The Secret Life Of

Organic Groups

January 31, 2015 — DrupalCamp Michigan

Wayne Eaker / @wayneeaker

Organic Groups

From FML to OMG

(and back again)

January 31, 2015 — DrupalCamp Michigan

Wayne Eaker / @wayneeaker

I'm Wayne Eaker

I'm Crazy About
Organic Groups

Overview

• The "Normal" Use Case
• How it Works Under the Hood
• Learning Management Systems
• Drupal Commerce Integration
• Premium Content Subscriptions
• Website "Section" Editors
• Going Beyond Nodes

Typical Use Case

Typical Use Case

Groups of users sharing node content.

• Groups can be created by admins or (optionally) by users
• Groups can have their own roles. (admins, editors, etc.)
• Permissions can be assigned at the group-level to those roles.
• Admins can assign group-level roles to members of the group.
• Membership can be open or moderated.
• Posting content to the group can be controlled by permission.
• Viewing content posted to a group can be limited to only members of the group.

Installation

Joining Groups and Posting

Viewing Group Content

Typical Use Case

• Replacement for a forum
• Replacement for a mailing list (see Message / Message Notify / Message Digest modules)
• Intranet
• Social Network (see Drupal Commons)

OG Architecture

Learning Management
Systems

Learning Management
Systems

Group ---> Class

Group Admin/Manager ---> Teacher

Group Content: Assignments, resources, discussions

Learning Management
Systems

Private Classes/Groups

Selling Organic Groups

Modules Needed

• Drupal Commerce
• Commerce License
• Commerce License OG

Selling Organic Groups

Anonymous Checkouts

Anon Checkout Rule Import

Selling Organic Groups

Selling Premium Content

Typical Approach

• Create role for "subscriber"
• Use Content Access module (or similar) to restrict viewing of premium content to subscriber role
• Sell access to role, either manually or with Commerce License Role

Typical Approach

• Problems scaling up to multiple content libraries: could end up with lots of roles.
• Permissions and other UI a mess when you have a lot of roles.
• No easy way to control authorship permission by content libary

Alternative: Moar OG!

• Set up each content library as a group
• Create editor/admins for each group
• Post your premium content to the groups
• Sell access to the group as before
• Email notifications: Message stack: Message / Message Notify / Message Digest

Editorial Sections On Your Website

Editorial Sections On Your Website

OG can be used to grant create/edit priviledges to parts of your site

• Each section is a group.
• Add editors to group, give them a role that can create/edit pages, etc.
• Use OG Menu module to allow editors to maintain a section-level menu.

Setup

OG Menu Module

Using Other Entity Types

The Situation

• You are building social network or intranet site
• You're already using Organic Groups for group discussions
• You've been ask to implement a user "follow" feature

User Follow: The Common
Approach

• Use User Relationships module
• User Relationships already has UI for users to follow others
• You can use Views to show posts from users with whom you have a relationship

User Relationships: Why Not?

• It's a completely different system: DB tables, configuration, etc.
• Another set of modules to keep up to date
• What if you want to show posts from both groups and followed users in a single stream? (like Facebook)

There's nothing wrong with User Relationships module, but you already have a system for users subscribing to content on your site: Organic Groups

Start with Normal Groups

Add The Crazy

Other Fever Dreams

• Create re-usable forms in groups with EntityForm: Assign submissions to group in context
• Build a marketplace site: Nodes as Group, Commerce Products / Line Items as Group Content
• Reviews: Commerce Product as Group, Review Nodes as Group Content (Bonus: purchasers as group members)
• Collaborative Image Galleries: Nodes as Group, File Entity as Group Content
• Taxonomy Subscriptions: Taxonomy Term as Group, Nodes as Group Content

OG: It's not just for groups!

• Can be useful anytime you want to group related entities together
• Especially useful if there is a group of users related to the group
• For non-node uses, you'll probably have to write your own UI
• Relatively simple API for adding / removing items from groups (Use og_group() and og_ungroup(). NEVER create og_membership entities directly!)
• Views and Rules support built-in

The Secret Life of Organic Groups
January 31, 2015 — DrupalCamp Michigan
Slides and Links: http://wayneeaker.com/og-talk

Wayne Eaker / @wayneeaker