Geeklog Forums

Here is what I would like to do. Let's say we were running a website to discuss automobiles. Since there are many different types of automobiles, we can split people into different groups. So everyone that is interested in Volkswagens will be in the Volkswagen group. Then we create Topics that are "owned" by the group Volkswagen and can only be read by that group. Plus we can have administrators of the Volkswagen Topics so they can add/delete material that is relevant to Volkswagens.

A user of the group Volkswagen will be give a website that is different then a person of the group Chevy. Because the Volkswagen group will have thier own Topics, and Blocks, the page will be dynamically created with those Stories and Blocks that are of interest to VW people.

Geeklog can almost do this. You can add groups, and even assign a topic to a group with read privileges only for that group. The problem occurs when you try to assign the topic or story to a group. Only System groups are listed! Not your newly created group!

Ok, so let's try to do what we want with the system groups. If you select Admin can read and edit, the group can only read, and nobody else can read - the topic is still posted for everyone, even those not in the group. When you check the permissions, the Anonymous Read button is selected. It is impossible to de-select.

So as far as I can tell, the user-defined groups serve little to no purpose. What am I missing?

I read and completely understood your scenario and as I developed this security model your situation *should* have been covered. Now I haven't tested this scenario on my test box yet (trust me, I will) but all groups in the system (not just default GL groups) should show up in EVERY group drop down. So for now, submit it as a bug and in the meantime I'll play with it.

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The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

Ok, this was a bug...

First, when assigning a group to an object (topic, story, link, etc) you can only assign groups to that object that you yourself belongs to. This is where the bug comes in.

When creating a new group the Root group was not being automatically assigned to that group. It should be. I have fixed this on CVS. Now when I found that out I tried to edit Root to assign the groups Chevy and VW to the Root group but ran into another bug. So I fixed two birds with one stone! Woo hoo!

Download the latest admin/group.php from CVS to fix this bug!

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The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

Wow! Thanks for the quick reply! Is there any consideration for creating admins for a particular group. You can do this now, but not at the same time. For example, if I create a group called "Volkswagen" and place all of my members that are interested in Volkswagen's in the group, then what group does the Administrator of the Volkswagen section be assigned. When I am creating a topic, I can either select the group has edit privileges or read only privileges. Is is possible to create an account that only has edit privileges over the category of Volkswagen and at the same time a group that can have exclusive read access to the Volkswagen content?

You can do exactly what you said by creating a VW Admin group and just a VW group.

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The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.