Report Alternative Views restrictions no longer working

What you are experiencing is actually expected behavior. If it wasn’t behaving like this before, then something was wrong before. It isn’t now.

I can confirm what original poster (ofloveandbeauty)is stating.

Version 2015 FEB 03 – Breaks the previous functionally of URI blocking menus to users not logged in.
This previously worked with versions
Version 150102 (2015 JAN 02)
Version 141007 (2014 OCT 07)

I was able to revert back to both versions and the URI/Alternative view blocking worked.

@chevymanusa,

And I can confirm that the present version is working as intended.

If you look at the explanation of Alternative View Protections for menus, you will see that it is intended to protect the content of the pages that appear in menus.

Protecting menu entries themselves is a job for another plugin, like Nav Menu Roles, as the OP has discovered.

So my site hid the navigation page before the update and now it is viable for all to see. The page even loads fine for non logged in users.

@camochad

What’s the “navigation page”?

I’m sorry. Hid a restricted page in the navigation. I’m looking into adding Nav Menu Roles but it is struggling with my theme. I don’t understand why it worked great before and now not so much.

@kts915
Thank you for repeatedly stating that the plugin is working “as intended” to everyone who has posted here.

I believe we are all upset for this feature has been working as we the users intended for months (if not years) and suddenly removed in a plugin update.

@camochad,

Yes, I think you have a theme conflict that, fortuitously, just happened to work out well before.

I’d contact the theme developer for help, especially if it’s a paid theme.

@chevymanusa,

Thank you for thanking me!

I am repeating the point because you keep repeating an unjustified complaint that is never going to be “fixed” because it isn’t broken. There is a viable solution, so where’s the beef?

Or are you one of those people who still believe the urban myth that more than x number of plugins will harm your site?

Have you read the support on that so called solution?
There are complaints about it not working with themes, heck even in this thread there are complaints.

For the record, I only posted here once.

Yes, plugins break other plugins. They have conflicts. Example this plugin and the iThemes Security would result in 500 errors. If you disabled either s2member or ithemes the errors would go away.

There aren’t urban myths, on occasion plugin developers screw up. So yes, less plugins are better.

KTS915, I notice you contribute to s2member github. Do you have a position at the company?

@chevymanusa,

I notice you contribute to s2member github.

Look a little closer. What you call “contributions” are usually questions about how to do something. Occasionally, they are suggestions on what I’d like to see in the plugin. I have no relationship at all to s2Member. But I do like to get the most out of it.

There aren’t urban myths, on occasion plugin developers screw up. So yes, less plugins are better.

Garbage. Bad code is the problem. It doesn’t matter whether you run 70 huge plugins if they are well coded. But one tiny, badly-coded plugin will screw up your site on its own.

Of course plugins (and themes) can have conflicts. In fact, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it was a conflict that was previously causing s2Member to hide menus. (Sometimes conflicts produce effects that users like, though they typically don’t realize then that they have a conflict).

Finally, there is an alternative to Nav Menu Roles. It’s called Privileged Menu. It doesn’t have as many options as Nav Menu Roles, but it’s well coded.

Interesting discussion! For myself, the reason I thought s2member was supposed to hide restricted pages from the nav menus is that the Alternative Views settings seemed to state that. Maybe I just misunderstood, but there is language about hiding protected content in menus. Here’s a screenshot of what I’m looking at, with the setting underlined in orange and some relevant notes underlined in blue.

For those that want to find this themselves, it’s in S2Member > Restriction Options > Alternative View Protection (please read)

@ofloveandbeauty,

I agree that it’s not as clear as it might be, but it does say “hide protected content” — it doesn’t say hide menus.

The point is that s2Member is designed, above all, to protect content on posts and pages. However, as the list there suggests, there are ways to access such content apart from inputting the URL directly, so the Alternative View Protections are designed to safeguard against the same content from being accessed from one of those other methods (if the site owner wishes to use them).

However, there is nothing that Alternative View Protections is designed to protect over and above that content.

That’s by design, for this reason: some users will want users who currently aren’t authorized to access such content to be tempted by the menu items (i.e. it’s for upselling). So these users will then click on the menu items and be directed to the s2Member Membership Options Page, where they’ll then be able to click a button or submit a form to purchase access to that content.

Of course, not every site owner wants the menu items to be visible to everyone, so that’s when you’ll need another plugin to do that job.

@kts915
You said “What you are experiencing is actually expected behavior. If it wasn’t behaving like this before, then something was wrong before. It isn’t now.”

This is complete nonsense. Until the current version it always worked this way. I have two sites that depend on this.

chevymanusa is correct. The current version breaks this feature.

Downgrading to v 150102 (2015 JAN 02) restores the feature.

@roysmyth,

I’m sorry, but it’s you who is talking nonsense. Just because it worked like that for you doesn’t mean it was working correctly.

In fact, if you look back over the forum threads over the past year, you will see numerous users who wished to protect menu entries, or to show them only to certain member levels.

Why would they ask that if s2Member was already hiding them? Answer: it wasn’t. Indeed, you will see the plugin Nav Menu Roles being mentioned repeatedly for that purpose.

So s2member was working differently for a very large number of users from how it was working for you (and some others). Both behaviors can’t be expected! The behavior that did not hide menu entries was exactly how s2Member is designed to work, and for the reasons I’ve already provided in this thread.

Downgrading to v 150102 (2015 JAN 02) restores the feature.

You are, of course, free to go back to a previous version. But you do realize that you won’t ever be able to upgrade, because there is nothing to be fixed. In fact, downgrading does not so much restore a feature but reintroduce a conflict that you happen to like.

My guess is that the conflict was with certain themes. It would be interesting if all those who had the menu entries hidden before reported what themes they were using.