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What is the best option for an intranet?

I started this topic two days ago, but I didn’t get my questions answered, so I’m trying again. Even though I’m using Multisite WP, I’m using it just for one website. My idea is to have the main site, then create another site to be an intranet, password protected, just for the members of the religious congregation for whom I’m building the site. In that internal part we would have forums, activity calendars, documents, etc. I think it’s better than to have two separate WP installations. I installed bbpress on the main site just to try it, but I’d need it to be password protected, not open to the public. I also looked at P2 theme… BuddyPress seems like too difficult for me… What is the best way to do this? Can you give me any recommendations?

Wed, 5 Feb 2014 19:37:17
  • Martin Bradley
    • The Bug Hunter

    Hey @lynnort!

    It seems that we may doing something similar, so if you are interested in collaborating, I wouldn’t mind sharing with you my thoughts.

    So, it sounds like you are saying that one site is focused outward and one is focused inward (intranet). Correct? The outward focused is pretty straight forward, so I won’t elaborate here. On the intranet site, what do you see driving the need for multi-sites?

    Regards,

    Martin

  • lynnort
    • Flash Drive

    You got the outward/inward part right, but remember that it’s all part of one website. As I mentioned, the site is for a religious congregation, and we are also teachers (I’m one of the sisters). So we want an intranet (password protected) for our forums, documents, activity calendars, and communications through Central and Latin America. But we also have the idea of connecting the students and/or clubs in our schools to communicate and colaborate and that also has to be password protected, and separate from the sisters’ site. That’s why I’m trying to find out the best way to achieve this. I’ve read about BBpress, BuddyPress and P2 theme, but I don’t know what would be the best option.

  • Martin Bradley
    • The Bug Hunter

    Success is accomplished mostly in the planning stage. You have to declare what you are wanting to do. If you want to setup the classrooms with student access, setting up a multisite (like Edublogs) may be the best bet. If you are just looking to secure information to members of specific groups, then BuddyPress may be your primary tool. It allows you to setup “Groups” for information all the while keeping it secure from the public using ProSites.

    This sounds like a very interesting project! Keep posting to this thread if you would like me to help further.

    Blessings!

    Martin

  • Patrick Cohen
    • Technical Docs Wrangler

    Hi there @lynnort

    I hope you are well today!

    It sounds like BuddyPress may not be the ideal solution for this scenario as it operates at a network-wide level.

    While you can add a constant to your wp-config.php file to limit BuddyPress activity to a sub-site, all the BP links would still be visible in the adminbar at the top of every page. The other drawback is that you cannot use that constant to create distinct BuddyPress installations on each sub-site.

    However, you can create multiple BuddyPress networks by enabling these 2 plugins:

    http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-multi-network/

    http://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-multi-network/

    But that is just way too much overkill. :slight_smile:

    A much simpler solution would be a plugin like this one which enables you to password-protect any site in your network. Simply activate it on the sites you want to keep private, and set the password for each one. Done deal.

    http://wordpress.org/plugins/password-protected/

    You can then use any plugins you need on each site for forums, docs, etc and everything stays nicely locked up behind a password.

  • Ash
    • Code Norris

    Hello @lynnort

    Welcome to WPMU community!

    I hope you are well today and thanks for asking the question.

    Honestly, WordPress is not designed as an “intranet” site. If you need a real life intranet, get a SharePoint site :slight_smile:

    Anyway, within wordpress BuddyPress and BBPress is very good option for social networking and forum respectively. But in multisite they work better if you network activate the plugin.

    I prefer having to different sites for intranet and main site. So, you may have more control over the intranet site.

    Hope it helps! Please feel free to ask more question if you have.

    Cheers

    Ash