In the spirit of growth and design. Lets say I convert to a multi class database and basically become an Alumni Association with my site. Down the road, a single class (or classes) decide that they want to have their own site since I can not support their specific needs on the MULTI CLASS site. So they join class creators and set up their own site and members.

Their membership should also be members (or at least included) in my multi class site and updates to contact information should be kept in sync on both sites.

Is there a provision in your desinn for a MASTER CLASS (the Parent (alumni association)) but allow for INDIVIDUAL CLASSES (children) to maintain their own pages (within CC)

Follow up question - on a multi class site - are members of one class prevented to look at data from other classes. Or is membership at the site level.

Some related questions were raised here if you want to read move about it.

Most newer Admins here don't know this I'm sure, but the multi year structure was initially created for small schools who throw All Year reunions. It was never designed to be a gigantic alumni site structure. That doesn't mean we wont' grow it into that, it just means it wasn't initially designed for that and it's currently not set up for that.

I have no problem with individual Admins within a multi year structure administering just their own year. That would require significant system changes not to mention a whole new pricing model of course. If each class can have an Admin with full Admin rights and privileges, then each class year would need to be multiplied by the billing plan chosen. Otherwise we'd have a 0% chance of supporting any of it.

I'd have two reservations about setting this up just yet:

1) With the vast majority of sites here being single year sites, it's unclear how many people would need/use this. We can probably survey people to find out when we get to this.

2) With a few hundred feature requests desired by the users, this wouldn't make the top of the list for quite some time.

In answer to your other question, membership is at the site level. We do have an optional Guest Pass system slated though that Admins can turn on to let other users from single year classes from the same school into their site. This was raised quite awhile ago but got shoved way down the task list to make way for more pressing features being requested.

If it sounds like we're swamped, yep, we are. The good news though is another in-house programmer starts this coming Monday. Mark Moellering is joining us to jump in the trenches and help turn things out a little more quickly.

1 I know of at least 1.
2. I was not looking for admin restrictions within a site.
3. What I am suggesting is a heir arch of sites. Each site paid for on its own merits. However

For example:

GPHS Alumni Site (Multi Class) years 1920 - 2010 and counting. We are the parent site. We have a complete data base of all 91 classes in our jurisdiction.

The class of 2005 says they want to be their own web site and pay you for it.

So we change the Alumni Site to be a Parent over all GPHS Classes and align the "Child" (GPHS Class of 2005) as a child. All members of the Parent coded as graduating as part of the Child - are then dual citizens. or the Parent and the Child. They are in your data base once.

When someone logs into the Parent (they see the whole list of 91 classes

When someone logs into the Child (they only see the class of 2005.

All of the member records are in the database only once.

Yeah there would have to be some coordination outside between the parent admins and the child admins but I think that can be resolved. Perhaps Adding and Deleting are reserved for the PARENT but Changes are allowed for both.

Not knowing exactly how your data base is set up, I think this could be done by adding a CLASS OF SITE (Parent or Child) and a CHILD OF (the PARENT that the child rolls up to) field. The Top level parent would be its own parent as would a orphan child (a single class or multi class site with not links to other sites. All of the members would be codes with it source site (the child) and then its parent.

I am rambling but I am sure something like this would work without a total revamp of everything and make the management of this portion of the system better.

You know this is quite interesting. I like this idea very much. We'd really have to think this out and given the tasks at hand it won't be for quite some time, but I'm confident we can do something here. Basically we're forming a network of related sites.

If nothing else we could probably start this by creating something similar to the Admin Rights feature, where each class Admin could opt into being part of the network of sites from the same school. After doing this they could then determine what members of other sites from the same school can do on their site. Such as participate in the Live Chat for instance. Participate in the Message forums. Instant Message each other. Access password-protected pages. Access restricted Classmate Profiles, etc.

Currently a member of one class site can't talk to a member of another class site from the year before them. Or after them. Etc. Why not make it possible for those Admins who want to opt into the collective so to speak? I think it's a terrific idea.

I'll put this on the open Task List, it's definitely something we'll discuss in 2011.

I will try to put together a document for you.

I like it! We have long struggled with maintaining our dozen or so individual class sites & keeping them synchronized with our multi-year. Getting alumni to join both for their distinct benefits, with their different scope & features, distracts from their common purpose to connect classmates & keep them involved & informed. As administrators our efforts are fractured, energies dissipated, as we move from one to the other.

Very interesting. We'll definitely come up with something in 2011.

If I didn't love the holidays, I'd suggest we skip them to bring us to 2011 when this is slated to be considered.

I found this thread in an effort to see if there is a notation as to when the Guest Pass option may be available. I have classmates from other years asking for access to our site. I'm afraid it will explode once I say yes. One class has found almost all 474 classmates! If I say yes and they come, I'll have so many Guests. It may be a good sell for the class to have their own site, but until then... it is my situation. Do I want that?

Gwen

Don't know yet. We'll have to have a Rights Access module that specifies what other class year members can do on your class site (if you allow it at all). And we may also have to have some display options too, as some class networks will be small, some will be medium, and some will be large. For instance we can't display a gazillion people as being online in the Instant Messenger. We'll have to have some way that the Admin can decide just what gets displayed, and how much of the display to keep class focused. For the moment all of this is way out there still, we've got fundamental system changes coming up, new designs and other things we have to have our full focus on before we can even begin the planning phase of the class network system. So my guess is it'll be well into 2011 before we're even gathered around the conference table to hammer this out.

Thanks the reply. Having some idea is better than wondering.

Gwen