Possible bug: children of inactive parent are still accessible Topic is solved

[LB]

If I make the parent page inactive, I still can access the children via their urls. I don't think this is the right behavior. If you turn the parent off, then all its children should do the same automatically.

Is this a feature or a bug?

[Ted]

Well, technically this is a feature.  But bringing that up makes me wonder if that should change.

Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

[kermit]

there is 'show on menu' and 'active' flags for pages. these are more than adequate to determine whether a page is accessible via generated navigation menus or direct links. just because you deactivate a parent, does not necessarily mean that someone does not want the ability to directly link to one of it's child pages. since the 'active' state is easily changed from the list of pages, and it only takes one click to toggle; i don't think any automatic changes of the status of a child page should be made when you make them to their parent. 

if this action is desired, perhaps a prompt (apply to child pages too?) to determine what to do when toggling a parent's active status, however people might become annoyed at that prompt if they run across it too often. so maybe a setting under user preferences to determine this: change child pages 'active' (perhaps also 'show in menu'?) state when parent is changed? options: yes, no, prompt. and have the current normal behaviour be the default.  whatever is specified here as the action to take would also apply if moving a child to a parent with conflicting status.

maybe a prompt is even too much? since you go into a page edit screen to change the parent, you're only a click away from setting it's active and menu states?  how about just a warning if you are selecting a new parent (in the pull down) with conflicting states and advising you to ensure the page's (being edited) status is correct. after all, if you are moving a page and are maintaining all the accessibility options like tab order and access key (among other things), chances are good you'll need or want to change (some of) those too.

i was with wishy before i started writing.. i had almost convinced myself that options or a prompt would work.. but then i got to that last part and now my original thoughts are just reinforced instead. the way it is now is the way to go. after all, it keeps things simple. if you want to change a page's status, go into the page and change it. don't expect the program to do it for you or try to make decisions like that for itself. if you move a page to a different parent, then you have other things besides just that one setting that you should be looking at anyway. that is how it is now, it makes sense, and as wishy said, it's intentional. it gives ultimate control to the user and doesn't take any decision for granted that may not necessarily be desired. it's also both easy to document, and so is the rationale for the current behaviour; and easy to get used to (as it is, is how it has been, so people should be by now). and not to forget how utterly simple it is to toggle a page's active status anyway.