By gfroyle on

I want to use Masquerade so that I can repeatedly switch from ADMIN to ANONYMOUS and back again, in order to check what the site looks like to somebody who just browses to it.

Downloaded it and unzipped etc. Given that it had a ".mysql" file in the package, tested to see if that needed to create tables, which it did, so ran that through mySQL.

Enabled the module in "administer >> modules".

Now ready to go... but how on earth do I switch ?? No buttons, blocks or menu items appear...

A previous forum post mentioned "switching via user profile" but can't do that for anonymous because there ain't no user profile..

Anybody know if this is possible?

Gordon

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

Sverre’s picture

Sverre commented

I had a quick look at this...
To masquerade as another user you go their profile page via administer > users and click on 'Masquerade as...'. However there is no profile page for anonymous users so you cannot masquerade as a 'guest'.
I did note that the module description states "The masquerade module allows administrators to masquerade as other users." NB: 'other users'!
Maybe you should request that this feature is added to the module?

As an alternative:
If you use Internet Explorer, download either Firefox or Opera browsers, or vice versa.
They are all easy to install and can run simultaneously, creating different sessions on your web server. I sometimes use all three at once! The effect is that simply by switching between taskbar tabs you can see your site from three different perspectives.

This is also invaluable in testing and ensuring your site's compatibility with other browsers!

Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
Opera: http://www.opera.com/

Incidentally, Firefox has some great web developer tools.

Hope this helps.

casperl’s picture

casperl commented

Without the benefit of this post, I would not even have hit upon the "administer > users ... click on Masquerade" as an option.

What it boils down to is that Masquerade is one of an increasing number of Drupal modules that requires an arcane knowledge of 'black arts' in order to figure out how to use the module. This is (mostly) due to the simple omission of a readme.txt file as part of the packaged module. A serious bug IMHO.

Yes, yes I know, I could analyse the source code in order to find out how a module works, but that is not universally regarded as user-friendly!

And, Masquarade by Role would have been helpful as well...

I am probably not the only Drupal user that ocasionally installs a module, only to uninstall that module again, since there appears to be no way to use it, and no documentation to figure out how to use that module! The http://drupal.org/handbook/modules is a giant step in the right direction!!!

-----------------------------------------------------------
Casper Labuschagne
Where am I on the Drupal map on Frapper?

heine’s picture

heine commented

Please file an issue against Masquerade (if there isn't one already). If you can provide a sample README.txt I'm sure the maintainer will quickly include it in the package.
--
When your problem is solved, please post a follow-up to the thread you started.

tongkusat123’s picture

tongkusat123 commented

If you are administer,and you want to Masquerade as user like userA,do it like this way(simple,i think)...
search userA in the searchBox...then you should select User tab,there will be Masquerade at the bottom....you could Masquerade as userA...

how about this....? ^_^

lkdasa’s picture

lkdasa commented
  1. Install the module by unzipping it into your modules folder
  2. Add a table to your databse. This can be done by
      going to localhost/phpmyadmin/
    • selecting the correct database from the list on the left
    • clicking on the import tab at the top of the page
    • clciking the "browse" button and navigating to masquerade.mysql and clicking Go
    • This sets up the table (this can all be done on a command line but I don't know how to do that)

    OR

    • (windows) command line: mysql -u -p c:\...\modules\masquerade\masquerade.mysql>
  3. To masquerade, you go to administer>users
  4. click on the username you wish to masquerade as
  5. you are now masquerading
  6. to revert, click "switch back" on the menu
fumbling’s picture

fumbling commented

When masquerading, I don't see a menu anywhere with a link to switch back. Is that part of the navigation menu? If so, I have that hidden for the role that the user I'm masquerading as belongs to so that might be it.

kylehase’s picture

kylehase commented

I was also lost at first and when I looked at the source code I saw that there was a help hook.

I didn't even realize that many of my modules have a help section on my own site located under admin/help. This section is very useful.

My problem however is that I'm using personalized profiles (snippets) and the masquerade link needs to be manually displayed. Any ideas?