This package provides a subsite implementation for Plone. It contains hardcoded configuration specific to our use case, but may still be relevant for other Plonistas hunting for solutions. Either fork and reconfigure, or else pick the parts you like.

A set of related cultural agenda websites: - common user database - generic content sharing (code-driven) - targeted content sharing (human-driven) - some view logic and theming shared - some view logic and theming site-specific

Most of our content lives outside any subsite in the membrane user folders which are in a profile container in the Plone SiteRoot.

Some content is subsite-specific and resides within a subsite.

All content, also the stuff outside subsites, needs to be assigned to a "preferred" subsite.

See docs/design.jpg for an overview.

This implementation uses elements from plone.theme and collective.lineage witout requiring either of those.

This package provides the following features:

From plone.theme we take the approach of marking the request with a browser layer that is specific for each subsite. This allows us to register views and css/js resources for a specific subsite. Layer interface inheritance is set up in such a way that we can also register browser components for a group of subsites.

Having a browser layer per subsite requires hardcoding the subsites in python.

A request.in_subsite convenience attribute is set by the before_traverse hook that also marks the browser layer. This attribute is used by the subsite_assigment behavior to provide a default setting for the subsite_home attribute.

See cultact/subsite/tests/subsite.txt for browser layer tests.

Subsite request marking is based on virtual URL structure, derived from SERVER_NAME. The assumption is that VirtualHostMonster is used to anchor a virtual host on a subsite, and then URL rewrites to access the userprofiles that are located outside the subsite. VHM is needed to ensure that absolute_url() plays nice with such acquisition. See example config below.

Set up this way, items that are not themselves contained in a subsite will show up "as if" they were contained in the requested subsite.

From collective.lineage we take the approach of having subsite containers which provide INavigationRoot and ISite i.e. local component registries.

On top of that we mirror the per-subsite browser layer interfaces into per-subsite content interfaces, effectively providing a singleton class specific to each subsite for maximally future-proof flexibility.

Since all of this is hardcoded anyway, 'subsite_config' and 'get_subsites()' provide a listing of implemented subsites. A setuphandler ensures the creation of the configured subsite instances.

subsite_home: A dexterity behavior makes it possible to assign any content object to any subsite, even if it's outside any subsite containment (as most of our content is). The assigned subsite id defaults to request.in_subsite. The assigned "home" subsite can be assigned by any user with the edit permission on content.

subsite_show: Content may be syndicated to other subsites by users with the reviewer permission. The behavior enforces that the assigned home subsite will always be included in the subsite_show set.

Two catalog indexes enable querying for assigned subsites on content, hence filtering content for a specific subsite.

subsite_home: assigned subsite subsite_show: all subsites in which this content should be shown

This allows you to query for: 1) all content for which this is the "home" subsite (or not) 2) all content that should be shown in this subsite (or not) 3) all content from other subsites syndicated to this subsite

Note that typically 2) will be a superset of 1).

Genericsetup registry records are created to enable using the subsite_home and subsite_show indexes as criteria on any Collection.

The default Collection behavior from plone.app.contenttypes forces a path query, that is then rewritten by plone.app.querystring to force containment within a INavigationRoot.

For our use case, we want to be able to query outside the current INavigationRoot in order to syndicate content from other subsites, and from the shared user profiles.

To make this possible, a MultisiteCollection behavior is provided which does not inject a path query. This behavior overrides the normal Collection behavior (via overrides.zcml).

You can now use subsite_home, subsite_show to set up any Collection search you'd like across multiple subsites.

A viewlet that overrides plone.app.layout.links.CanonicalURL is provided for SEO purposes, pointing to the canonical URL for objects that are shown in a different subsite than their "home" subsite.

This package contains an override viewlet that makes Products.Doormat subsite-aware.

Anything that is INavigationRoot aware in Plone will require customization if you want to be able to access content outside a subsite (=INavigationRoot).

Typically, you'll want to provide custom search and navigation logic.

For Collections, the MultisiteCollection behavior only works as expected if you do not use path queries. If you do need multisite path queries you'll have to monkeypatch plone.app.querystring.queryparser.

For livesearch, you can either search across all subsites, inject extra query variables via URL rewriting, or customize the livesearch view.

There may be other parts of Plone you might need to customize for your use case.

For all of this to work you'll need a URL rewriting frontend config that projects shared content outside of the subsite, into the subsite.

Example nginx configuration:

# localhost development only!

# This adds security headers
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubDomains";
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
add_header Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only "default-src 'self'; img-src *; style-src 'unsafe-inline'; script-src 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'";

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name maastricht.localhost;
    # shared user folders
    rewrite ^/profielen/$  /profielen permanent;
    rewrite ^/profielen(.*)  /VirtualHostBase/http/$server_name:80/ka/VirtualHostRoot/profielen$1 last;
    # livesearch all content
    rewrite ^/livesearch(.*)  /VirtualHostBase/http/$server_name:80/ka/VirtualHostRoot/livesearch$1 last;
    # serve subsite
    rewrite ^/(.*)  /VirtualHostBase/http/$server_name:80/ka/maastricht/VirtualHostRoot/$1 last;
    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $server_name;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9933;
    }
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name sittard.localhost;
    # shared user folders
    rewrite ^/profielen/$  /profielen permanent;
    rewrite ^/profielen(.*)  /VirtualHostBase/http/$server_name:80/ka/VirtualHostRoot/profielen$1 last;
    # livesearch all content
    rewrite ^/livesearch(.*)  /VirtualHostBase/http/$server_name:80/ka/VirtualHostRoot/livesearch$1 last;
    # serve subsite
    rewrite ^/(.*)  /VirtualHostBase/http/$server_name:80/ka/sittard/VirtualHostRoot/$1 last;
    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $server_name;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9933;
    }

}

YMMV.

Author: Guido A.J. Stevens Thanks: Clayton Parker

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This package is maintained by Cosent.