What is Access "Special" in Joomla? Any tips on good permiisions Joomla extensions

[cgc0202]

It would be nice to have a Joomla website where you can have more ways to differentiate registered members, much like it is done in the forum software SMF or the wiki software, TikiWiki.

In the meantime, has anyone used the Access "Special" in Joomla? How exactly is this used?

I would appreciate any lead on a simple Joomla extensions that will allow you to bestow different access level for registered members. There is a commercial software that allows you to the extent of regulating access to specific pages. That is good but the price is too steep per site.

TikiWiki provide that capability, for free; and while not as granular, SMF allows you to setup an unlimited levels of access, also for free.

Any good lead would be appreciated.

Cornelio

[drarvindc]

Access levels are best explained here on Joomla docs http://docs.joomla.org/User_Group_Ac...n_simple_terms

Under special access comes the users "Manager", Administrator and super administrator.

Joomla itself is going to enhance the access levels in the upcoming J 1.6. Read this interesting post on joomla forums http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=501&t=276517

I developed my college intranet site using CB+group jive + fireboard + Docman, i needed better access levels for each Year (we have 5 UG, 2 PG and 3 PhD years).
I wanted to segregate each class into their respective year of admission, I wanted only the teachers to be able to upload lectures but did not wanted to put that into special group. Plus i also wanted to have different users lists bases on year of admissions. So i settled for JACL.

It seemed impossible to implement my wishlist using core joomla access levels. Till today i use JACL to have more access levels and also to put the users in their respective years. Planned to migrate the site to J 1.5 but after reading that thread about J 1.6. I am waiting eagerly for it. JACL is good but comes with its own set of problems and restriction and not to mention that it hacks the core files.
Hope to see good stuff in J 1.6

[cgc0202]

Access levels are best explained here on Joomla docs http://docs.joomla.org/User_Group_Ac...n_simple_terms

Under special access comes the users "Manager", Administrator and super administrator.

Joomla itself is going to enhance the access levels in the upcoming J 1.6. Read this interesting post on joomla forums http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=501&t=276517

I developed my college intranet site using CB+group jive + fireboard + Docman, i needed better access levels for each Year (we have 5 UG, 2 PG and 3 PhD years).
I wanted to segregate each class into their respective year of admission, I wanted only the teachers to be able to upload lectures but did not wanted to put that into special group. Plus i also wanted to have different users lists bases on year of admissions. So i settled for JACL.

It seemed impossible to implement my wishlist using core joomla access levels. Till today i use JACL to have more access levels and also to put the users in their respective years. Planned to migrate the site to J 1.5 but after reading that thread about J 1.6. I am waiting eagerly for it. JACL is good but comes with its own set of problems and restriction and not to mention that it hacks the core files.
Hope to see good stuff in J 1.6

Thanks drarvindc.

I assume you are referring to access of articles in the Front End? I will try again. When I first tried it when I was new, I was obviously the superadministrator, but I could not view it in the FrontEnd, even if I signed up as the Admin.

I did read the "White paper" when they released the first version of Joomla 1.5.x in mid January 2008. Apart from the permissions granularity, it also discussed how to improve the security of the registration and login.

It is now more than a year but it seems no progress yet. This is even more a concern because the Joomla site itself has been hacked so many times. I assume all the security upgrades also since the introduction of Joomla 1.5.x were because there are many scripts used that are not just that secure.

To my dismay bots or even spammers have found a way to bypass even more stringent Community Builder registration/login perhaps because simply unpublishing the default Joomla login does not prevent access to the default login process.

I cannot wait for Joomla 1.6 to achieve better granularity or more secure registration, login.


Cornelio

[cgc0202]

What is JACL again?

TikiWiki has a better permissions systems, and while not perfect, the precautions for the registration.login are also better. I chose TikiWiki over MediaWiki (the software for Wikipedia) mainly because of the permissions systems.

The lack of "author attribution". "editorial" and "administrative" control contribute collectively to the inherent "fatal flaw" of the basic concept of Wikepedia -- anyone can edit a file, anonymously.

I even proposed that they could have created just a wiki with their permissions systems, and it would be the answer to the basic flaw of the MediaWiki. [By the way, this would be a good demonstration of your optimization focus. Create a lean Wiki from TikiWiki.]

Also, while I understood the intent of the language, I abandoned TikiWiki eventually and reluctantly because my target users just found the wiki tags so foreign. As significant, TikiWiki is so bloated with them adding so many features and the CSS while unified got so complex because there was no unified development.

When I opted to go for Joomla, I was familiar with the inherent weakness of the granularity and registration/login but I thought then that there would be extensions to deal with this problem.

Cornelio

[drarvindc]

JACL is explained here http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/387/details

Logging into or registering on any joomla site is no big deal even if you dont have the login or registration module.

Just put /index.php?option=com_user&view=login in front of your site url and one lands at login page.

with /index.php?option=com_user&view=register it takes one to the registration page.

As i said earlier, i would prefer to use joomla inbuilt access levels especially the one they have promised for J 1.6. Using a thrid party components always throws up fear in me about its life-cycle or unforeseen migration or some other related problems. I have used few components which were later no longer supported by the author.