Solved Kunena 3: Category (and Section) permission: Why do some but not all settings have multiple selection?

In:

Components | Kunena Forum | Category Manager (Select section or category) | Category Permissions

Viewing (both Section and Category)

You have the option to select two User Groups, Primary and Secondary and whether you want to include child groups

Posting (Category only)

You have the option to select multiple User Groups by holding Ctrl or Shift buttons

Replying (Category only)

You have the option to select multiple User Groups by holding Ctrl or Shift buttons


Question

Why can you select multiple User Groups in the Posting and Replying settings but not in the viewing settings? Why is there a change of standards. If it is done for some settings then why not all settings? Is this a Joomla restriction?

I'd prefer to be able to have full multiple User Group selection (i.e. Ctrl or Shift buttons) in all (Viewing, Posting, and Replying) settings and also to be able to allow or disallow child groups access for all settings. Is this possible and could it be added to a future version of Kunena?

Many thanks,

This question is not easy to going to be easy, perhaps, to digest in the few words that I am going to use. Put simply: there is no need to select multiple categories for the purposes of viewing a category.

Hi sozzled,

I think that there is a need, however you may have a solution to my needs

My user group is:

Public
|—Guest
|—Manager
|—|—Administrator
|—Registered
|—|—Author
|—|—|—Editor
|—|—|—|—Publisher
|—|—Exhibitor
|—|—Moderator
|—|—Organiser
|—|—Trader
|—Super Users

For most of my forum, I would like everybody (including search engines) to have read access to all of the forums.

Example 1

I wish to have a private section (and a few categories) for Admin, Super Users, and Moderators to discuss forum things in private. Please note that I haven't looked into how to make people moderators so I don't know what extra that gives them so please assume that for this example I don't want the moderators to moderate the this section and categories, so I would like nobody except the following to view the forums:

Admin
Moderators
Super Users

Example 2

I wish to have a private section and categories for some User Groups to chat in private as the conversations may be delicate (traders complaining about organisers and their replies) so we don't want the public to view this. so I would like nobody except the following to view the forums:

Administrator
Exhibitor
Moderator
Organiser
Trader
Super Users

Your help would be very much appreciated, especially if there is an obvious solution that I can't see! :blush:

I don't think you've made your case, sorry.

Let's take one element of this broad-ranging subject and deal only with that: forum moderation.

It's next-to-impossible to clarify what you're trying to do when you remarked in another topic

Privateer wrote: ... especially as I don't have any Moderators yet.

You do, of course, understand the differences between category moderators and global moderators, don't you? You also understand that forum moderation is not governed by Joomla ACL classes, don't you? And you further understand that Joomla ACLs are used to define access to Kunena categories.

So, let's put all of these things together. Suppose you want to have a user account who can moderate topics posted in those categories where your "exhibitors" post messages and where your "traders" post messages)? Easy! Assign the moderator's account to be a member of both these ACL groups. If the moderator, in this case, is a global moderator then you do not need to do anything more.

I have asked you to look at how you go about assigning forum moderators and your reply has been "Yes, thanks, hopefully I will find time to investigate this further". The point that I'm trying to make is that how you assign forum moderators is pivotal to understanding what you need to do in this case.

What we have, in your case, is a site that is currently under development (and presumably without a membership) and you're seeking our input to the development process. We're doing our best.

My original response remains unchanged. There is no need to define multiple levels of viewing access. These things can be managed in a different way depending on how you organise your Joomla ACL groupings. Here's a hint: nest the "private" groupings under another child of the "registered" tree, like this:

|---Registered
|---|---Internal
|---|---|---Exhibitors
|---|---|---Traders

Assign your exhibitor users to "Registered" + "Internal" + "Exhibitors" and then give the exhibitors forum category the viewing permissions of "Internal" and assign whatever posting and/or reply rights as you like.

That's just one idea. There must be dozens more.

You should also know that we're only theorising here, in your case. I hope this matter is resolved very soon.

Hi sozzled,

You're absolutely right, my site is currently under development and currently has no membership. However I would like to set it up so that the infrastructure is already in place when the membership starts to increase.

I don't have any moderators at the moment because I will wait until the site needs moderators and also when there are members who are suitable and willing to become moderators. I do appreciate all of your assistance in the development process.

sozzled wrote: You do, of course, understand the differences between category moderators and global moderators, don't you?

I've read the documentation How to add a moderator , but there's not much there and it is in the category "Articles that could be improved".

I presume that global moderators are ones who at the selection of one item are able to moderate all categories, whilst category moderators are ones who are manually given certain categories that they can moderate.

sozzled wrote: You also understand that forum moderation is not governed by Joomla ACL classes, don't you? And you further understand that Joomla ACLs are used to define access to Kunena categories.

I'm starting to learn how things fit together.

I like your idea reorganising the Joomla ACL groupings and that is what I will do.

It must be just me as you appear not to have had anybody else have this as a request, but I do think that as the Posting and Replying settings are totally customisable on User Groups then it would be good to have the Viewing settings the same,, not just for consistency but for total customisation and control of the forum.

Once again many thanks for your time an advice. It have been very helpful in allowing me to set up the forum on my website.

Kind Regards,

Privateer wrote: I've read the documentation How to add a moderator , but there's not much there and it is in the category "Articles that could be improved".

I am fairly sure that I did not mention that out-of-date, irrelevant rather unhelpful Wiki article in the other topic where we discussed this issue.

How to assign forum moderators in Kunena: The procedure for how to assign forum moderators is off-topic to this discussion. We need a separate topic for it. If you created a topic called "How do I assign forum moderators in Kunena then I would be able to devote myself to answering this question. Instead, you thought that you used Joomla ACLs to assign forum moderators. You do not use Joomla ACLs to define forum moderation privileges. Joomla ACLs are only used in Kunena in relation to controlling whether people can

(a) view categories;
(b) create new topics in categories; or
(c) reply to topics in categories.

Forum moderators can
(a) move topics from one category to another category;
(b) edit the contents of any topic;
(c) ban users;
(d) delete posts
(e) delete topics
(f) restore deleted topics or posts
(g) lock and unlock topics
(h) sticky and unsticky topics
(i) approve posts in categories that are subject to moderator approval

and possibly a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head.

You said that "it was a shame" that you have to use something other than Joomla ACLs to define forum moderators or that you have to assign these privileges to each user, one at a time. Well, assigning privileges has to be done to each user one at a time. But you do not necessarily have to assign, to each moderator, each of the categories that you want them to be able to moderate.

That's the difference between having global moderators and category moderators. The problem is that if you don't understand what are the key differences between Joomla ACLs and how you assign forum moderators, it is not very helpful having the discussion about "why do some, but not all, settings have multiple selection in connection with category access" when you insist that you seem not to understand that you do not need Joomla ACLs for your moderators.

One reason that you may need a Joomla ACL group for moderators is if you have a forum category where you want you moderators to discuss things among themselves.

Moderators are assigned using the Kunena User Manager feature.

There are two types of moderators: those who are assigned to specific moderated categories and those who are "global moderators" who have moderator privileges across all categories in the forum. It's important to understand the difference between the category moderator and the global moderator.

(continued in next post)

(continued from previous post)

Let's say you have a category in your forum called "General/Locked Forum" and you've set this category with Moderated = Yes. You do that with the Category Manager facility.

Let's say that you want to assign a user account to be a moderator of this category. See the following image that shows you what you need to use in the User Manager facility.


If you want to assign a user account "moderate" several categories then you can make a multiple-choice assignment from the available categories.

To assign a user as a global moderator, use the same approach (Kunena User Manager, with Is Moderator = Yes) but choose, instead, "Global Moderator" instead of choosing specific categories. Global moderators have one other privilege that category moderators do not have. Global moderators can ban users (but they cannot ban other moderators and they cannot ban administrators).

It's really that simple. Do you understand now?


(Memo to self: It should only take me about 4 hours to produce a 3-minute training video on this subject ... :whistle: ... if I can find a spare 4 hours, that is)

Hi sozzled,

Many thanks for that reply - very useful information on Moderators (categorty and Global) and how to set them up.

sozzled wrote: One reason that you may need a Joomla ACL group for moderators is if you have a forum category where you want you moderators to discuss things among themselves.

Yes that is exactly what I would like.

sozzled wrote: The problem is that if you don't understand what are the key differences between Joomla ACLs and how you assign forum moderators, it is not very helpful having the discussion about "why do some, but not all, settings have multiple selection in connection with category access" when you insist that you seem not to understand that you do not need Joomla ACLs for your moderators.

I think that there is a misunderstanding, I've not explained myself, so apologies for that.

When I said "why do some, but not all, settings have multiple selection in connection with category access" I was not talking about moderators, I was talking about:

Components | Kunena Forum | Category Manager (Select section or category) | Category Permissions

Where you set the Viewing, Posting, and Replying settings for User Groups, i.e. nothing to do with moderators.

I was just asking why in the Viewing section you cannot select multiple User Groups by holding Ctrl or Shift buttons, as you can for the Posting, and Replying settings.

I hope that this makes sense now.

Kind Regards,

Privateer wrote: I was just asking why in the Viewing section you cannot select multiple User Groups by holding Ctrl or Shift buttons, as you can for the Posting, and Replying settings.

I gave the answer in msg #2:

sozzled wrote: ... there is no need to select multiple categories for the purposes of viewing a category.

Your response, in msg #3, gave me the impression that you were unwilling to accept this answer. I gathered - putting this discussion together with another long discussion we've had on a related matter - there was more than merely "thinking aloud" about the whys and wherefores of forum moderation. Furthermore, because we're really only talking hypothetically - you don't have any members - how could we be sure that you understand how to apply this advice? How can we be sure that, after researching information for you and guiding you about how to assign forum moderators, you referred (in msg #5) to an out-of-date article in the Wiki - something I had not mentioned - giving me the impression that our advice had not "sunk in"?

I hope that you clearly understand what you have to do.

Privateer wrote: I've read the documentation How to add a moderator , but there's not much there and it is in the category "Articles that could be improved".

The article you refer to is obsolete and I have replaced it with Forum moderators