Permissions based on profile info

Mekers

Hey,

Is it possible to have permissions granted to people based on their profile info?

The problem I am trying to solve is the following:
We have a community with different subgroups. I'd like to grant or deny access to parts of the forum and categories based on membership of these subgroups.

The solution I came up with was: On the registration page members who register choose from a drop-down menu to which subgroup they belong and the forum will make sure they have the proper access rights. A member would only be able to post a discussion to the group in which he is a member.

Is this feasible? Or is there another/better way to deal with permissions, new members and the groups they belong to?

Dominion

Mekers I'd like to grant or deny access to parts of the forum and categories based on membership of these subgroups.

This is possible, as Franz said. Just create the groups, then restrict access to tags based on group membership.

Mekers On the registration page members who register choose from a drop-down menu to which subgroup they belong and the forum will make sure they have the proper access rights.

This isn't possible at present, as only admins can edit users to assign them to groups. So you wouldn't be able to allow your members to choose their own groups; an admin would have to do that for them.

However, I believe it should be possible to create an extension that would enable users to assign themselves to groups, and even to make that selection available at registration.

Franz

Dominion However, I believe it should be possible to create an extension that would enable users to assign themselves to groups, and even to make that selection available at registration.

Ah, true, I forgot that.

Mekers How would you make sure that users don't pick the wrong group, though? Wouldn't that make it possible for them to gain access to discussions that they should not be able to see, even if only temporarily?

Franz

Have you taken a look at the "Permissions" tab in the admin panel? That, in combination with tags, should give you what you need...

Dominion

Franz How would you make sure that users don't pick the wrong group, though? Wouldn't that make it possible for them to gain access to discussions that they should not be able to see, even if only temporarily?

That was bothering me too. I suppose the extension could be designed so that the user's group selection would be "held for moderator approval" or something. But then how would the moderators know whether the new user had picked the right group? ?

In the long run, the manual approach might be simpler and more foolproof: ask new users to post a self-intro and group membership application in a new users forum (or a private discussion with the mods, etc.) and manually add the user to the requested group . That's how I'd do it, anyway.

Mekers

Thanks Franz .This has actually been a conundrum for me for sometime. Manual group assignment seems to be the way for now.

Mekers

Dominion Much thanks. Your suggestion is spot on

Dominion

Glad I could help!

Since it seems that you can get where you want to go without developing an extension, I'll move this to Support. If you ever decide you'd like to create an extension to automate the process after all, feel free to bring it up again!