Read only users / Limited user

We would like to designate some user as read-only. So they can see all like any othe rmember of the site, but are not able to post any comments, blogs, pages, etc.

Any one knows a plugin or has idea how we should develop this?

  • @Jed..

     

    My honest opinion is that a 'demo' or 'visitor/guest' tailored access is unnecessary..

    Logically speaking: The motive and consequence of these things are that a visitor lands on your site... clicks a button, or logs in using a form, then they are given restricted access to content.. they like your site.. they sign up.. they provide content.. and so on... Isen't that what we want any visitor to do regardless of whether they click that button or not..? If we really want every visitor to be encouraged to sign up, then who are we designing the 'visitor' login or visitor button for..?? 

     

    Technically speaking: If we do this, then we would need to add a new member/user category.. this will make our standard categories (four). Admin, user, visitor, and lets call this one 'surfer'. In reality, we only have 2 categories, admin, and, user.. the script does not have anything special for 'surfers'.. but once we invent the 'visitor' category... we need to draw a distinct definition between these two categories, visitor and surfer. This is not difficult to do, what is difficult to do is upgrading the visitor's account to a user's account... forms, duplicate data.. and so on.. Remember, at all times, the member has the option to sign up as a full user.. but they might decide to sign up as a visitor to start with.. BUT BUT BUT, once you say 'sign up as a visitor', you are talking about a sign up process that the script will recognise, throw the db where it should go, trigger and answer queries..etc.. etc. and then after all that, and most importantly, if the visitor wants to become a full user, then we have to either kill the visitor account and create a user account, or, import the visitor sign up data and upgrade to user (which is more commonly used).. This can be a complicated project.

     

    The way I would approach this is one of 2:

    1. This method made forums very popular with sign ups... access to read only. Forums will commonly allow anyone to view their content, but wont take comments from non members. (same with YouTube and MySpace). I personally prefer this method simply because whatever the surfer is seing is as fresh as it is added..

     

    2. Demo/Tour... I'm sure you know what this is.... the down-fall to this method is that you have to create it, while method no. 1 is all about the content provided by your existing users. Also, with a 'tour', you have to keep it up to date.. so you have to maintain it.. another thing, if you have a big site, your tour might turn out to be large, complex and very demanding..

     

    Ok.. so, what is the ultimate solution???

     

    Well.. although this might be an invention, I have been thinking about it for some time, even before I got onto elgg... 

    A combination of tour and read only access... how this works... You simply create the tour/demo... you break it up into headers linked to the various areas of your site, ex, files, videos, public pics, pages, search people,... etc.... your visitor clicks.. and what they see then is a read only live feed from your content... This is like a wiki with the exception that your users will provide the content.

     

    Yes, this can be linked and added as a button anywhere you want.

     

    I hope I didn't bore you too much..

     

    - Carlos

  • Sorry.. one other thing I forgot to mention..

     

    I am all for creating a new member category if the difference between the categories is substantial.. Example: paying member - non paying member.

    So, how different are your target segments from each other dictates how you divide them..

     

    Just an opinion.

     

    - Carlos

  • Well I already have a video tour in the form of a flash movie but its time intensive to create and needs constant updating,

    Your entreched in this creating a new category of user but that isn't what we are after here - what we want is something to catch the attention of the sort of user who turns up at a web site,see's the registration requirement and will go away because he has no inclination to subscibe.

    The visitor user & password seemed like a good idea but maybe we just need the 'tour' ie something that would display a series of the sites pages?

    Looking at my access logs I see I get around 60 people a day who come to the login page click and bottle out. Even 5% of them changing their minds as a result of a tour would be acceptable.

  • @all: Thanks for all the great feedback in just a few days. All in all there might be several reasons why we want "read-only " users. In our case it is that we have company-members and for strong legal reasons, only one designated employee will be allowed to respond.

    Of course we can add some user-type-check before every "post-action" in every plug-in, but that is a nightmare as we loose all compatibility. There must be a clever way to achieve this with just one plugin...I hope...???

  • @Tom... What you really need then is a case management system where only 2 entities are in control of a relationship while everyone else can view its progress.

     

    In the past few years, companies, mainly online media and publishing organisations relied heavily on Wiki like scripts to achieve this.. In that anyone could look for and view progress of a topic while only the person who created the initial entry may edit, add or alter.

     

    While I'm not an expert on how we can achieve this in elgg, the thing that comes to mind is that we may have a module which might be suitable for this.. It is 'Friends'... If we can modify friends modules to be named differently, and then, make the friendship add controlled by admin (even if both friends accept add as friend)... from there, we can create and call instances and applications based on 'user_relationship'.

     

    I would start from there and possibly find other possibilites.

     

    - Carlos

  • contact importer not working

    <!-- display the message -->

    Login failed. Please check the email and password you have provided and try again later, this error is coming when i import contact using "http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/webgalli/read/17244/contacts-importer-pluggin" contact importer plugin.

    this is happening for facebook and yahoo.

    please go through http://silversocialite.com and login to in friends tab and at the left click on import contact. it will work for gmail but not working for yahoo and facebook?:(

    please help me

  • register_elgg_event_handler ( 'update', ...
    register_elgg_event_handler ( 'create', ... , 'read_only_handler')
    etc...

    function
    read_only_handler (....) {
    /**
    if UserName is designated 'read-only'
    do not allow any create, update, delete of any object...
    yadda yadda yadda yadda...
    return false;

    */

    }
  • @dhrup: thanks... that looks like the way to go :)

  • contact importer not working

    <!-- display the message -->

     

    Hi,

    please ask any of your friend whether they have solution for this? :(

    Login failed. Please check the email and password you have provided and try again later, this error is coming when i import contact using "" contact importer plugin.http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/webgalli/read/17244/contacts-importer-pluggin

    this is happening for facebook and yahoo.

    please go through and login to in friends tab and at the left click on import contact. it will work for gmail but not working for yahoo and facebook?:(http://silversocialite.com

    please help me

     

  • @smith: please try another discussion with this question! I suggest to use the one of the plugin you refer to!