Solved Having problems restricting the right to post within a category

Thanks.

I've just mailed a few moments ago...

As I have replied to yours, too.

Hi Sozzled

I want to thank you for the offer of direct contact. I have you kn Skype and have it running now on my main system (although I have no camera or mic) so can catch your call and then switch to the laptop for video and voice.

I also had an issue with a plugin that may shed some light on this...

The plugin in question was the text hider that displays text "X" to group "A" and text "Y" to group "B".

I couldn't for the life of me get the damn thing to work with the subscribers. I messaged the developers and they tested and got it working. They did one thing I didn't and that isn't documented:

They created a new access view level for "Subscribers"

Well, wonder of wonders their plugin now works.

Kunena however works but with one or two bugs. Here's what happens:

Case A - Public User:

If a public user tries to create a new topic they clearly cannot as the "New topic" button is not even visible. All good.

Case B - Subscriber:

If a subscriber logs in they can post, great news there also.

Case C - Registered, but not a Subscriber:

"John Smith", a Registered user can view the caregory and cal also view the "+New Topic" button:
i.imgur.com/rUP753F.png

However, he should not see this button as he is not a subscriber. When he click sthe button to create a new topic this message appears:
prntscr.com/1ekgls

I hope all that is of some use and we can work together to get this resolved.

Thanks once again for all your help.

What is the name of this "wonder of wonders" plugin that is incompatible with Joomla ACLs and does things in its own unique and mysterious way? It may serve as a good warning to other people to not use this plugin that, basically, stuffs things up (from the sounds of it).

No, the plugin works perfectly fine with standard ACL but if you create a new user group it is not documented that you have to also create a new viewing level.

The point is that once I created the new viewing level the non subscribers were then unable to post into the forums which is exactly what I want.

I now just need to hide the "new Topic" button because if they click it they get the Captcha message.

OK. Sounds like the mystery as been solved and the main issue as been resolved, yes?

I'm not sure if I understand the second issue - something about CAPTCHA :S - and we may have to create a new topic to discuss it.

P.S. What is the name if this "subscriptions plugin". It's still worthwhile letting other people know what you had to wrestle with to resolve your problem. Thanks.

Sorry for the late response.

The content hider plugin is Core Design Access Text and with standard ACL it works a treat. I simply had to add a new view access level to get it to work with "Subscribers".

Once I created this new view access level the intended use in Kunena also worked. However, I get two problems that could do with resolving:

If a registered user tries to post into a category that requires subscription:

The "Reply To" and also the "New Topic" buttons SHOULD NOT be visible
If the user does try and post they see this message:

i.imgur.com/uK1YsIE.png

I found what was causing that Captcha error to display:

prntscr.com/1es17r

I changed the challenge from zero to blank.

:blink: Going all the way back to your first message, the way you have described the configuration for the "subscribers" category is that "the public" (that is, any user, whether or not they are logged-in) can view the messages posted in this category, but the only people who should see the NEW TOPIC or topic reply functions are those who have the Subscribers ACL. If registered users, who do not hold the Subscribers permission, can post new topics or reply to existing topics, then I am totally stupified!

This should not happen.

The CAPTCHA situation - don't you just love it when a simple problem escalates and turns into a shaggy-dog story? - the CAPTCHA Challege for Users value of 0 is the default and it works everywhere I've used it. You should not need to change the value from 0 to blank (or null).

This should not happen.

The reason why the "Public Key is missing" message appeared is because you had not defined the public/private key information (obviously) but, because you did not even want CAPTCHA challenge enabled this message is not very helpful and you wanted the message to go away. You found a workaround but, it is my guess, that this situation may have arisen because the original CAPTCHA Challege for Users setting was not really 0 but something corrupted, maybe?

Back to the original problems (or a new twist on the theme): Registered users are able to create new topics (or reply to existing topics) in categories on your site where they should not be able to do so. And, from a Kunena perspective, everything looks right to me. Well I'll be a monkey's uncle if I can deduce the cause of this! :pinch:

You got it right and it certainly was a strange one but through the problem I had with that content hider plugin I resolved it with Kunena also. It's strange but here's what I did to get it working...

I created a new user group called "Subscribers" under "Registered" users and the subscription component does its job perfectly: If a registered user subscribes it changes their user group to "Subscribers". All good thus far.

What I did not do and for some reason is not a documented process is this:

I had to ALSO create a new view level for this group "Subscribers" and once I did that both the content plugin and Kunena started working exactly as expected.

Strange I know.

The Captcha issue was an easy one to solve and as I'd never even looked at that setting in Kunena it was difficult to find but I know for sure Kunena was producing the message so looked around and changed the value from zero to blank.

I want to thank you for your patience on this. Greatly appreciated.

So ... now we can mark this mystery as solved?