"Allow public choice" - where to use it?

Good question. Also interested, how group owners can create forums being just users and not admins. Hope its ok to add this question here.

Coming to this shortly.

"Allow public choice" on the OGF Forum publicity administration and cannot see where to use that option then."

Go to .. og_forum/manage/

"When I go to an OG Forum even as the admin (and group owner) and "Post new Forum topic" I don't have no option to set that topic public or not."

that's correct

"I don't see where to edit a OG forum to make the whole forum/container public too. Forums are just there and don't have any options themselves beside the ones in the Admin -> Content management section, but there you can only set the hierarchy and weight but no publicness..."

Go to .. og_forum/manage/

"Also interested, how group owners can create forums being just users and not admins. Hope its ok to add this question here."

Currently you need to setup a new role eg "group managers" and assign the permission "admin own group forum" to that role and then give that role to a user who is a group owner who needs to create forums.

Please reopen if you need further assistance.

Also please feel free to update the README if it needs updating.

Best, Paul

Hi paulbooker,

thank you for your assistance! I still have some questions though:

- og_forum/manage/ is not a path where you have a list of all OG forums available to you, instead you have to add a backslash+nid of the group's forum you want to edit. Otherwise you get a "page not found". The problem is you have to write down this nid of the group you want to edit and add it manually to the og_forum/manage/ path... Is that meant to be so?

- "...make the whole forum/container public..." - you have the option to make forums, but not whole containers public as in http://profile.imageshack.us/user/rconstantine/images/detail/#tag/ogforu... (HelloWorld2 is the contaibner, Fish sticks a forum etc.)

- and one more question from http://drupal.org/node/557534 -
... Also nevermind if you play around with the options in "Forum publicity administration" ("Automatic forum publicity", "Allow public choice" or "Make all forums public") nothing seems to be happening?! E.g. if you switch off the option in the permission settings "make forums public" and set "Allow public choice" in OG forum settings you don't have the latter option anywhere available. Neither the forums become public when you set "Make all forums public"...? Shouldn't it be so that if you click on that option, then all OG forums become public? That's not the case with me.

Thanks for your time and sorry for questions that might be too obvious, but I cannot see the solutions and it's not that I haven't tried to look around...

"Currently you need to setup a new role eg "group managers" and assign the permission "admin own group forum" to that role and then give that role to a user who is a group owner who needs to create forums."

Sorry forgot to mention that i already assigned the permission "admin own group forum" to usual role "registered users". But users cant find the way to manage forums.

1. @paulbooker replied "that's correct" to "When I go to an OG Forum even as the admin (and group owner) and "Post new Forum topic" I don't have no option to set that topic public or not."

That SHOULD NOT be correct. Here's your own readme (see bolded text) that claims the way that automatic publicity works is by making a forum private until such as time as a public post is put into it. So if you can't specify to the individual forum post that it is to be public, WTH is this here for?

FORUM PUBLICITY ADMINISTRATION
This section has several controls which work together as follows:

-AUTOMATIC FORUM PUBLICITY
This turns on/off the automatic publicity of group forums. If a group forum has at
least one post which is public, than entries will be made in the database to indicate
that the forum and its container are also publicly browsable. If a group forum does
not have any public posts, then that forum will not be publicly browsable except as
noted below in conjunction with other settings.

Are you saying "that's correct" that this is a bug in the module, or "that's correct" and it's a feature?

2. Also, you keep referring to "Go to .. og_forum/manage/" ... NOOOOO. The code is broken, and you shouldn't have to manually construct a proper url to manage the forums; when you click Forums on the Group it should redirect you to og_forum/manage/group-nid and NOT to forum/nid as it currently does.

3. The problem @mitkoru reported of no messages visible to non-group members is 100% accurate. All posts in the forums remain private. And since there is no facility to flag a post as public, there's no way to coax the system into opening public permissions. Clicking the make public link in the Manage groups forum page (which hits og_forum/manage/public/group-nid/forum-nid) does not have ANY effect on the visibility of the forum by non-group members. Essentially with the current code, all forums are PRIVATE - if that serves anyone, this is a great module.

These 3 issues rise to the level critical failures in advertised functionality and usability for this module and need to be addressed by the maintainers or the community. Thanks to @mitkoru for trying to point these out to the maintainers. The way this module is currently performing, I can think of no reason to use it over the http://drupal.org/project/og_subgroups Subgroups for Organic Groups project - since you can use a subgroup in place of a forum, and use the node post [ ] Public checkbox to control public access to the node in the topic as a forum post. Right??!

-- glen

@glen201, just a comment on 2. The Forums tab was put there as a convenient way for members of a group to access the forums associated with that group. I think this makes sense (see #498354: Forum as a group tab?). Anyone who has access to those forums will see the tab. It's not intended as a management function. Maybe a nice feature might be to put a tab on any forum that is associated with a group called 'Manage' or similar?

@dazweeja: yes, you're right, there should be a "Manage"-tab on the forums page, not on the OG page but it's certain there should be one.

The questions 1 and 3 by @glen201 though are still open... Normally the README and the explanaitions below the options in "Forum publicity administration" are exactly how I would like OG forums to behave, only I cannot succeed in achieving this by enabling those options. Some support on this would be really great.

"- og_forum/manage/ is not a path where you have a list of all OG forums available to you, instead you have to add a backslash+nid of the group's forum you want to edit. Otherwise you get a "page not found". The problem is you have to write down this nid of the group you want to edit and add it manually to the og_forum/manage/ path... Is that meant to be so?"

It looks as though Drupal stripped something off that path that i used to indicate a group NID. You will need to click on the "Manage group forums" link (see attached image) and you will see the 'make public' and 'reset public' links against all your group forums

"... Also nevermind if you play around with the options in "Forum publicity administration" ("Automatic forum publicity", "Allow public choice" or "Make all forums public") nothing seems to be happening?! E.g. if you switch off the option in the permission settings "make forums public" and set "Allow public choice" in OG forum settings you don't have the latter option anywhere available. Neither the forums become public when you set "Make all forums public"...? Shouldn't it be so that if you click on that option, then all OG forums become public? That's not the case with me."

Looking into this shortly ..

"1. @paulbooker replied "that's correct" to "When I go to an OG Forum even as the admin (and group owner) and "Post new Forum topic" I don't have no option to set that topic public or not."

Sorry, on my local machine i can see a public checkbox under the Groups section for each content type on the Submit forum topic ,.. pages

"when you click Forums on the Group it should redirect you to og_forum/manage/group-nid and NOT to forum/nid as it currently does."

This looks to be working correctly as you click on on Forum link in a group context and you end up on a page that shows forums for that group.

"Clicking the make public link in the Manage groups forum page (which hits og_forum/manage/public/group-nid/forum-nid) does not have ANY effect on the visibility of the forum by non-group members."

Not sure what the problem is here. Works fine for me.

> @paulbooker You will need to click on the "Manage group forums" link (see attached image) and you will see the 'make public' and 'reset public' links against all your group forum

Aaaaaaah! So the invisible link is only exposed in the 'Group details' block... well that's not good, if you aren't using that block! It should be reachable without a block, either as it's own menu item (so it can be added to navigation) or as a tab entry for group members that are admins! This implementation is very non-standard (and NOT documented).

> @paulbooker Sorry, on my local machine i can see a public checkbox under the Groups section for each content type on the Submit forum topic ,.. pages

Aaaaaaaaaahah! So, on your system you have set the Forum Topic node type as an Organic groups node? Or post? (admin/og/og) This did not seem to work properly when I tried it. Basically, the node's Public visibility seems to be controlled by the Organic Group, and not the forum... On my system, the Forum topic is at its default, which is it is not a OG node/post -- just a regular forum topic. It doesn't make any sense to force a forum topic to have an OG field, because this would exclude posting to other general forums not connected to a group when the OG configuration is set to require a audience on all OG nodes (Audience required set in admin/og/og).

Thanks for noodling on this with us @paulbooker.

-- glen

"Aaaaaaah! So the invisible link is only exposed in the 'Group details' block... well that's not good, if you aren't using that block! It should be reachable without a block, either as it's own menu item (so it can be added to navigation) or as a tab entry for group members that are admins! This implementation is very non-standard (and NOT documented)."

Please feel free to scratch your itch and write any accompanying documentation, thanks.

"Aaaaaaaaaahah! So, on your system you have set the Forum Topic node type as an Organic groups node? Or post? (admin/og/og)"

Yep, forum topic is configured as an allowed group post.

Well, when I set forum topic as a group post, it won't let me create a forum post even though I am logged in as the group manager! It says "you must join a group" -- and from the Edit page on node/add/forum?gids[]=76 I can see the Forums dialog, and the Groups audience sub-menu. I am also able to create a new Forum and post into the group using other nodes as group posts.

See also http://drupal.org/node/555964

Huh?

I need some help on the values of the table "og_term". I saw that when you create a forum for an OG the values look something like:

where 2018 is the forum container and 2019 is the forum (like "General discussion"). nid is the OG group node. In the above described situation the forums are not public ("0") and not visible for not OG members.

If you go to (base path)/og_forum/manage/28 and set "make public" for "General discussion" the database shows this:

Now forums are accessible for non-groups members also as the public value is set to "3"...

Why is it "3" (not a boolean value obviously like public<->not public)? What would "2" ot "1" mean? Anyone has a glance into this?

I'll take a look at this shortly ..

Please do. I think this "shortly" has been going on for over a year.

The public values in og_term relate to the following constants in og_forum.module ..

Please reopen if there are still issues here to be resolved.

Best, Paul

Hi Paul,

thanks for you answer in #18.

One question still remains open, I think:

Thank you for your assistance!

subscribing