Shifts and Devices

The “Problem of Many-in-One” is a shorthand term for the commonly encountered challenge of creating a web presence for an umbrella organization that is composed of autonomous chapters. A typical solution is sketched below, with an organizational web site exchanging content with autonomous chapter web sites:

A description of the Problem of Many-in-One which hints at the typical requirements is:

The Organization consists of multiple Chapters, many of which require a Chapter Web Site. The required Chapter Web Site may vary in scope from a single contact page to a full web site with a calendar and other plugin features.

The Chapters each need to administer their own site, but the Organization needs to be able to overide local control on occasion and administer the site directly.

The Chapter sites need to be able to feed content into the Organization site, subject to organization editorial controls, and the Organization needs to be able to cascade selected content down to the Chapter sites.

The Organization needs to be able to control branding, themes, and information architecture templates of the Chapter sites. The Chapters need the capability to select from the menu of themes and templates made available by the Organization.

Administration at both the Organization and Chapter levels must be simple and WYSIWYG, as the administrators will generally have only basic web user skills.

Politically, the solution must balance Chapter autonomy and creativity in generating their own content with Organization requirements for coherence and consistent messaging.

A real-world example of the Problem of Many-in-One was discussed at the Web of Change Conference, and is summarized in a report on a special session of Drupal developers that focused on the Council of Canadians’ web presence, a typical instance of the problem.

The Problem of Many-in-One is a recurring ‘problem pattern’ that many web developers have confronted and solved for individual clients, but that currently lacks a robust solution at the content management (CMS) level: Instead we reinvent a solution each time the problem arises.

I think that instead of continuing to cobble together ad hoc solutions, we can tackle the problem head-on, at the CMS level. A robust, out-of-the-box solution to the Problem of Many-in-One will have the following attributes:

• Organization and Chapter structure as a built-in default, reflected in domain and subdomain or directory and sub-directory architecture.
• Simple templating of theme and architecture at the Organization level, with a set of built-in architecture defaults tuned to typical chapter needs.
• Simple admin with the ability to hide unwanted features at both the Organization and Chapter levels.
• Selective content exchange in both directions between Organization and Chapter sites.
• Simple ability for the Organization administrator to create, template, and delete Chapter sites.
• ACL that allows Chapter admins access only to their Chapter site, and Organization admins access to all sites.
• Ongoing operations must not require modifications of code, and must be capable of being carried out within the admin interface.

Clearly, many of the available Open Source CMSs have part of the solution, but so far none has been identified that has all of the features required to solve the Problem of Many-in-One in a way that is efficient and easily reproduced.