Yeah, that's right. Sueetie Groups, as in…Groups! Groups within a .NET-based Online Community Application, sharing a single website, a single membership system, a single database, a single license. Oh, wait. It's Open Source, so there is no license. Scratch that last part.
Groups were one of the capabilities of the Sueetie architectural model that I wanted to demonstrate early on, as I've spoken to several companies who were looking for this functionality in Sueetie. I could have created any number of groups on the Sueetie.org site, but I felt three groups would sufficiently demonstrate the concept.
The goal of the groups on Sueetie.org is to demonstrate proof of concept, not to create thriving groups in and of themselves. With that in mind I created groups on topics of interest to me: Fitness, the Zune, and Clean Energy. Each group has its own blog, forum, media gallery and wiki. The groups are public with no access restrictions. Adding restricted access and group membership request functionality is only a matter of typing. Another role, another button, another setting in a web.config file.
I'll leave the technical aspects of Sueetie Groups for the Sueetie Wiki when I document implementation, which I hope to do soon. For now I want to mention that no additional ASPNET roles were required for the public groups on display at Sueetie.org. Secondly, not a single table or database object was added to support Sueetie Groups. Not having to duplicate databases or SQL objects to add group functionality is extremely Sueet!
Below are a few Sueetie.org screenpics. To view for yourself, cruise to http://sueetie.org/groups.
The Sueetie Groups landing page. The three current groups are circled
The Zune Group Home Page where links to the group's applications are circled
The Zune Group Wiki with Zune Group navigation links circled
The Clean Energy Media Library
