Serious BUG discovered

Just to explain if you have preotected pages then goto the capibilities under the groups and delete the page name that we gave for each page it actually hides the page from the display all pages area and looks like all those pages have been deleted.

I have tested this on three servers and its the same error!!!!!

pe

Hi,

What you describe could have been an issue if you were using an outdated version of Groups because that was fixed in version 1.7.0.

Cheers

I was using version 1.8
the problem was as stated above
pages going missing when you goto the group capibilities and remove the group there
very bad news
p

This is not resolved!
I just uploaded the newest version
its happening on my local install!

Please advise
as the pages vanished and I spent hours trying to find a solution>???

NOt resolved

Hi @peethillman,

This topic is closed because the issue that you describe does not occur with the latest version. If you still see this happening it is due to the particulars of your installation and is easily resolved as described below:

For example, if you have posts with removed access restrictions from when this was an issue, then you must either recreate the capabilities (*) that were used to protect the posts and enable them for access restriction, or remove the post meta which is used directly from the wp_postmeta table (where meta_key = groups-groups_read_post and the meta_value reflects the capability that was removed). DO NOT attempt the latter unless you have made a full backup of all your files and your database. The following is easier if you remember the name of the capability that was removed:

(*) To gain access to the posts that are hidden you can simply do this:

1. Sign in as an administrator
2. Go to Posts > Add New and in the Quick Create field of the Access Restrictions box input the name of the capability that was used to protect the hidden posts and then removed.
3. Publish the post.
4. You will now see the hidden posts and can change the access restrictions on these.

I kindly ask you to read the Forum Welcome and Forum Rules. Please don’t post duplicate topics, acting like that on free forums like the ones here only creates more work for the volunteers that try to help you. Also note that if you have questions on premium plugins, then these are not the forums to seek help in but you should refer to the premium support facilities of those premium plugins (you mention Groups WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions, support for which is handled here).

Cheers

Notes and deletes duplicate topic, please carry on.

Thanks Jan.

Hi there and thanks for this
For some reason I am not getting confirmation of posts nor am I getting emails that there has been any response from this thread via www.remarpro.com(strange and not in spam folder!)
my intention was not to cause issues
but to highlight a problem when pages go missing with the latest version of the plugin
thanks
P

Kento – I am having a second attempt at using Groups for access control. During a first attempt some months ago, I created a group and a capability with the same name to restrict access to two pages. During my current attempt, I deleted that capability and the group and got the problem reported at the root of this thread : the 2 pages disappeared.

I applied the remedy given in your post and found my two lost pages. However, the corresponding capabilities do not show up in the pages’ ‘restrict access’ box, so I am unable to remove them properly before deleting the unwanted group and capability. In fact, nothing shows up in the ‘restrict access’ box (irrespectively of whether the “display groups” box is checked or not). I do not have this problem with the dummy page I created to apply your remedy, i.e., I can see the group/capability for that page.

I also find that the shortcodes groups_member and groups_non_member don’t do anything – it’s as if the groups are not recognized at all, i.e., only text guarded by groups_non_member shows up, but never the text guarded by groups_member.

I am using version 1.9.1 of Groups with WordPress version 4.2.5

I would appreciate your help on these issues.

Hi @david31650,

To enable the capability for access restriction under Groups > Options > Capabilities where it says “Include these capabilities to enforce read access on posts. …” – please check if it’s there, otherwise you should add it and after saving the options it should appear in the access restrictions box as a choice. But … you don’t need to have it appear there if you simply save the post. Give that a try first please.

Regarding the shortcodes, you’re probably not using them correctly. Have a look at https://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups/shortcodes/groups_member/ please. If you have any further questions on these shortcodes, please post a new topic as this is a completely unrelated question. Also please post a new topic for the question above, this one really is resolved and the particulars of your setup don’t necessarily match what happened here.

I hope that helps …

Cheers

I think marking this bug as being resolved is not quite accurate.
Yes, the solution provided by Kento is a workaround, but the bug (or a version of this) is still present in the Groups Plugin version 1.9.1…and it cost me couple of days of trouble shooting to find the workaround.

To reproduce this all you have to do is assign a page or a post with a capability and then rename the capability within Groups plugin without updating the original page or a post. The original post will loose the new capability and any attempt to access it will produce 404 error.

The problems with Kento’s solution is that if you accidentally delete (or rename) your capabilities and DON’T remember the original name it becomes very difficult implement Kento’s workaround.

A better default behavior of the plugin should be that any renaming of the capability should automatically update the pages using those capabilities…and any deletion of capability should remove the access restrictions from the pages using those capabilities.

I am interested in a resolution to this as its a bug and needs to be addressed.
I say this with no malice but It has cost me a lot of time.
Thanks

Bo

@jay Many thanks for your feedback. Please note that the subject of this topic as posted by the OP was a bug that is fixed, what you describe is a different scenario (renaming instead of deleting). Thanks for pointing that out, we should take this also into account. For anyone who wants to discover any renamed capabilities still protecting posts, you can run the following MySQL query:

SELECT meta_id FROM wp_postmeta WHERE meta_key = 'groups-groups_read_post' AND meta_value NOT IN (SELECT capability FROM wp_groups_capability);

And the following query is to remove the protection from any such posts. DO NOT run the following query unless you have made a full backup of all your files and your database. Also note that the table prefix wp_ might be different in your particular setup or when you need to address the issue in a multisite setup.

DELETE FROM wp_postmeta WHERE meta_id IN ( SELECT meta_id FROM ( SELECT meta_id FROM wp_postmeta WHERE meta_key = 'groups-groups_read_post' AND meta_value NOT IN (SELECT capability FROM wp_groups_capability) ) tmp );

For anyone interested in this or a similar topic:

The issue reported in this topic as posted by the OP was a bug that is fixed. Please do not post any follow-ups but rather create a new topic.

Please refer to Form Welcome – quoting from there:

Unless you are using the same version of WordPress on the same physical server hosted by the same hosts with the same plugins, theme, and configurations as the original poster, do not post in someone else’s thread. Start your own topic.

Following up on this topic again simply makes it more confusing to anyone actually interested in a solution, while creating different topics makes it easier to find and help people in a similar situation. Even though your issue is similar, it’s not the same and thus you should post a new topic instead.