The Beloit College site was set up to be very distributed, with the assumption that the various campus offices would regularly make page edits, add story/event content, etc. Thus, in most cases, each “minisite” is defined as a group.
- Group: Academics - /academics/
- Group: Anthropology - /academics/anthropology/
- Group: Biology - /academics/biology/
- Group: Chemistry - /academic/chemistry/
- etc.
- standalone page - /offices/
- Group: Communications & Marketing - /offices/communications-marketing/
- Group: Registrar’s Office - /offices/registrar/
- etc.
Editor permissions are defined per group, with a few instances of extending page edit access to other directories per individual.
We also have some instances of using the “new section” option, in cases where there is a large office with distinct parts, significant overlaps in content like staff profiles, etc. For example:
- Library & Information Technology Services - /lits/ (Where’s the /offices/…?)
- Section: Library - /lits/library/
- Section: Archives - /lits/archives/
- Section: Information Technology - /lits/information-technology/
I believe there is an interest in leadership to try and achieve a more centralized approach, at least for the core marketing pages (Academics, Admissions, Student Life, etc), where a single large group managed by a central office would make sense. That said, I’m assuming we’d still want the individual groups for offices to add and promote their content, but perhaps given less emphasis (i.e. marketing on “www”, campus sites on “campus” subdomain). Ideas too big for me to have sit down and worked out in full, just yet.
In general though, even without a need to use groups for permissions, it’s not too difficult of a framework to work in (assuming group switching works as intended). I can imagine a transition to it could be somewhat painful, say if tags were being used to show stories in specific programs rather than group sharing…
Does that help? Any specific questions or concerns?