How to create simple 'subsites'?

Question

I am creating a site for a company, which has multiple departments. Each department shall have a departments (sub/branch) site. Within each department site, there will be users of different roles, such as editors, approvers, administrators etc. - each only allowed to edit content in its own branch site.

Apart from this permission, everything else will be the same - they will share the same theme and templates, content types, modules, workflow logic etc. Only the permissions need to be different

How to create these simple 'subsites'?

Here are the options in my head right now:

1. Using Organic Groups - a very steep learning curve (many settings) and seems like overkill
2. Subsites - requires additional databases, and installs
3. My idea - 1) Create a vocabulary containing all departments. 2) Create a content type for each content that will appear on any of the department sites. In the content type, have a field which allows the user to select the department (from taxonomy) to publish this under. However, I'd have to limit so that the user can only select the departments they are under

I am inexperienced and so do not know the potential pitfalls of choosing any of the options, anyone can give me some pointers?

Answer 1

Have a look at the domain access module.

I think it is what you're looking for.