Thread: Any PHPBB admins in the house?

I would suggest hitting up Bunni on PM or xfire. Guy is a genius.

Ya, as you already know its a permission problem. Been a while since ive had a phpbb forum setup, and dont have a install to go poke around in and find the exact name of the permission. Look under the permissions for guest, they NEED (you have to grant it to them) the permission to view those catagories without being registered. Do this either a global permission or a by catagory/forum/thread permission.

Leme know if that helps.
Bun-

Originally Posted by finc.hairy

Originally Posted by Bunni

Ya, as you already know its a permission problem. Been a while since ive had a phpbb forum setup, and dont have a install to go poke around in and find the exact name of the permission. Look under the permissions for guest, they NEED (you have to grant it to them) the permission to view those catagories without being registered. Do this either a global permission or a by catagory/forum/thread permission.

Leme know if that helps.
Bun-

Yeah thats my problem. In the new phpbb layout, there is only one spot to edit the global group permissions and read-only access is an option in the drop-down menu and every category has it.

Plus I haven't modified read-only access - so it is still the default, allowing you to view a forum as a guest with all the permissions that come with that right....(read, download, print etc...)

Yet the issue persists.

That's why I'm wondering if there is a conflict somewhere, like in phpmyadmin. And one of my issues is that I don't know enough about this stuff to pin-point it or to know what I'm looking for in the vast complicated views of myadmin.

I'm gonna poke around there later today.

ya the problem with the new UI is the overlaying permissions. While it has many advantages (complete customization and total control down to the last dot), it has a huge disadvange: complexity and subsequent undesired results. Since your problem can be in many places, ill instead help you understand the permission system so you know where to look and what to look for.

For reference from the phpbb page you linked:

1. User/Group permissions (global) - e.g. disallow changing avatar
2. Administrator permissions (global) - e.g. allow to manage forums
3. Moderator permissions (global or local) - e.g. allow to lock topics or ban users (only global)
4. Forum permissions (local) - e.g. allow to see a forum or post topics

Theres two types of permissions that can be applied to a base on the tiered system, you have 3 bases: a user, a group, a forum (can be anything from a thread to a catagory). Now on top of these 3 bases, two types of permissions can be applied, global and local. Global permissions can only be applied to the two bases: users and groups, and local can only be applied to the base: forums and some groups (ie moderator group, but NOT admin group (mods have limited powers in certain areas, admins have power everywhere)).

For all bases except forums, 3 types of permission sets exist, user/group perms, admin perms, moderator perms. These permission sets can be altered globally and locally to a base.

Global permissions effect the entire base, in example a specific user, all administrators (group), all moderators (group), all users in __ group.

Local permissions are permissions applied to a base for a particular place (ex a forum), hence the name local. Your problem likely exists in: forum permissions -> (hit the "All Forums" under the 'Select a forum' List box and hit Submit -> Select the guest user group under the group list box and hit edit permissions. You have your obvious permissions: read only access, no access, full access etc-etc.



Youll see roles, these are pre-set permission sets, again, you see your 4 types of permissions (including forum roles).


To recap: for any given base, there can exist global permissions, and local permissions, making a total of 8 possible layers of permissions. This system can be configured to quite literally anything you can dream of permission wise. If your looking to keep things simple, just keep this in mind. If your having permission problems similar to the ones your having now, you know that the problem can be at: each forum (local, at every forum the guests cannot view), the guest user group (global). Since there is no global user permission (there are admin and mod) relating to being able to view forums in general (if there was such a global permission, applying it would allow the effected base to view ALL forums which is rarely wanted and almost always undesired so there is no such permission), the problem must exist in the local forum permissions.

Keep in mind that when a base is removed from a permission set (ex if you accidentally removed the guest group from all local forum permission sets (hitting remove permissions instead of edit permissions in the steps above)) the base defaults to no permissions at all, relating to that permission set. In this case, if the guest group was removed from all forums local permission set(s) then the guests would default to no permissions (ie cannot see, read, or edit the forums) for the effected forums in this scenario, in this case, all of them.


If you wanted to give a particular group admin powers in only 1 forum, you would apply the permission to the local permission-set for that forum. If you wanted to grant a group admin powers in all forums, you would apply the permission globally to that group; same goes for users.


In KISS, permissions directly to users, groups (including admin and mod) are global. Permissions for users, groups at a particular place (ie forum) are local.





Let me know if this helps,
Bunni-



edit: color coated to help clarify references