Kunena 6.2.5 & module Kunena Latest 6.0.7 released

The Kunena team has announce the arrival of Kunena 6.2.5 [K 6.2.5] which is now available for download as a native Joomla extension for J! 4.3.x/4.4.x/5.0.x. This version addresses most of the issues that were discovered in K 6.1 / K 6.2 and issues discovered during the last development stages of K 6.2

This category contains miscellaneous, uncategorised third-party extensions (e.g. JomSocial, Community Builder, etc.) relating to older versions of Kunena that are no longer supported.

This category may also contain a few topics relating to K 1.6 that may have been moved here possibly by mistake.

The topics in this category are for historical interest only. Owing to the structural differences between K 1.6 and K 1.7, the ideas in these topics may not work with later versions and, for that reason, the topics are locked.

Question Threads from Private Boards showing up in Forum Tab

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14 years 7 months ago #1 by standarddamage
Running Joomla 1.5.14, CB 1.2.1, and Kunena 1.5.4...

In Kunena I have 4 forums set up that are only viewable by the staff. The problem I'm running into is that anytime my staff or I post something in one of those forums, the title and forum associated with the post shows up in the "Forums" tab and is viewable by everyone.

Is there a way to set it so that the posts from those private boards don't show up in the "Forum Posts" section of the "Forums" tab? I basically want to set it up so no one can see those posts through that tab.

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14 years 7 months ago #2 by sozzled
standarddamage wrote:

In Kunena I have 4 forums set up that are only viewable by the staff. The problem I'm running into is that anytime my staff or I post something in one of those forums, the title and forum associated with the post shows up in the "Forums" tab and is viewable by everyone.

I assume, when you write "everyone", you mean only registered, logged-in users who have access to the member profiles. Is that correct?

If what you say is correct, this seems to be a bad security flaw in Community Builder. What do the folks at Joomlapolis have to say about this problem? This means you cannot keep any of your forums private! :ohmy:

If your first priority is to stop unauthorised people using a back-door approach to view restricted forums, you must unpublish the CB forum tab now ... at least until the folks at Joomlapolis have provided you with a solution.

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14 years 7 months ago #3 by standarddamage
sozzled wrote:

I assume, when you write "everyone", you mean only registered, logged-in users who have access to the member profiles. Is that correct?


Yes. Exactly.

If what you say is correct, this seems to be a bad security flaw in Community Builder. What do the folks at Joomlapolis have to say about this problem? This means you cannot keep any of your forums private! :ohmy:


They're actually my next stop. I wanted to make sure that there wasn't something I was doing wrong from the Kunena end, especially seeing as I'm so new to the software.

If your first priority is to stop unauthorised people using a back-door approach to view restricted forums, you must unpublish the CB forum tab now ... at least until the folks at Joomlapolis have provided you with a solution.


The problem is that if I disable that tab, the members won't be able to change their signatures. However, I can set the number of posts to 0 so that none of the posts show up at all for anyone under that tab. Which is probably what I'll end up doing before I open the new Kunena forums.

Thanks for the response, Sozzled, I appreciate it. :)

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14 years 7 months ago #4 by Hurr1c4n3
You can also unpublish the forumview field in the forum tab of community builder.

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14 years 7 months ago - 14 years 7 months ago #5 by sozzled
standarddamage wrote:

The problem is that if I disable that tab, the members won't be able to change their signatures. However, I can set the number of posts to 0 so that none of the posts show up at all for anyone under that tab. Which is probably what I'll end up doing before I open the new Kunena forums.

There are other alternatives, too, and I would investigate the suggestion made by Hurr1c4n3:

You can also unpublish the forumview field in the forum tab of community builder.

I rely on Community Builder for user registration, login and for users to choose/upload an avatar. The tabs on the user profiles are useful but they're non-essential and, particularly in your case, one of them creates a significant problem in terms of allowing unauthorised access to confidential and/or sensitive information. That, in my opinion, is an unpardonable sin and demands an immediate solution.

For your information, I have set the two relevant Kunena configuration settings thus:

Integration » Avatar Integration » Use avatar picture from = Community Builder
Integration » Profile Settings » Profile = Kunena

With these settings, my users can change their signatures from the Kunena user panel.

Keep us posted on what information you obtain from Joomlapolis.
Last edit: 14 years 7 months ago by sozzled.

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14 years 7 months ago #6 by standarddamage
Hurr1c4n3 wrote:

You can also unpublish the forumview field in the forum tab of community builder.


To my understanding, you can't. It's a system-generated field. :(

Keep us posted on what information you obtain from Joomlapolis.


I will Sozzled. No answer as of yet.

The thing is that all they would need to do is allow you to pick and choose which forums to publish, which I surprised they overlooked seeing as both Kunena and JFusion allow for that very option in the profiles and modules.

The forum tab has a lot of issues that I hope CB is aware of. If not, I intend to make them aware of them so they can be fixed. There's this, and CB 1.2.1 doesn't recognize the ranks properly either.

Again, thanks for the help, Sozzled. :)

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14 years 7 months ago - 14 years 7 months ago #7 by sozzled
standarddamage wrote:

The forum tab has a lot of issues that I hope CB is aware of. If not, I intend to make them aware of them so they can be fixed. There's this, and CB 1.2.1 doesn't recognize the ranks properly either.

I'm sorry to say that the folks at Joomlapolis have their own, very slow, timetable. For example, we waited three months for a version of the forum tab that was truly, properly integrated with Kunena.

I know there is goodwill on both sides - Kunena and Community Builder - to see Kunena move ahead with the support of Joomlapolis (even though they use a totally different forum product at their website) but it will require our tolerance and patience while we await a solution.

The simplest solution in this case is to unpublish the Forums tab. I checked at my "demo" site (just a few moments ago) and I found that I don't use this tab myself. I prefer, instead, to view a list of user messages from the Kunena user panel. Let's be clear on the size of the problem that you have brought to our attention: only the message subjects (and the categories they were posted in) are displayed in the forum tab, not the contents of those messages. If, for example, you and your staff are posting in a private category then that activity will be on "public" display but substance of the messages won't be. You and your users may feel uneasy if these private exchanges contain sensitive information in the subjects and you should be careful how you word the subject.

There's an old saying I learnt years ago: the best way to keep a secret is to not tell anyone that you have any secrets. So, I agree with you, it is not reassuring to your users to be even hinting at matters that are none of their business.

In respect of the "ranks problem", a temporary solution has been offered by a user: see www.joomlapolis.com/component/option,com...,100/id,99690/#99690 for the solution. :)
Last edit: 14 years 7 months ago by sozzled.

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14 years 7 months ago #8 by standarddamage
sozzled wrote:

I'm sorry to say that the folks at Joomlapolis have their own, very slow, timetable...

...In respect of the "ranks problem", a temporary solution has been offered by a user: see www.joomlapolis.com/component/option,com...,100/id,99690/#99690 for the solution. :)


Yes, I'm aware of the timetables at Joomlapolis. :laugh:

I appreciate that they're running with only so many staff members, and that these things take a little time. I was just surprised at how poorly that patched that tab was, especially when it's so integral to the sites it was to be installed on. Hopefully someone over thee will give some answers...Krileon certainly tries to do what he can.

Thank you for the link. I had seen that before, and applied those hacks already, which certainly helped. Unfortunately I still can't change the rank of two of my staff members, but having them show as Administrators in the profiles is a minor problem.

We'll see. :)

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14 years 7 months ago #9 by standarddamage
Well, I have all kinds of answers now. I will post what happened so that others will benefit from what I learned...

What I had done was publish the Kunena menu item with "Special" permissions while my staff and I did some beta testing. Because my test account (which has just basic, registered access) couldn't see the actual forums, the Forum Tab couldn't pick up on which boards that account should or shouldn't be able to see. As a result, it would show everything to every member, regardless of their rank. Once I changed the Kunena menu item to "Public" access, the problem went away and my test account could only see the forums in the tab that it should.

Krileon at Joomlapolis came up with a fix for the other major problem. Forum ranks have been showing incorrectly in the Forum tab in many ways. Staff all show up as Administrators, special ranks don't show, and registered users ranks wouldn't progress based on their post counts.

Krileon posted a fix HERE that will solve all of that. He re-coded the simpleboard tab to fix everything. All you have to do is download, unzip, and replace the file.

I hope this helps everyone. :)

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14 years 7 months ago #10 by sozzled
standarddamage wrote:

What I had done was publish the Kunena menu item with "Special" permissions while my staff and I did some beta testing. Because my test account (which has just basic, registered access) couldn't see the actual forums, the Forum Tab couldn't pick up on which boards that account should or shouldn't be able to see. As a result, it would show everything to every member, regardless of their rank. Once I changed the Kunena menu item to "Public" access, the problem went away and my test account could only see the forums in the tab that it should.

So, what you're saying (in a nutshell) is that there is no "security flaw" as such in the untarnished, unadorned cbsimpleboardtab plugin. Right?

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