Organic Groups as a Multisite Implementation

Drupal's Organic Groups module allows users to create and manage their own groups. With these groups, you can manage access to your content by associating content with a group. This association, combined with the Context module, provides us with the foundation to create a multisite geared towards communities. A foundation that solutions such as Drupal Commons use to provide community-driven content. Groups as a Site With organic groups, each group is treated as a content type. As a result, you can use each node of that content type as one of your sites. For example, if you had a sports-focused site, you could create a Group node called Hockey. Using this group node, you can utilize the Context module and treat it as a section of your website. With your groups dividing your site into sections, we can use each node as a context condition allowing us to

• change the navigation of the site
• change the page layout
• retrieve content solely belonging to a group.

These actions will be the result of triggers that act upon the group node condition. As a result, deploying out new sites is as simple as creating a group node and applying the necessary context conditions and triggers. Single Database Installation with Multisite Features Approaching multisite implementations with organic groups allows us to keep a single database. A single database saves us from such issues as

• moving content across sites
• sharing users across sites
• applying update scripts across sites

As a result, our data becomes easier to maintain as we simply need to assign content to a group. Moving content between sites is a matter of ticking a checkbox for a group to create the necessary link. This single database solution also eases update scripts that need to be run for modules as there is only a single database to act upon. Organic groups and contexts allow us to provide community-driven multisite solutions. With each group as its site, we can deploy and take down sites by simply adding a new group node. As well, maintining the site becomes easier as we only need to deal with a single database when compared to a traditional multisite implementation. Organic groups and context: providing the simplicity of a single database solution with the functionality of a multisite.