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| « Skins 2.0 | b2evo 1.10.2 "Florida" released » |
User permissions 2.0
Advanced user permissions have long been both one of b2evolution’s strengths and one of its weaknesses.
On one hand they allowed unmatched control over who could do what on which blog. That was good in those complex multiblog-multiuser setups. On the other hand, they could be pretty confusing for newcomers who were blogging just by themselves and didn’t need any complex permissions.
Yet, the admins of enterprise blog platforms wanted even more flexibility with their permissions…
With b2evolution 2.0 we have addressed this the following way:
Blog owner default permissions
First, advanced permissions are now turned off by default. That means that when you create a new blog, you assign it to an owner and that’s it. The simplest case being: you are the admin, you create a blog for yourself, you are the owner of the blog.
The blog owner can do almost anything on his blog without requiring any additional permission.
There are a few advanced things that the owner cannot do though. Among these: change the base URL of his blog, aggregate other blogs on his blog, set up a static file… These things require an advanced admin privilege. Again, on single user setups, the owner is also the system admin, so he can do whatever he wants, without trouble.
Advanced perms
Now if a blog owner wants to invite additional users to blog on one of his blogs, he can turn on advanced permissions in his blog’s features panel. By doing so, the “User perms” and “Group perms” tabs appear in the blog settings.
Those advanced permissions tabs work mostly like before: any user can be declared as a member, a contributor, a publisher, a moderator or an admin of any specific blog.
The advanced permissions can also be given on a more granular level (e-g who exactly can upload a file, who can publish drafts, etc…). Those permissions can also be granted to user groups just like before.
Post editing permission
There are a few new advanced permissions though, among which the post editing permission!
So far, when a contributor had permission to post, he could also edit existing posts. Any existing posts…
Well, no more! Now you can decide for each user and/or group what posts he can edit. He may be allowed to post but not to edit anything at all. Or he may be allowed to edit only his own posts. Or he could be allowed to edit only posts written by someone with a user level lower than his own. Or equal user level. Or all posts.
Needless to say, the admin group has a super-permission that superseedes all this and lets them edit anything, anywhere, anytime without any hassle.
We hope this will satisfy most of the advanced as well as the simplification requests we have received since the introduction of advanced perms two years ago. If not, let us know…
All this and more coming to a blog near you this summer — b2evolution 2.0.
17 comments
So, that would be great :-)
Thanks a lot,
Michael
Can't you just make those posts protected and make your family members of the blog? That way they'll see these posts and the rest of the world won't.
that is what I have currently done. Unfortunately every group then has ability to read every post of the blog. That is ok for family but this was just an example. Sometimes you have more than one group who should be able to read different things. Think of a blog which is not for personal use but for a workgroup etc. So it still would be nice to have :-)
So again, if it is not soooo much effort it would be great to have it :-)
Thanks again for all the hard work, I can't wait to try out 2.0.
(I need to understand the limitations so I can best address them.)
We have one installation of b2evo, under which we have four public blogs and another 8 protected blogs. Some folks are members of some blogs but not of others. Some folks can also post to some blogs but not to others. Even to the public blogs, b2evolution allows individual posts to be private or protected [members only].
Posts from all the public blogs show up on our "home" page, though we could also configure b2evo to show posts from the protected blogs there as well.
But we only mange one instance of b2evolution. The hierarchy is Press [our b2evo subdomain] -> individual blogs -> categories -> sub-categories -> sub-sub-categories
Perhaps thinking of it that way might clear up the issue.
b2evolution's multi-blog and multi-user configuration stomps on anything else available, but that doesn't mean there isn't room to improve. Two dot oh, with regard to user permissions, seems like a major step forward in that area. I personally have a hack that stops userA from editing the work of userB. I prefer and look forward to it becoming part of the core application, and now have no plans to share my hack publicly. Maybe I should as a stop-gap measure, but since I can't predict what the future will be I think it is best that I not share a plugin that will be obsolete very soon.
Therefore I say thanks to Francois for recognizing that making a multi-user blog be collaborative is not always what we (the users) want or need. Sometimes, and in truth many times, we want something the current core does not enable.
I am running my personal blog currently on 3-party website, several of them. But I want to make one on my own website and really only one. I need everyone who comes to be READERS but I have several levels of "sensitive" posts.
0) Sometimes I would publish "deep thoughts" or "movies reviews" - this is for everyone who comes over.
I suppose my personal contacts to register at this blog as READERS. But posts can be different:
1) events in my life like buying some new camera etc. - this is interesting only to members, and can be read by all of them
2) events in personal life - I wouldn't like to share this with all members, only friends to whom I would be talking about it live (well, if some of them weren't living in other countries)
3) very personal info like dreams or intimate relationships what I would share only with a few very close friends.
Real flexibility would be to use user groups for it - if those groups have writing access set up for categories and posts, cannot you just add permissions for READING access to Categories? SO that I could let alone writing access and only set up reading access? (sorry if I say stupid things, I haven't tried b1evo yet, I'm only looking for a blog engine for my site but can't find any which already has those features).
However in my case I could also content myself with access levels.
Say I assign a registered member (READER) a level 0-3 and when I post I also assign level 0-3, or I assign a category level 0-3.
In fact, any kind of advanced reading access management would suit me, and your engine seems to have the most flexible rights management...
Your idea about a minimum level to read a category makes sense. I will make the feature simpler than an extended per-category permission system.
In the meantime, I believe you could achieve that exact functionality by having 4 different blogs in the same b2evolution with different permissions and then aggregate them together in order to show only one blog (all that still in the same install b2evolution).
Many of my friends and family members are not as blog/forum/community savvy, the whole idea of having to log in is just too much of a hurdle for them. They forget their log-ins, or even that they have to log in to see the entries ... It would be a lot easier to them if they just saw the title of a protected blog entry, with a little password field below it. Entering the password provides access to the entry's text.
I'm looking for a mutli-user/blog "platform" where anyone can signup and customize & manage their own personal blog (themes, etc). It sounds like 2.0 (alpha) can do this, but I don't know if it's an automated process or if the admin (me) would have to manually setup each user's blog.
Q: Is the multi-user/blog/themes automated as far as setup? Or is this not really on the map in terms of intended functionality?
Other platforms I've looked at:
http://www.netartmedia.net/blogsystem/
http://www.bloghoster.net/
Thanks!
Having users create their own blog is provided through an additional plugin at this time.
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