First of all I made a new Main Menu (in one language, not All) without displaying the Modules and I named it "Main Menu". If you name it differently, you have to name it the same in the "instance", too (see below).
Next thing I did was:
- make some hyperlinks viewable to the admin only. The only thing I had to do was modify (Administration Menu - Permissions - Group - View Permissions) the "instance" of the second default group permission (All groups || Menublock:: || Main Menu:Administration: || None) from instance:
Main Menu:Administration:
to instance:
Main Menu:(Administration|Forum|Members List|Sections|Stats|Top):
This way only the Administrator saw the hyperlinks to Administration, Forum, Members List, Sections, Stats, and Top, the way I wanted it.
- secondly I wanted registered users to see some extra hyperlinks so I modified (Administration Menu - Permissions - Group - View Permissions) the "instance" of the fourth default group permission (Unregistered || Menublock:: || Main Menu:(My Account|Logout): || None) from instance:
Main Menu:(My Account|Logout):
to instance:
Main Menu:(My Account|Logout|Search|Submit News):
This way only the Administrator saw the hyperlinks to Administration, Forum, Members List, Sections, Stats, and Top, the way I wanted it.
So far, so good. However, making a hyperlink invisible doesn't mean it's inaccessible! For example: if you are not an admin, the Members List hyperlink will not be visible to you in the Main Menu(in the above example) but if you know the URL to the Members List (http://www.anysite.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Members_List&file=index), you could see it even as an unregistered user!
So I went on to try to make the Members List inaccessible to everyone except to Admins(s). I didn't succeed yet. Maybe someone can help? I tried the following permission:
- All groups || Modules:Members List: || .* || None
and put it in third position (from top) but that didn't work. I also tried:
- All groups || Members List:: || .* || None
but that didn't work either... If someone could help me out here, I'd be happy to document it and make it available to the community.
Something that kept me wondering, too, is that when I log into my PN 0.7* site, I cannot vote in my poll. When I log in, I can vote. Obviously this has something to do with permissions but nowhere in the default installation is there any permission that has a "Poll::" component in it!? Why's that?
Furthermore I have some suggestions:
1. Is it just me or is permissions difficult? There's just not a whole lot of examples on Permissions either, is there? First place I looked is in the Online manual (included in PN :-) which is quite good and technical, on
docs.postnuke.com and in
Permissions for Newbies (thanks to
mrherald) but I still couldn't find what I was looking for.
2. Could more groups be included in a default PN installation? Perhaps 5 (or so) levels could be created from Visitor (unregistered), to Junior Member (registered), to Senior Member to Admin? (Just an example.) The only thing absolute beginners would have to do is add users to the correct group, they would not have to worry about (1) creating permissions and (2) having them in the correct order.
Titus proposed something similar like that
here.
3. Could some of the developpers perhaps include more examples in the Online Manual?
4. Could you setup a forum dedicated to Permissions or a FAQ (Post - Nuke Permissions) or both? I would be happy to add some questions and replies to that FAQ once I get the hang of it!
Reginald.