Thread

Hi. I’ve been developing with 1.6.8 and MSM for the last few months and have been punting dealing with member groups as long as I can, with 2.0 on the horizon (I’ve applied for the beta).

Unfortunately, I’m starting to run out of time, and am considering the purchase of amember to get the features I need, namely members in different member groups per website (or a single member in multiple groups) and date fields (specifically, expiration dates - FoxEE is the only alternative, and that costs $160). I know these features have been loudly requested, and we’ve had confirmation that the membership in 2.0 has been rewritten. We just don’t know what it’s going to do.

Here’s my problem - I really don’t want to spend $200+ on amember if 2.0 can deal with my membership needs natively, but with the news blackout I have no idea what 2.0 is going to offer. Plus, if I commit to amember, odds are that program won’t work with 2.0 immediately so I’ll be shut out of the 2.0 goodness.

I’m flying blind here.

So, how about it? With the public beta of 2.0 coming up, how’s about filling us in on this one feature in 2.0? Right now, my options are to spend the money and development time on amember and hope for the best, or cross my fingers and hope that I’ll get some clarification on 2.0 before it’s too late. Any help would be appreciated.

and we’ve had confirmation that the membership in 2.0 has been rewritten

Really? Where?  I don’t remember this, honestly.

Douglas, if 1.6 is not meeting your needs with membership then you should take whatever steps you need to make it work for you. If that means purchasing aMember, you should, but further information is not forthcoming at this time.

Thank you!

and we’ve had confirmation that the membership in 2.0 has been rewritten

Really? Where?  I don’t remember this, honestly.

From Leslie, on August 24 http://ellislab.com/forums/viewreply/628331/

Yes, the Members section is getting an overhaul of sorts, though this is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Douglas, if 1.6 is not meeting your needs with membership then you should take whatever steps you need to make it work for you. If that means purchasing aMember, you should, but further information is not forthcoming at this time.

Thank you!

Unfortunately, Lisa, other developers out there have that information, and know what’s getting fixed in 2.0 so they don’t waste their time and/or money tweaking something in 1.6 that’s already been addressed in the update.

That’s not fair.

Look, if I was one of your established developers, I’d know the answer. But since I’m not, is it really your company policy to encourage me to purchase an expensive plug-in that I may or may not need in a few month’s time and take my chances? Somethin’ ain’t right there - just sayin’.

Hi Douglas,

The Member section is getting some adjustments/improvements but I never said that multiple member groups are coming in 2.0 or that it was rewritten. If it helps, I can confirm that 2.0 will feature the same underlying membership structure as 1.x, which means it will not have multiple member groups per individual member.

This feature has been on our radar for quite some time and while we’d like to see it happen within 2.x’s life cycle, there aren’t concrete plans to implement it. That’s not a promise that 2.x will eventually have it, I’m just saying we’re well aware of the request and the various stories of how it would be useful.

You best course of action would be to find an alternative method if that is something you absolutely must have.

Hi Douglas,

The Member section is getting some adjustments/improvements but I never said that multiple member groups are coming in 2.0 or that it was rewritten. If it helps, I can confirm that 2.0 will feature the same underlying membership structure as 1.x, which means it will not have multiple member groups per individual member.

This feature has been on our radar for quite some time and while we’d like to see it happen within 2.x’s life cycle, there aren’t concrete plans to implement it. That’s not a promise that 2.x will eventually have it, I’m just saying we’re well aware of the request and the various stories of how it would be useful.

You best course of action would be to find an alternative method if that is something you absolutely must have.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! That helps me tremendously in planning my next moves!

If EE does not support multiple member groups, how do you propose going about giving members access to more than one protected area of a site?

It seems easy enough to protect pages based on a member group, but it’s not very effective if you can only assign one member per group?

So frustrating…

If EE does not support multiple member groups, how do you propose going about giving members access to more than one protected area of a site?

It seems easy enough to protect pages based on a member group, but it’s not very effective if you can only assign one member per group?

You can assign multiple members to a group, you just can’t have a member belong to more than one Member Group. So if you needed a group of members to have access to multiple areas, you create a member group with appropriate permissions and assign them to it. You can create as many Member Groups as you needed.

What EE can’t do natively is have a member in more than 1 Member Group.

Thanks for the reply. 

While this would protect multiple areas it’s not a very dynamic or flexible way to design a site. 

The maintenance effort in going this route makes me cringe.

Thanks for the reply. 

While this would protect multiple areas it’s not a very dynamic or flexible way to design a site. 

The maintenance effort in going this route makes me cringe.

For a specific type of site, you are correct. However, for most EE sites, it works just fine. This is one of the issues with this particular feature request. The deeper you look at it, the more complex the implementation and consequences become. Since the current solution works for the majority of sites, we’ve kept it in favor introducing more complexity.

I know that doesn’t help with the specific project you are working on but that’s the reason why this request gets examined regularly and then left as is.

If you post specifics of what you want to accomplish on a project in the How-to forum and leave a link here, I’ll make sure someone from the support staff reviews it. I can’t promise a solution but its always worth taking a look.

I’m attending the roadshow this week and looking forward to discussing these sorts of issues with all of the EE heavyweights.

Regards…

I’m attending the roadshow this week and looking forward to discussing these sorts of issues with all of the EE heavyweights.

Regards…

That also works! See you Friday 😊

What this really screams is a need for a “Roles” module. Leevi Graham has roles in his NSM Publish Plus module to fine-grain editing permissions across different websites in MSM, so it can be done.

And, oddly enough, Leevi also has the LG Access module…

What if you smooshed the two concepts together? If a Roles module added a multi-select or checkbox field to the member’s profile that only admins could see, then add a tag to the top of a template like {exp:roles:restrict_access_to role_id="1|2"}, you’re pretty much there.

Hell, I’d pay for it. Any takers?

For front-end viewing, Solspace.com has a Permissions Module.  I’m not sure if it’s available for purchase at this point but you could always contact Solspace and ask.

I did about a year ago and they said it was so buggy they pulled it. Honestly, because this feature has been requested so often and no one was addressing it from the third-party developer end was what made me think that this was being built into 2.0, so no one in the loop was going to bother building something with a limited life span.

I hope the member module in 2.0 at least has the ability to add different types of fields besides text, like dates, checkboxes, etc., to custom profile fields. That way we can at least get creative with some conditionals that can fake some of this stuff until something better comes along.

@douglas Reed We have a beta module called the Collaboration Mod that is running successfully on several sites. It allows you to create groups (both private and public) and add members to them. Members can belong to one or more groups and can share information between groups or keep it private. It is very robust and the only reason it is not commercially available is we are still working out the docs and trying to make it easier for beginners to use. You can contact me directly if you are interested in using it.