I've read through this discussion: http://groups.drupal.org/node/48428
But I'm still confused a bit. I currently have a site within Aegir and I want to create affiliate sites on subdomains. These affiliate sites would have some original content, some shared content and usually a unique theme and unique primary menus. Users should be able to register on either site and be a member of the whole site, able to access content for any affiliate site. They will also all share the same Ubercart store. I've done something similar before with another site that was just a standalone site using the Domain Access module. From what I can remember, it was fairly simple if you weren't using multisite, you simply chose what site(s) got the content and published it.
In that discussion above, though, it seems like some say Domain Access won't work with Aegir, or that it will work but users will have to re-register for the new site and have two logins. I've also seem Organic Groups and the Virtual Sites modules recommended, but OG has always felt a little inflexible to me (everything is called "groups") and I've never used the Virtual Sites module and there's nothing about using it with multisites or Aegir.
So before I dive in and try these various different ways through trial and error, does anyone have any advice? Can I get Domain Access to work? Would Virtual Sites work? Or should I be able to make OG work?
Comments
An update
Well, since I have to get this project going I've gone trial-and-error style. Virtual Site didn't work and when installed all admin area stuff loaded much slower than usual, so that's not a good sign. I have Domain Access more or less working (with some error messages popping up here and there) but when I go to the subsite I'm logged out. From what I've read, I might need a single sign-on module of some sort, which will not work with Aegir?
So I think I'm stuck here and might just have to pull the site out of Aegir and manage it on it's own. Can anyone confirm this scenario is impossible with Aegir before I do that?
Shared tables issue?
I don't know much about sharing tables between Drupal installs, but I believe one method for single sign-on in Drupal is to share your user table between two sites/installs. You might also have to muck with cookies/sessions, but I'm not sure. Maybe search drupal.org for info about sharing tables.
-Tim
In that other discussion they
In that other discussion they seem to say that you cannot share tables because Aegir disables it. I don't know much about it, either, though, so maybe sharing user tables is something that can be done with Aegir?
After reading a bit more, it
After reading a bit more, it seems like I wouldn't need to share the users table. I can log in just fine on the subsite with existing accounts. So I tried setting the $cookie_domain in settings.php manually, as suggested in the Domain Access readme, and that still doesn't seem to work (tried both 'mysite.com' and '.mysite.com').
Still struggling with this,
Still struggling with this, would love any other ideas!
It seems like maybe Domain Access isn't the right module? Can the same be done with something like Context and Spaces?
context and spaces
I am trying to accomplish the same thing. Context and Spaces is the path I was headed down, but it's hard for me to wrap my head around it. Would be interested to see if anyone has a solution using this.
Panels
One options we are looking at is using Panels. With panels you use contexts to change the content, layout and even look/feel of sub-sections of your site based on taxonomy or something else. What it doesn't allow for is robust contribution permissions. For example, I have a set of line offices and each office has contributor(s). If I use taxonomy terms and panels to change what is displayed under /office/office_name, I have no way of preventing Office1 from contributing content with the incorrect taxonomy term (Office2). There are some modules that enable permissions with taxonomy, but none are perfect and most allow you to assign permission for an entire vocabulary to a role, but not per term. Basically turning this into a permissions/user maintenance nightmare. I might end up using a robust Workflow to require all content to be reviewed and approved by a central office, but this is also fallible.
I think you might be able to make a context out of a CCK field and then do permissioning that way, but I'm no Panels/context expert.
List of taxonomy modules that deal with permissions:
http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_access
http://drupal.org/project/tac_lite
http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_role
http://drupal.org/project/vocabperms
http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_access_user
-Tim