Access control - what are my options?

[dirtywhitellama]

Hi,

I'm looking into this CMSMS and it seems like a really great simple solution for my needs.  (Although, if I install it I will probably have some questions about porting over my current menu styling )

But before I went to download I realized that the site I want to put it on has an access restriction on much of the content (since it is a site for friends and there is a lot of personal information on it we want to control who has access to the main body of content).

So what are my options with CMSMS?  Does it have any kind of log in / access restriction feature?  Is there a plugin or add on of some kind to give it that?  Or will I have to set the entire CMSMS behind the passworded section on the website?


Thanks for your help

[calguy1000]

CMSMS is great for limiting access to frontend users.  It has a very powerful addon development kit, which has been used.to develop three very powerful modules:

a) A module for managing frontend users, add, delete, edit, etc.  (FrontEndUsers)
b) A module for allowing users to add themselves to the frontend, with email confirmation (SelfRegistration)
c) A module that uses the frontend module (a) to allow you to display different content to different users, based on ip address, group, or userid (CustomContent)

Infact, the ability to display different content to friends, than to the general public is why I wrote the three modules for CMS.  It just happened that these modules became to be used by the vast CMS public

If you have any more questions, just shoot.

[dirtywhitellama]

Great - I will install those then as soon as CMSMS finishes installing.  I'm excited to get this thing on our site now - although once its up and I have the right templates set up there is sooooo much content to resort and add into menus....

On the self register do they need admin confirmation? Or if I am concerned about people registering that I perhaps dont want to see some of the information can I set up a default group and then move people to a group that has more access if I want to?

Also how do I set access to each page -  or I guess that would be explained in the module help -  probably a line I put into each template, right?  And when it displays different content, people who are not logged in don't see the menu options at all correct?


Sheesh, so many questions.  But I am totally new to this CMS thing so I guess what can you expect     (I have plenty of experience with html and have done some things with CSS and modified some Javascripts but that's about it...)

[calguy1000]

Users don't need admin confirmation to register, the way you limit people to certain content, is by the admin giving them access to certain groups.

i.e:  Create two groups "Users" and "Friends", and add the {cms_module module=SelfRegistration group="Users"} tag to your registration page.... when you want to give that somebody that registered themselves access to the "Friends only" pages, the admin would add that user to the "Friends" group.

Then you would put something like this into your access restricted page (or access restricted template).


You are a friend, you are welcome!!, please enjoy the site

You don't have authorization to see this content


Hope that helps.

[dirtywhitellama]

Can restricted content be completely invisible on the menus or will it be there but when they click they get the no-go?  And on my template would I put the "{content}" tag like this using your example -


You are a friend, you are welcome!!, please enjoy the site  {content}

You don't have authorization to see this content




I appreciate your help, still trying to get CMSMS installed on the website, it seems to have quit halfway through uploading the files :/

[calguy1000]

Unfortunately, since the feusers module, and the custom content module are external to the core, there is no way built into the menus to restrict the content shown in the menus

But there are tricks that can be done, i.e: 
Create all of your restricted pages, as children of a section header, mark that section header as "Not shown In menu", then in your restricted pages, or restricted template, create a second menu that shows everything below that section header.

If you want to create a restricted access template, you would do something like:


{content}

You are not authorized to view this page


Again, hope this helps.

[dirtywhitellama]

Aha - that actually applies to a different question I had too which I had posted in the general help forum -  Can I make CMSMS show two separate menus on a page?  IE have the top level pages on a menu on the left side, and then a given group of siblings on a menu on the right? 


Is there any handy reference for setting up (meaning primarily the design elements since I know it does parent/children/etc automatically) menus in CMSMS or am I going to have to just examine their code and experiment?

[calguy1000]

Checkout the default templates, there's one in there for a horizontal and a vertical menu

[dirtywhitellama]

Alright I got the modules in and installed- it said something about remember to set some permissions (somethign about modifying settings), but I don't know what it meant nor where to find this.

And then I went into FEusers management and clicked add group,  and it said no properties defined, then when I clicked back to menu it brought up a screen to add a group to the regular groups list rather than FEusers.  Do they use the same groups list and if so how do I get FEusers to display it?    If not why isn't it making a group for me :/

[calguy1000]

Go to "Users & Groups" >> "Group Permissions" select the admin group, and check everything.  This is a flaw that's been taken care of in 0.12

Once you turn everything on.... click on "main" on the menus (just in case).  and then go to the FrontEndUsers module.  You should see the  "Properties Tab"

Define some properties (like first name, last name, email address).  then go to groups, and create groups. 

And then edit your templates and/or pages.

Again, hope that helps.

[dirtywhitellama]

Ahhh, thats what it means!

Great, thanks again.  Seems to be working now. I haven't looked at it yet but is setting up a page for self registration straightforward  or is there anything I need to know about that too?   If it has a clear help page attached I should be ok. (then again, I would've thought so about the permissions and such too but you never know. )


Maybe I can get this set up tonight and we can start moving our content over...then again it might take me longer than that to get the templates in place, too.

I'm excited about this whole thing, though. 

[calguy1000]

The funny thing about help pages, is what's clear to one person isn't clear to the next
Anyways, there is help in the help page for the self registration module, under the "How Do I use it" section.  but, by default.... things should start going if you create a page, and insert:

{cms_module module=SelfRegistration group=""}

somewhere in the content.

BTW, although it may seem obvious (to some) means, place the name of the group that you created in the frontendusers module into the tag at that spot (this parameter is case sensitive).

Hope that helps.

BTW, as soon as I get my ass out of neutral, I'll be releasing a new version of selfreg/feusers with many new features, though most of those new features are aimed at sites with tonnes and tonnes of users.