improve permissions page for tags

andrewjs18

I have over 100 tags on my forum (migrated forum from mybb to flarum) - trying to manage the permissions for all of them is BRUTAL in flarum.

first, I have to add all of the tags into the view on the permission page, then I have to endlessly scroll left to right to be able to view them to then manage them.

any tips/advice? is there a chance this can get improved in the core product at some point? I don't know what the fix is (I'd leave that to the UI/UX experts!)...

ram0ng1

andrewjs18

I confirmed that this issue happens even with a small number of tags! So adding just a few tags already makes horizontal scrolling necessary...

I believe we need a better UI/UX approach for this permissions page.

ram0ng1

Idea 💡

I redesigned this permissions page to fix the UI/UX issues caused by the default matrix table.

Instead of dealing with endless horizontal scrolling, everything is organized vertically:

Left sidebar to easily search and switch between global settings and specific tags.
Grouped permission categories (READ, CREATE, PARTICIPATE, MODERATE) with collapsible sections.
Direct dropdown pills for each permission to quickly manage group access.
Quick action buttons to copy settings or remove restrictions.
Option to copy permissions to other tags.

huoxin

Noting some pain points I posted previously related to this (if this proposal ever got picked up)

huoxin the most frustrating one I think is still with the permission system, I have about 9 user groups on my forum (including mod and admin), and when you try to add a new tag or new user group, you will have to go down the full list of permission and adjust one by one, and you can only add one user group to one permission at a time 😔
Also adjusting some permission like View forum (discussions and users) it can affect the permission below, so if you accidentally remove the wrong user group, that user group will get remove below even if you add it back
There is also no redo/undo nor import/export feature for the permission (unless you did a database backup before this, which I didnt 😢 )

GreXXL

ram0ng1 I think this could be a good option to improve this. I think if a decision has been made a PR for an upcoming 2.x release would be very welcome 🙂

ClaudiusH

ram0ng1 Interesting upgrade proposal. Thanks for taking the time to put that together. One thing that your proposal is losing is an easy way to compare permissions between different tags which the column layout in the current layout does allow:

Maybe similar to some webshops you could pick one "comparison tag" that would be shown to the right to retain some of that functionality?

huoxin

GreXXL I would agree it would be nice if this can be PR to core, but depends on how much changes ram0ng1 is going to make, if it is just UI/UX wise, I think should be fine for upcoming 2.0 or 2.0.1

Also I feel the permission system might need a deeper revamp other than just UI/UX (probably something for 2.1 or 3.0) , things like the no-one permission flarum/framework3777

and also I dig out some issue that already gone into archives flarum/issue-archive253 , we can see that the issue arise only if the forum starts to have many tags, groups and permissions

also saw that this is recorded in the roadmap page, but not sure if yall is still using it 😂 orgs/flarumprojects/22/views/1

andrewjs18

huoxin agreed. I think the permissions system needs a rework in general so it's more user friendly and efficient.

andrewjs18

ClaudiusH good point. balancing the two together would be a nice blend to reduce the amount of time clicking between permissions.

one thing I'm used to from a traditional forum aspect is cascading permissions both from a user group and a category/forum/tag perspective. this would also cut down on time needing to be spent fine tuning every single permission.

andrewjs18

GreXXL I'm not sure how complex we want to get, but a reworked permission system would be very much welcomed for those of us migrating over from a more traditional forum set up (smf, phpbb, mybb, xenforo, vbulletin, ipb, etc.) to coincide with a better tag system that allows more tag nesting and such, like mentioned here: #396974

I think the two issues are linked...