So confused with permissions

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TheJay
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So confused with permissions

Post by TheJay »

Hello there, phpBB seems really good but one thing I don't understand is how many different sections there are in the admin panel for dealing with permissions.

Can someone please tell me how I fix this mess? I don't know how or why each name appears twice in each forum and how I can resolve it.

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Thanks.
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KevC
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by KevC »

Does it happen in the default prosilver style?
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thecoalman
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by thecoalman »

The permission sets in phpBB can be very confusing but if you understand them they are very flexible and there is rarely a case where you can't do something you want to do.

Firstly always use roles and if a role does not exist with the specific permissions you want create one, even if it's single change.

The registered users group contains every registered member so you assign base permissions to them you expect everyone will have. phpBB permissions are stacked which means when a user that belongs to multiple groups a yes permission always overrides no. So for example if the registered user group has permission of yes for feature on forum and another group they belong to is set to no the yes overrides the no. To remove yes permissions you need to use never, if the second group has never permission it will override the yes. For example the "Newly Registered User Access" role for forum permissions has never permissions set which will override the registered users permission.
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stevemaury
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by stevemaury »

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TheJay
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by TheJay »

Thank you all very much for your replies. I understand that all the different ACP sections allow the forum and anything within it to be very well controlled. It's just overwhelming and sometimes feels like it takes forever to set up a role/user permissions.

I wish it was possible to select all forums and set permissions for all of them for a user with one drop down box for "full access" for example, rather than having to choose the option for every single forum/category.
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thecoalman
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by thecoalman »

Not quite what you asking for but this is from another post I just made:
thecoalman wrote: Wed Apr 21, 2021 4:16 pm You can get a broad overview of what permissions are set by doing the following.

Go to Permissions tab >> On the left click forum permissions link >> Put check for "all forums" and submit

Under the heading "manage groups" click to highlight top group, should be administrators. Scroll to the bottom, hold shift and click bottom group. All groups should now be highlighted. Click edit permissions.

You should now have page with every forum and every groups permissions. Double check to make sure they are accurate.
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by TheJay »

It's really rubbish having to go through all the forums and categories and manually choose. I'd like to set "full access" for everything for one user in one box rather than 25+.
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thecoalman
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by thecoalman »

There may be special cases but generally speaking no one applies permissions to single user. It's quick and dirty way to solve singular permission issue but the same problem usually crops up down the road for other users, it's easier to maintain by creating groups even if they are only person in that group.
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KevC
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by KevC »

What exactly are you trying to do? Why is that user different to all the others?
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by TheJay »

There are a set of forums being managed only by administrators and another set that are being managed by the administrators and a moderator. I wanted to quickly set the correct permissions for the user but it took a very long time.
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by KevC »

It's easier to make a group and assign permissions to that group. Then put the person/people you want in to it. That way if anything changes you can just take them out of the group or add someone else and not have to go through assigning or removing permissions again.

There is a copy permissions option in the left permissions menu. Then you can set one forum as you want it and use that to copy the same permissions to others.
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by stevemaury »

Do NOT apply permissions to users. You will regret it.
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TheJay
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by TheJay »

Could you please explain why?
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KevC
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by KevC »

Because it makes it hard to track down what permissions they have and where if you need to change or trace anything.

If you do it by groups, to add those permissions, put them in the group, to take them away, remove them from the group. That's it.
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Re: So confused with permissions

Post by stevemaury »

OK, a couple of years go by and your board has grown so now you have 300 users and 10 forums and you want to know who has what permissions on what forums. Maybe a disgruntled user has left, or wants to make trouble or maybe you want to change a user's permission and want to see what permissions he already has, or for a lot of other reasons. You could use Roles and Groups and just see what permissions and groups role provides and who is in the group, OR you could check 3,000 permutations of permission sets (300 users X 10 forums). The first would take 5 minutes. The second would take days.

Or, you have 10 users who you want to grant extra permissions to. You can individually edit user permissions for each, OR you can just place all of them in the appropriate group.

There are other reasons, too. But now you are asking "Well, why are there User permissions then?" As the Coalman said, they can be quick and dirty tools to handle temporary situations by one who has a complete understanding of the permissions system. In general, new users are not among those people, and might use User permission without a good understanding of the long-term consequences.
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