board permissions, unable to deny permission to respond to an existing topic

[richardwbb]

I've ran into a problem with setting the required board permission. On the forum I am running, 'Newbie' has to start a new topic in 'Voorstellen', which is Dutch for 'Propose'. When a new topic is posted, the user level goes to 'Forum member', and all the boards become accessible. This is working properly.

Now, I noticed that it is possible for 'Newbie', to respond to someone else's topic [without having started a new topic in 'Voorstellen']. Also, I  noticed that the board 'Voorstellen', which now is the only board 'Newbie' has access to; Newbie is only here able to; 'start a new topic'. This isn't possible for 'Newbie' in the few other boards it can read. This is working properly.

There are no standard permissions for 'Voorstellen', I've made a 'Permissions for group Newbie in profile Voorstellen', as shown with the link below, to an image I've uploaded.

Other things I have been considering;

- setting permission to start a new topic to; 'checked' or 'unchecked', gives the expected result
- everyone seems to be a member of 'non-grouped' members, though it isn't clear to me what this is, turning that off/ or on again, doesn't make a difference

http://parkeerdoos.netau.net/map/simplemachines/permissions-for-group-newbie-in-profile-'voorstellen'.jpg

[Kindred]

There is a second permission apart from start new topic ... that is rely to topics.
If you don't want the user to be able to reply in the newbie group, then set that to no...

And yes... any member who is not specifically added to another group belongs to the regular member group (and the post count based group)

So, you can turn off (disallow) all posting related permissions in "members" and then use the post count groups allow or disallow to control access... or you can turn on deny, and set the newbies permissions to DENY then access to the reply permission.

edit for spelling --Illori

[richardwbb]

There is a second permission apart from start new topic ... that is rely to topics.

What I make up from your words, is that you are mentioning the checkboxes next to 'Own topic' and 'Any topic', below the checkbox for 'Post new topics'. I have this setup the way, as shown in the link to the image I posted. Now I wonder, if I understand you correct.

So, you can turn off (disallow) all posting related permissions in "members" and then use the post count groups allow or disallow to control access... or you can turn on deny, and set the newbies permissions to DENY then access to the reply permission.

Can you point me to where the deny checkboxes are. I seem not to be able to find those. Or did you mean, unchecking. To make it even more complicated, I've checked, that my user account for testing purposes, is listed in the 'action=moderate;area=viewgroups;sa=members;group=4' [Newbie], and also made sure that the 'Newbie' group has zero rights, [on another board, and what I'm after for this board], it still is possible for them to reply. Now the only difference I can see from here, is that for the boards things are working, those permissions go back to the 1.x forum and the last two I'm having trouble with, where set by me [and not the previous Site Admin], on a 2.x forum.

And I'm not able to copy those settings from another board permission, since there are three types of registered users; 'has to propose', 'proposed' and 'contributing member'. Also, there are three board views; 'won't be showed', 'showed but can't start a new topic', and 'showed and can start a new topic'. Atleast I hope to be able to tell, if I'm doing something wrong or not, in the end it seems to relate to how I received the forum database, I'm just not able to reproduce by copying, since those setting isn't there in a working order.

[Kindred]

You need to turn on the deny capability in settings.

However, even with just allow/disallow, you should be able to do what you are saying, so it suggests that you haven't set things up correctly.

I would offer to look at it for you, but this week is crazy for me

[richardwbb]

Wow, I always was under the impression that for permissions, those would always to be found under 'Forum', 'Boards', 'Edit boards', as you just wrote that I should be able to do what I was saying, I have given up on this, though I believe you are right. Now you have mentioned I had to turn on a setting, I quickly found that with 'Members, 'Settings', 'Select permissions per group', it is possible to enable this. The manual is stating;

Denying permissions can be useful when you want take away permission from certain members. You can add a membergroup with a 'deny'-permission to the members you wish to deny a permission.

Use with care, a denied permission will stay denied no matter what other membergroups the member is in.

and

For each permission you can pick either 'Allow' (A), 'Disallow' (X), or 'Deny' (D).

Remember that if you deny a permission, any member - whether moderator or otherwise - that is in that group will be denied that as well.
For this reason, you should use deny carefully, only when necessary. Disallow, on the other hand, denies unless otherwise granted.

Here is a screenshot of what I've just mentioned; http://parkeerdoos.netau.net/map/simplemachines/permissions-for-group-newbie-in-profile-'voorstellen'-member-permissions.jpg to make this insightful to future readers.

Now I made a database backup, to keep it an easy option to revert to the current setting I have. It has been running this way for several years and restoring the database makes this certain and sure is easier then trying to remember what has to be undone. I'm expecting to be able to get this proper this way and therefore I thank you Kindred.

[richardwbb]

I've got it working now the way the administration has asked for. After discovering they abillity to deny permissions as an overall setting, I had to change one setting to 'D', from;  'Allow' (A), 'Disallow' (X), or 'Deny' (D). It wouldn't work for that particular board in the regular way, which does work for the other boards. I don't know how that is possible.

Then, to let guests see a board while a logged in 'Newbie', won't see it, until it has started it's first topic, took me a little while to learn that it was so simple to solve, since those permissions are distributed here; Forum, Boards, Modify boards and then click 'modify'. Then under 'Allowed Groups:' I could unset 'Newbie'.

I've fixed this by removing unnecessary profiles first. To be able to do this, I identified the unique required settings, for example; read only, read and start topic, and read and start topic and be able to reply. This was because for every board there was made a unique permission profile and while that is possible, it doesn't make things clearer.

Now the forum is responding faster because I was able to dispose almost two thirds of profiles, together with unused member groups [imagine that for every membergroup, there are the same list of settings that where coming with each board, while my forum carried those settings about fifteen hundred times, now reduced to six hundred.

In the end it wasn't necessary to start with a database backup, but better safe then sorry. Learning to work with SMF permission profiles and membergroups seems a lot like NTFS permissions to me. When you have had experience with all facets of it, it won't be bothering you any longer. A good tip is to keep a list of url's of what setting was where, for future reference. This won't bother me again so this question has been solved.