Hi! I need to be able to change the default access for usergroups so that every new forum created has the proper desired defaults. I can't find it in the GUI options. How do I do it?
To be very clear:
I'm not talking about going in to each individual forum and changing the access there after the forum has been created.
I am talking about changing the default access for every group so that NEW forums are created automatically with the desired default access for each user group.
Reasoning:
Due to the nature of our forums, they have to be private by default -- with no access for anonymous, guest, or registered users, and with absolutely no room for forgetting to set the access properly. However, the default for these are standard, read-only, and standard, respectively.
For us, it is not acceptable to have to change these values per forum after it's created due to the human-error component of forgot-to-change-that which has the potential to make what should be private into something public.
In our world, anonymous will never have access to any forum. Guest will have read-only access to 1 forum. Registered will have standard access to 1 forum. Every other forum we create needs to have access for these three groups default to No Access. There will be a lot of forums created; that's a lot of room for error.
Even new user groups I create have default access set to standard, so I can't even create a new user group with the default access I desire.
Where to Change It:
I assume I'm just missing where I can set it. If so, please let me know where!
If I'm not just not seeing where I should make this change, hmm, well, I will manually update these values in the database if I have to do so, but it really should be an option in the GUI to be able to set the access defaults for usergroups to what the given site's WordPress administrators need, not some arbitrary default set by the plugin developers.
It seems it could very easily be turned into a dropdown selection in this interface (see attached) just like the User Role selection is, yes? Leave admin and moderator defaults unchangeable if you wish, but all others we as WordPress administrators should be able to set as works for our specific implementation.
If that's not viable, please consider at least changing the default "default access" level for every group except admins and mods, to No Access so that we actively have to change it with every forum. That still has room for the forgot-to-change-that human error, but at least it blocks access to what should be private until someone corrects it. But I suspect that idea would meet resistance from those for whom the current set up works, so back to the first suggestion. :0)
Other than this one thing, I'm absolutely loving the plugin and am looking forward to using it!
Hi @becca,
The default forum access for a usergroup can be provided in the usergroup creation screen (not editing). So the new usergroup will have correct forum access in all forums. Then you can edit each forum and set individual forum access t the new usergroup:
You cannot edit that after creating the usergroup. Because it'll change the accesses in all forums. Usergroup can have different forum accesses in different forums, that's why you cannot control usergroup forum access from the usergroup editing screen. You should go through all forums and change to the forum access you want.
Hmm, thanks, that's helpful to know for new groups we create.
But it doesn't get us what we need for existing groups such as anonymous (I still cannot believe anonymous is given standard access level by default!) and guest. That would mean we would have to manually change those both these groups to No Access for every single forum we create. That would be both painful and prone to errors.
So, I've edited the default access values in the database, and that's working for our needs.
