[Plugin: User Access Manager] Problems with unexpected results

Hi Mike,

if any post or page has no group everyone has access. If you put a group to an post or page only that group has access. To accomplish your aim you can create a category named “Volunteers Only” and put a user access group which you have created to this category. Then you choose the users for that group and it should work. If it don’t work you can send me an email with an login and I will see what the problem is. If you have any ideas to make the plugin more comfortable let me hear them. One idea of me is a FAQ with samples or an integrated help function. Thanks a lot for your feedback.

Bye,
Alex

OK — that helped, but there’s something in your plugin which interferes with my blog in a BAD way…

I deactivated the plugin and dropped the tables it created in order to get a clean start (BUG: deleting the user access groups I’d created did NOT remove the various pages and posts and users I’d checked during experimentation — those were ALL denied access whenever the plugin was activated even though I’d deleted ALL user access groups) — so I dropped the following uam tables:

Table Action RecordsTip Type Collation Size Overhead
wp_uam_accessgroups Browse Structure Search Insert Empty Drop 0 MyISAM utf8_general_ci 1.0 KiB -
wp_uam_accessgroup_to_category Browse Structure Search Insert Empty Drop 0 MyISAM utf8_general_ci 1.0 KiB -
wp_uam_accessgroup_to_post Browse Structure Search Insert Empty Drop 0 MyISAM utf8_general_ci 1.0 KiB -
wp_uam_accessgroup_to_role Browse Structure Search Insert Empty Drop 0 MyISAM utf8_general_ci 1.0 KiB -
wp_uam_accessgroup_to_user Browse Structure Search Insert Empty Drop 0 MyISAM utf8_general_ci 1.0 KiB -


Then reactivated the plugin and without doing ANYthing else, my blog category menu no longer displayed the two categories which owned sub-categories (also, the blog became slow in putting up the front page)… Checking the uam tables verifies that none has any records, so it’s not ‘that’… Deactivating the plugin restores the missing categories and subcategories to the menu.

On the ‘plus’ side (ignoring for a moment that 90% of the site becomes unavailable from the categories menu and widget Categories List), creating a user access group “volunteers” and assigning category “Volunteers Only” to it and a couple of users DOES display the “Volunteers Only” category in the category menu only when I’m logged in as admin or as one of the volunteer-enabled users.

But unless we can figure out this bug, the loss of the major categories in navigation is… “problematic”…

Any good ideas? On the face of it, your plugin is ‘perfect’ for our ‘volunteers only’ content.

It’d also be great if ‘protected’ content were hidden from spiders and feeds so it didn’t show up in RSS or search engines — is that possible?

— Mike

I fixed the bug “deleting the user access groups I’d created did NOT remove the various pages and posts and users I’d checked during experimentation — those were ALL denied access whenever the plugin was activated even though I’d deleted ALL user access groups.” This fix comes with the next release.

Your main problem is very very strange. Which version are you using 0.7.0.1? The best way to find the reason for your problem is to give me access to your page or send me a database dump.

Protected content didn’t show up in RSS but I forgot that in the feature list.

EXCELLENT! OK — access to the site — you’re going to need an admin login, right? PROMISE not to be a bad boy and mess up our site and other users? OK — let me dig around a bit on the web and see if I can come up with an email address for you and I’ll send it along in a moment…

THANKS SOOOooo much for your (super-prompt) help in this! WOW! Email to follow soon as I ‘find’ you!

— Mike

You find my mail here: https://www.gm-alex.de/about/

Alex — one place you might want to begin to look is “categories with sub-categories” (since only those disappear when the plugin is active…

I believe wordpress ‘quietly’ revised their API with 2.7 and later… This was a problem at first with another plug-in (post-notification) as well.

— Mike

Hi Mike,

I optimized many code at my new version and it seems that this version will work. You can try it by downloading it here: Other Versions of User Access Manager (choosing the dev version). I only upload working versions with no or small bugs. The next official release will come in 1-2 weeks.

Bye,
Alex

Hi, Alex — thanks for the updated files…

I installed them and brought up the site and activated the uam plugin — still have major problems… As you know, there are two categories in the site which ‘own’ sub-categories — these are called “Articles” and “Survivors Parks”. There are two other categories which have posts, “For Patients” and “Volunteers Only”.

1) With NO records in uam tables, anyone not logged in does NOT see the two post categories which own sub-categories in menu or category widget (Articles and Survivors Parks disappear).

2) when user is logged in, ONLY a user with admin role can ‘see’ the two categories which own sub-categories — editor can NOT see those nor can subscriber.

3) before the dev updated files were installed this morning, when a user access group was added (“Volunteer”) with one category checked (“Volunteers Only”) and three users (“volunteer”, and the two ‘real’ editors) were checked, one uam category record was created and three uam user records were created. But when the user access group was subsequently clicked for editing, the category box came up UN-checked while the three users WERE checked.

After installing the dev updated files this morning (with 0 records in uam tables), when I added a user access group as described above, the uam table records were created as before, but the user access group I created (“volunteer”) does NOT show up (and so can’t be clicked or edited) in “Access Manager/Manage user access groups” (NEW BUG)…

====

Alex — I suspect that for testing purposes you can use your own DB — simply create a parent category (no posts in parent), and a sub-category owned by the parent (with one or more posts in the sub-category) and I THINK you will be able to reproduce the symptoms…

I’ve again de-activated your plugin until next update or dev update.

Good LUCK and thanks for all your hard work on this!

— Mike

Alex,

Here’s what’s going on with my 2.7.1 wp and ver 8 of your plugin.

It all seems to work fine. I can create groups, add users to groups, and lock down pages.

When you go to the site not logged in as any user, you don’t see the locked down pages.

When you go to the site logged in as admin, you see all the locked pages with their indicatlor ([L]).

When I log in as a user that belongs to any group with privileges to any locked down page, that user can see all of the pages that are locked down… not just the ones assigned to their user group(s).

Don’t know if that description helps.
Thanks for your efforts, this is a great plugin when it works!

Thanks for feedback. I will see that these bugs get killed quick as possible. But the reason for the new bug can be that the update function has a bug. Can you try this:

1. Remove the dev version and all other version.
2. Look at the DB and remove all uam tables. (Should be remove automatically, but sure is sure.)
3. Reinstall the dev version.
4. Look if the tables are created.

Thanks for your help.

Bye,
Alex

Alex, the ‘development version’ at your link several replies above includes only a handful of files — it’s not the complete plugin… Have a look and let me know that it’s complete and I’ll see to it.

— Mike

I downloaded it and it locks good. All files are included. But I have one more idea. Can you disable all other plugins and test if it works? If it works now activate all plugins step by step and look which of this one makes trouble. I’m confident that we will find the reason and get it work.

Bye,
Alex

Alex,

Again, thank you for your efforts.

I did as suggested above… disabled all plugins (even cleared /wp-content/plugins directory),and manually dropped all the uam tables.

Re-downloaded dev version of UAM, reuploaded, reactivated… no tables created.

I even did a core reinstall of wp 2.7.1 and activated your plugin, again no tables created.

I anxiously await your updates. Again… such a wonderful plugin.

Dear Alex,

OK, I deleted user access manager from the site, deactivated ALL plugins, dropped all uam tables from the DB, downloaded the development version of the uam plugin and uploaded it to the site…

Then logged out and verified that category menu was functioning properly with four categories displayed in the menu.

Then activated the uam (development) plugin with NO other plugins active. The five uam tables were created, each with 0 records.

Then I visited the site as admin and all looked fine (except that site response was a bit ‘slow’ after your plugin was activated — I do NOT have the core patch installed) — but four categories looked normal.

Then logged out and visited site and… Same as before, the two categories which have no direct posts but ‘own’ subcategories with many posts do NOT appear in the menu!

The uam tables are IN the DB and all have 0 records (I haven’t added anything to uam — it’s ‘clean’)…

Then deactivated uam plug-in and logged-out site looks fine again.

Then I reactivated the usual plugins we use at the moment:

Akismet 2.2.3
Contact Form 7 1.9.3
Featured Content Gallery 3.1.0
NextGEN Gallery 1.1.0
WordPress.com Stats 1.3.7
WP-PostViews 1.40
WP-PostViews Widget 1.40

and logged-in and logged-out site looks ‘normal’ (all four categories in menu back and functioning fine).

I’ll zip up the entire site and email it to you via yousendit.com in a few minutes.

Thanks again,

Mike

i have tried this plugin for the propouse of seting permissions category wise…but doesnt seem to work on its main propouse?
the concept is great and i think can be a great plugin, this might jsut be a glitch or litle bug and hopefully the 5 stars are an indicator of how good it is :)..

what i need is that my ‘authors’ only write on specific categories.
Also on top of that i would like that whatever authors post on those restricted categories to be moderated instead of going live immdiatly.

is this possible? and if this is not the plugin for it someone please tell me a workable one?

Many thanks
José