Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.Please define the default access rights inversely. I had a few additional roles like administrator and editor. The default forum access rights were almost entirely the opposite of what is normally needed. From the start they were preselected for anonymous and authenticated users and unselected for the additional roles, which is almost exactly the wrong way around. This makes the settings awkward, because I had to make about 300 mouse clicks for some 20 forums. I'm glad I didn't have hundreds of forums already.
Another solution for this problem would be to allow the user to enter a default setting for all forums first, then change the differing forums. Even more elegant solutions are conceivable, such as default forum settings for forum containers and for the global forums pseudo-container.
Hans-Georg
Comments
Comment #1
merlinofchaos commentedIt's not really possible to invert the default access rights, because by default there are only two roles we can rely on being there: anonymous and authenticated.
What you really need is a way to set up access rights and apply it to many different forums.
Comment #2
liam mcdermott commented(hope I'm not overstepping any lines here, or whether this should be raised as a new feature request)
I've changed the description to be more descriptive of the underlying issue, and am going to link this from: http://groups.drupal.org/node/8599
Problem definition
Currently there is no easy way to set access rights across all forums. All access rights must be set for each forum/container individually.
Use case
Liam (that's me, this is a real use-case) has just converted a forum to Drupal. The converted site has over 100 containers+forums+sub-forums and he is faced with the prospect of changing all those forum's access rights.
Temporary workaround
Use the Firefox macros plugin. Open all the forum settings windows in new tabs and record a macro that will set the default settings to the current tab, then move to the next one. Rinse and repeat.
Unfortunately this is quite a turn-off for people switching to Drupal. It gives an impression the road ahead is not going to be pleasant. :)
Implementation
On the forums settings page
/admin/content/forum/settingsadd an access rights edit form, which will save default settings for all forums.This is all I can think of for the moment. Does it make sense?
Comment #3
salvisYes, I like that idea.
Comment #4
mennonot commented+1 subscribing
Comment #5
njehlen commentedsubscribing - this would be a huge help
Comment #6
davidteall commentedHas this now been implemented? I see there is now an access rights tab on /admin/content/forum/settings. However, it is not at all clear how the settings on this page interact with the settings on the individual Forums. Can you take away a 'default' permission by leaving it un-ticked on the individual forum settings? I suspect (and rather hope) not. If so, is it correct to say that you can only add permissions on the individual forum page?
If this is so it would help enormously if the tick boxes on the individual forums appeared with the default settings ticked and greyed out.
Two more thoughts: The Forum Topic page includes settings for 'author' but the individual forum pages do not. Why is this? It would be helpful if both pages were the same.
How do the 'post in this forum' controls interact with the 'create forum topics' control on the main permissions page? It seems that to create a post you must have a tick in both places. For the edit privileges it is either/or.
Comment #7
hgmichna commentedCan we shift this to Drupal 6, as Drupal 5 is now obsolete and nearing the end of its life cycle?
In Drupal 6 I don't see any access rights tab on the Admin, Content, Forums, Settings page, and doesn't seem to make much sense.
I don't see any other improvement either. At least it works.
Comment #8
davidteall commentedDrupal 5 will be in use by very many sites for a long time yet. There are still a very large number of modules not beyond rc1 for D6
Comment #9
hgmichna commentedThose modules are the ones to forget quickly. If the developers can't keep up, these modules become a dangerous trap. You cannot use them on any serious site.
Drupal 7 may arrive in a few months, and support for Drupal 5 will cease. This means that nobody can keep running Drupal 5 with a clean conscience. It will become dangerous, because newly found security holes will not get fixed.
Do the time calculation. If you were relying on a third-party module that is still not released now, shortly before Drupal 5 support ends, then you'd be leaving yourself with preciously little time to upgrade to Drupal 6, and you would do that while Drupal 7 is already around the corner. A dangerous strategy, if you ask me. And what if one of those module authors doesn't make it in time?
Third-party modules are one of Drupal's strengths, but they may at the same time be Drupal's biggest problem.
I've drifted off into general Drupal questions that are relevant for all third-party modules, but it needs to be said from time to time.
Comment #10
salvis#6:
No. Would you like to submit a patch?
This must belong to a different module, maybe Content Access?
Yes, as far as Forum Access is concerned. If you want to use multiple access modules, you must use devel_node_access (part of Devel module) in debug mode to make sure that you get what you expect.
I don't understand this. Grayed out == disabled?
I don't know what paths you're referring to. Open a new issue, unless this is really related to the topic of this thread.
Without the 'create forum topics' you won't get a chance to create any forum content whatsoever. And without 'post in this forum', you won't be able to post in this forum. Get devel_node_access, if you're unsure hat is happening.
Comment #11
davidteall commentedThanks for your help.
Since writing this post I have learnt that the access controls at Admin | Content Types | Forum topic are generated by the Content Access module which I am using alongside Forum Access. I installed the two together and had assumed that, as both related to the Forum pages, both were generated by the Forum Access module. Silly me! That being the case you can ignore all I said about the interaction between the two and greying out etc. I was barking up entirely the wrong tree. Some might just say I am barking!
The issue about the lack of a setting for 'author' is a real problem that I feel it would be helpful to address if you are able to. I have posted about this as a separate issue here: http://drupal.org/node/331940
Comment #12
salvisI've implemented a variation of this, #213957: Clone role permissions and default Access Control on forum admin page, in 6.x-1.x-dev.
It's unlikely that I'll backport it to the D5 version.