a new club I would like to be able to select a Region number then automatically get the next available club number for that region. It would also be nice to have the Club become part of the Region's OG...
Members - i.e. users. This is where things get really tricky. I need to be able to import, by the User Import or Feeds module, the member list on semi-regular basis since most of the membership joins or renews offline. I get a CSV file which I can import - which include the member's region number and club number. For users who are able to join online or need to change their region or club, I would like them to be able to create/edit their profile (perhaps using Node Profile module) so that when they choose a Region, that the select list of clubs is autogenerated. The member would then also be joined to the Region's OG

Am I on the right track here? Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? For the relationships between a Club and a Region should I use a node reference CCK field or should I share the existing region number I added to the Region? Same for the Member to Region and Club relationship...

Thanks,
Eric

Comments

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Posted by WebNewCastle on January 13, 2010 at 6:14am

Hi Eric,

I've done a variety of things with OG and used some of the add-ons for OG - I think there was one for Sub Groups that I saw - I haven't used this one or many of them since I often approach things other ways without using too many contributed modules.

I was wondering when I read your post - are the regions going to involve using groups features and functions or is it just the clubs that would need this? If the former, then maybe setting up your regions through taxonomy would be sufficient and then tailor what you need for Club through OG.

I am not sure if I will need

Posted by aitala on January 13, 2010 at 2:34pm

I am not sure if I will need any OG features for either the regions or clubs, however I am pretty sure I cannot use taxonomy for the regions since I will need to add CCK fields to each region. Its also unlikely that I will need to limit access to nodes based on regions - but classifying info by region will be needed for an Events node type.

Some examples - sorry about the links, I've inherited a framed site using lots of poorly coded ASP...