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Step-by-Step

Wed, 11/21/2007 - 23:38 — admin

As we were preparing to go live with our solution, we realized we should write it all down so we wouldn't forget anything. Then we realized it might be good to share the process with anyone who might be following this story.

The Environment

Our environment complicates our solution a bit, so it might help to explain it. Many of the steps below can be eliminated in a more "typical" situation.

The first installation was for a support group whose site is pretty much only available to members. The "expert" was someone who had made some presentations to the group, but does not, herself, meet membership requirements. So the expert had to be kept out of most areas of the site, yet allowed to get to enough to be able to answer the questions. This required a new role be defined and locked down.

The site already uses TAC_Lite for access control. That was some help. Another help is that the navigation is split into three separate blocks that are controlled by visibility settings.

Step-by-Step

Some of these steps may seem obvious, but I'm including them because this article stemmed from my own planning sheet.

  1. Upload the latest versions of the modules.
    • FAQ_Ask
    • FAQ (-dev version because of new features)
    • Subscriptions
    • Taxonomy_Image (with patch).
  2. Enable the modules.
  3. Turn on the taxonomy_image wrapper option.
  4. Create the "expert" role.
  5. Upload expert's picture.
  6. Add new term to FAQ categories. Also taxo-image. Note term number.
  7. Add the expert user.
    • Basic settings.
    • Assign to "expert" role.
    • Add subscription for new FAQ category.
  8. Review Access Control. Expert needs:
    • access comments
    • access content
    • access site-wide contact form
    • edit faq
    • view faq
    • answer question
    • access taxonomy images

    Add "ask question" to "authenicated users" so members get it too.

  9. Review FAQ settings. Make sure "use categories" is set.
  10. Set up FAQ_Ask settings
    • Choose roles.
    • Select users.
  11. Create the "Ask the Expert" menu item (term number from above).
  12. Disable the "Ask a Question" menu item.

The process is really not that different than most new module installations. We needed to be careful here because of the security concern. You probably already do most of the steps above anyway; you've just never written them down.