[support] Basic Questions About Organic Groups

[Earnie Boyd]

Quoting Moses Elias <iom at netvision.net.il>:

> I am new to Organic Groups, and I have a couple of basic questions. If
> anyone could help out it would be much appreciated.
>
>

You probably want to review http://groups.drupal.org/taxonomy/term/1568 
to familiarize yourself then.

>
> 1)
>
>
>
> When I watched Zacker's famous OG tutorial video-cast, I noticed that when a
> new OG group is created, you can assign a mailing group name in the typical
> yahoogroup format, for example, xxx, which is then represented as
> xxx at mysite.com when the mail is sent out to group members. Just like in the
>
> form: support at drupal.org has, which this mailing list itself belongs to.
>

Haven't seen the video.

>
>
> Surely the drupal site is using a 6.x version flavor of Drupal, and this can
> be achieved in 6.x - but currently I don't see how it's done. Zacker did
> this when he created a new group? How can I achieve the same thing? I don't
> see a field where the unique group-name can be provided as input.
>

The d.o and g.d.o sites are not yet on Drupal 6 that I know of.  Many 
of the modules they use still need to be converted.

OG has many contributed modules, is what you're looking for in one of 
those modules?

>
>
> I was told to try and use the og2list module. However, I notice that og2list
> isn't available for any 6.x version. Is this feature possible using a
> related module or maybe I've overlooked some feature?
>

Time to check the issue queue and create a patch if needed.  Really, 
Drupal 6, while good isn't quite ready where modules are concerned; 
especially if you need them for production.  That doesn't mean that you 
can't make the necessary changes yourself.

>
>
> 2)
>
>
>
> When you create a new organic group, any messages sent from the organic
> group defaults to a mailing list style message. If I want the very same mail
> to appear both as a mail message sent to a group member and is also an
> identical forum message as well, how do I achieve that? I was told to try
> and use triggers/actions but I don't see exactly how this can be done.
>

Don't know.

>
>
> 3)
>
>
>
> What is the relationship between OG forums and OG groups. Can anyone please
> explain the relationship/difference between the two?
>

A group is a wrapper around applications and a targeted data set.  A 
forum is one of the applications.

>
>
> Can someone also explain the difference between OG forums and regular
> forums?
>

I assume OG forums to use the forums module.  The difference is a 
control for the set of data for the group.

>
>
> 4)
>
>
>
> How do I have a one to one relationship between an OG group that's created
> and an OG forum? I understand OG sends out a mail messages to all members
> subscribed to an OG group. But I want the same mail message that's sent out
> to the OG group  members to also identically appear as a forum message.
>

The group administrator needs to create a forum for the group.  The 
forum then belongs to the group.

>
>
> One to one relationship between OG group email message and OG forum message.
>

I'm not sure I get it.  The user subscribes to a group and can choose 
to receive email notices from the group.  I haven't played with OG 
forum to know if you can separately subscribe to each forum or not.

> Is that possible?
>
>
>
> 5)
>
>
>
> How do I associate only one OG group with only one OG forum? For each OG
> group that I create I want to have one and only one forum created.
>
> Authenticated users will be creating groups/forums on the fly so I want to
> limit their scope for errors. How do I link between the two of them?
>

I'm not getting it.  I think you want to just create a group and allow 
posting and commenting within that group and forget about the forum.  
Can you explain what you plan to use the forum for?  How is it 
different from just posting stories to the group?

>
>
> 6)
>
>
>
> Is it possible to moderate an OG group? In other words, any email message
> that is sent out under the group's name, is it possible to moderate the
> message if the group owner/administrator decides that this group member
> should be moderated?
>

That is a possible workflow, yes.

Earnie -- http://for-my-kids.com/
-- http://give-me-an-offer.com/