Posted on: 03/12/09 01:50pm
By: Armitage
I've had an ongoing problem where whenever there was a featured news item on the main page, certain users would get a "No New News to Display" block, plus their Forum Lastest Posts block would disappear.
I've traced the problem to gl_userindex. Any user that had aids=4 set would experience this issue (aids=0 is the default).
My question is, what is that setting, how did they set it in the first place, and why is it hiding those two blocks?
Thanks!
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 03:31pm
By: Dirk
The (somewhat unfortunately named) "aids" field can contain a list of user ids of authors that a user doesn't want to see.
My Account > Content > Exclude Topics and Authors > Authors
Is your uid = 4 on your site?
bye, Dirk
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 03:41pm
By: Armitage
Ahh, thanks for the information. Yes, uid 4 is the account I use to post all news stories, etc. I guess that explains it!
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 03:44pm
By: Armitage
Ah I see something interesting. In the box where they can select the userid to exclude, there's only one entry (me). Once clicked and highlighted, it becomes impossible to unselect. This must be how they got it accidentally set in the database.
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 04:27pm
By: Dirk
Quote by: ArmitageOnce clicked and highlighted, it becomes impossible to unselect.
It's a multi-select listbox. You need to hold down a key when clicking. Which key depends on the operating system. On Windows, try Control.
bye, Dirk
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 04:29pm
By: Armitage
Right, but it only has 1 entry in the box, and once clicked, cannot be unclicked. I've tested it and there doesn't seem to be an immediately obvious solution. It has caught out at least a dozen of my users. I've just gone and manually set aids=0 where aids=4 for all of them and will check occasionally to see if anyone else has fallen into that trap.
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 04:35pm
By: Dirk
Did you try what I wrote above? Works just fine with only one entry ...
bye, Dirk
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 04:39pm
By: Armitage
I thought I had tried before but you're right it does work. Maybe I'll stick a comment on that page or better yet just block users from changing it in the first place in case they can't figure it out either
Re: gl_userindex question
Posted on: 03/12/09 04:49pm
By: Dirk
Btw, there's already a
feature request[*1] to allow disabling that list. Maybe in some future Geeklog release ...
bye, Dirk