We have a requirement to link pages within Tridion across multiple publications. We would need this feature to be available for some websites (200 pages) that we are migrating from another CMS tool.
Here are some of the options and some thoughts on each of them. I wanted to get some feedback from the community based on everyone's experience in the past. Are there any easier options? Should I be aware of any drawbacks that either of the approach would bring?
Option 1
Content: Create a Master Publication and have all of the child publications inherit from it.
Publish / Unpublish: Using Custom resolver, we would be able to publish items / pages from the master publications to specific child publications (than all Child Publication). This would be a customization.
Pros and Cons: Publishing is controlled and maintains all of Tridion governance. One of the disadvantages is that the child publications would see any pages or structure groups created in the parent publication. Although, Tridion security would permit us to get around who could see these pages in the CME, there could be a situation where a publisher creates a SG or page with the same name as in the parent causing Tridion to throw an error.
Option 2
Content: Create a Master publication which will publish Dynamic Component Presentations with metadata
Publish / Unpublish: DCP will be published with the metadata
Pros and Cons: Custom layer is involved. We would use a dynamic custom application that would render the page for that child website based on the metadata that was published. One of the disadvantages is that authors would NOT be able to see references of any of the pages available for a website within the CME. They would like to see the pages which were created ONLY for them
Option 3
Content: Create an orphan publication and create pages in the other publications based on the metadata and using event system (without having Blueprint conflicts)
Publish / Unpublish: Publishers will publish items from the reference publications directly
Pros and Cons: Whenever a publisher creates a page in the orphan publication and define metadata (check boxes of the list of the publications that this page should be created at), Tridion custom event will be responsible to create a local copy of the page in each on the publications checked during creation. The publishers will have to publish the items directly from each of the reference publications since the copy of the page will be local to that publication. Publishers should also be aware that the page can be modified in 2 locations, technically, i.e; the orphan and the local publication. We would have a new TCM URI but that should not impact our requirement
References: I looked at the following answers (1 and 2) to confirm that we can create a page in another publication using custom APIs.
Update 1
The number of websites in scope for this is about 5. Content for these website publication will be created at a global level and hence all of the websites in scope will inherit the content from this level. The structure group and pages is where there are reservations in a child publication inheriting all of the master or the parent publication's SGs and pages.
Editors Perspective: From a editors perspective, they should be able to create a page and choose where it needs to go (website1 -5) and save. Tridion should then either create the pages or make it available ONLY in those Publication chosen by the editor in the website layer.
Website Behaviour: First website: http://www.mywebsite1.com/mypages/1.htm, http://www.mywebsite1.com/mypages/2.htm, http://www.mywebsite1.com/mypages/3.htm Second website: http://www.mywebsite2.com/mypages/2.htm, http://www.mywebsite2.com/mypages/4.htm, Third Website: http://www.mywebsite3.com/mypages/3.htm (Can be the same as the 3.htm from website 1 or a different one too), http://www.mywebsite3.com/mypages/4.htm, http://www.mywebsite3.com/mypages/5.htm
