Collapse multiple publications into one publication

Question

When tasked with creating a Blueprint for my company a couple of years ago, there where requirements to separate rights from users that should not be able to perform certain actions. So at the time, I took this requirement and created three separate publications to allow security rights to be applied to them differently.

I know it might not be possible, but knowing what i know now, I would like to take these three publications and collapse them into one (300_Content) to allow for smoother content creation and management. As of now, our problem now is mainly with linked schemas and metadata schemas to folders. We have to localize the folder at 200 in order to set them. I would like to not do that.

Is this even possible?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Possible? Yes - at least theoretically!

Perhaps depending on how many items you're talking about, you might consider constructing an entirely new BluePrint chain and content porting everything to it. You'd need to work out the order in advance though, and you'd first need to spend quite some time figuring out the niceties of Content Porter mappings. (Not for the faint-hearted!)

There may even be a way to do this without a new chain, but that would at least involve renaming items to prevent conflicts.

Of course, you could avoid all those conflicts (also assuming a good plan) by moving items from one publication to another. But I just heard half the Tridion people on the planet sucking air in through their teeth and screaming: "If you hack the database you lose support!!!" Which, of course, is true. However, Tridion professional services can do this kind of work without losing support. So if you are seriously considering this, at the very least, I'd get in touch with them to examine the possibilities.

That said, I would also be looking at whether it's necessary. The most obvious way to avoid localising folders would be to move them up the BluePrint. At its most straightforward, that would involve creating new folders higher up, with the right schema associations, and then in the lower publications cut/pasting the content to the new folders. Then you can delete the old folders, and rename the new ones to get back to where you were.

Answer 2

You are planning to collapse three different publications into one publication? I like the idea and quite frankly very curious if this is possible (though I believe it is not, sadly).

However, I am a bit confused as to why you want to do this in a 'allow smoother content creation' -context. Is this content creation you mention Schema creation as well, and if so, is every content editor able to do this?

If no (or an Admin/Chief Editor does this, who needs access to these anyway), than I suggest optimising your user groups and permissions. It is a bit of a trial and error task, I'll admit, but you can actually hide the 100 / 200 publications mentioned above based on user (group) privileges, but still maintain editing and creation abilities in the 300 -layer.

Take a look at This Live Doc here (login required) and see if this suits your needs.