Intro and questions

I go by The Maker online.  This has been a handle/name that has been with me for a very long time. I was giventhe name back inthe old bulleting board days because I setup and customized bbses for others in my area. I have a  long history of working with communication platforms internet and before the internet existed.  I ran a few of those bbses back in the day.

I work in the IT field (EDI Analyst) and also have work part time at a computer store because I enjoy helping people solve their issues.

I have been toying with the idea of configuring a Composr based site for a bit.  Many of the features seem to remind of the old BBS days (yup I am that old).   Thus, Composr intrigues me.  Does Composr draw any inspiration from the bbses of old? 

I have setup doezens of other CMS based sites for testing purposes and I run a few on other software currently.  I am confounded by the Composr security permissions a bit.

On my test site, I joined as a new user to test things out from the start.  The user became a regular user after joinging however, I cannot get my head around why a standard user has rights to add news and other seemingly admin level content ( links etc ) out of the box.  There are other usergroup ranks that this seems appropriate but I think I am missing a point or misunderstanding the intent.  If anyone can assist with an explanation of why this is I welcome help to set me straight.  And even more how I prevent non admin users from adding specific content like news and links.  I am leary of breaking a perm elsewhere in making changes at the wrong levels.

Overall I am impressed by Composr and I really want to put it into production when I feel that I understand things a bit better.

Thaks for your time,

-- The Maker
 

Hi and welcome,

I will leave the reasoning to one of the devs (though I expect it's because most "community" websites rely on member submissions for content) but it's quite easy to change the permissions with the Permissions Tree editor. Out-of-the-box it may not make sense for your ideas but it's not difficult to set the permissions you desire.

Composr Tutorial: Access control and privileges

Open Source CMS with advanced social, interactive and dynamic features. Fully flexible, themeable and extendible: suitable for building powerful websites.

View

Composr Tutorial: Advanced configuration

Open Source CMS with advanced social, interactive and dynamic features. Fully flexible, themeable and extendible: suitable for building powerful websites.

View

Composr Tutorial: Advanced access control

Open Source CMS with advanced social, interactive and dynamic features. Fully flexible, themeable and extendible: suitable for building powerful websites.

View

Adam's correct.
Note though that there's also the validation feature. I believe by default users can submit news, but it won't be validated until staff validate it.

I've personally never used a BBS actually. I'm just slightly too young for that, and I always felt it. I grew up programming from a young age on a BBC Micro and I can see people were running BBS's with them but I was still a kid, and by the time I was a young teenager the web was taking off.

However:
One of our original developers and our original designer is Allen Ellis, son of co-inventor of Usenet. Sadly I never got to meet Jim Ellis.

Adam said

Hi and welcome,

I will leave the reasoning to one of the devs (though I expect it's because most "community" websites rely on member submissions for content) but it's quite easy to change the permissions with the Permissions Tree editor. Out-of-the-box it may not make sense for your ideas but it's not difficult to set the permissions you desire.

Composr Tutorial: Access control and privileges

Open Source CMS with advanced social, interactive and dynamic features. Fully flexible, themeable and extendible: suitable for building powerful websites.

View

Composr Tutorial: Advanced configuration

Open Source CMS with advanced social, interactive and dynamic features. Fully flexible, themeable and extendible: suitable for building powerful websites.

View

Composr Tutorial: Advanced access control

Open Source CMS with advanced social, interactive and dynamic features. Fully flexible, themeable and extendible: suitable for building powerful websites.

View

From “Post #6465”, 11th Nov 2020

Thank you for linking some tutorials. I will read them  and hopefully find the area to turn off NEWS adds etc.  I tried early today before coming back here and did not succeed …yet!  I'll read and see whats what!

Chris Graham said

Adam's correct.
Note though that there's also the validation feature. I believe by default users can submit news, but it won't be validated until staff validate it.

I've personally never used a BBS actually. I'm just slightly too young for that, and I always felt it. I grew up programming from a young age on a BBC Micro and I can see people were running BBS's with them but I was still a kid, and by the time I was a young teenager the web was taking off.

However:
One of our original developers and our original designer is Allen Ellis, son of co-inventor of Usenet. Sadly I never got to meet Jim Ellis.

From “Post #6466”, 12th Nov 2020

That's pretty cool that Jim Ellis' son Allen was involved with development!  I might have found my tribe!

TheMaker said

Thank you for linking some tutorials. I will read them  and hopefully find the area to turn off NEWS adds etc.  I tried early today before coming back here and did not succeed …yet!  I'll read and see whats what!

You're welcome :) Admin Zone → Security → Privileges → Submission is maybe where you need to be. Just deselect the unwanted groups (Guests, all Member ranks) in the "Submit mid-impact (medium visibility) content" row. However, this affects other modules (authors, banners, catalogues, downloads, galleries, polls and topics), so just restricting access to the news module may be preferable. You can set access rights to the cms_news module (or any other) with the Permissions Tree editor.



You should be able to log in with the 'test' account (a standard member account) using your admin password and verify the changes are working as intended. Another generally useful tip is to use the Search box under Help in the Admin Zone, finding what you need should be much easier that way (in most cases, not all). I agree the Allen/Jim Ellis revelation is pretty cool, I didn't know that.