During the initial design of the conf.researchr.org system, we decided that items (tracks/committees/events) should be viewable from multiple Display Contexts, depending from which URL the visitor browses the content. I.e. content of a sub-conference/workshop may be viewed from the main conference website, or from its own (workshop) website, both having their own styling, navbar menu and optionally a custom domain name. This behavior was active when the Display Context setting was set to <blank>, only available for sub-conferences.

It turns out that this causes some confusion for the visitors, as the same content (e.g. a call for contributions) can be displayed from 2 (in the eyes of the visitor) completely different websites. It’s also confusing for the content managers, who may not be aware of this issue, or don’t know the exact consequences when choosing the <blank> option vs choosing the main conference or the subconference its own as Display Context.

We will drop the <blank> option and force a conference instance to be viewed from the parent conference Display Context or from its own context. This enforces conference/workshop-specific content to live on a single URL, having a single presentation.

The configuration of the Display Context will be moved to a more appropriate place Display/Styling options, where the option will be explained.
When setting a Display Context to not inherit the styling/navigation menu/domain name, a new option allows one to inherit the attending items* from the parent conference. We think that this will provide the right balance of flexibility and simplicity.

* The display context will be preserved when viewing an inherited attending item, to prevent context switching when viewing a subconference website.

Submitted by Elmer van Chastelet on 20 September 2017 at 14:12