How to set up a Walled Garden

Last updated by Ed Lyons Comments (5)

This document is part of Elgg's "Walled Gardeners" group, where you can get information about running a private site.  The group is here.

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CONTENTS

  • Why have a private site?
  • Changing access control settings
  • Changing access level names
  • Changing the order access levels appear in the menus

 

WHY HAVE A PRIVATE SITE?

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There are lots of reasons you might set up a walled garden.  Some uses would be:

  • A private company's intranet
  • A high school
  • An extended family
  • An organization's private network

There is one important thing for you to remember: Elgg was not meant to work this way.

Elgg actually can work this way just fine, but there are details you have to take care of to make sure things are alright.  But don't assume anything.

The big thing you want to do is set up the "wall" around your site (so no one can get in).  This was originally accomplished by putting a PHP gatekeeper() statement before the rendering of all pages.  This didn't really work well because (I am only going to describe this to show the issues):

  • Cron pages could not be reached
  • The lost password could not be reached
  • Certain "external" pages were out of view (about, terms, etc)

Fortunately, the new ways of doing this have taken a lot of this into account.  The new starting point is to not use the "walled garden" plugin, but to use shellcode's site access plugin, which is pretty good!

 

It has settings for you to define what pages are in and out, with sensible defaults. (For more information on WG-related plugins, go to the document in this group, "Guide to plugins for Walled Gardens.")

 

CHANGING ACCESS CONTROLS

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This ends up being big issue.  Why?  Elgg's out-of-the-box access levels are: Private, Public, Logged In Users (and groups, personal friend collections).

However, as soon as you have a walled garden, you have a problem.  What does "public" mean now? 

It turns out that there suddenly is no difference between public and logged in.  While it might not matter in the system, your users will get confused.  Also, what about "private"?  Many people who do walled gardens want to get rid of "private" - such as schools - who have figured out that having everything out in the sunshine means nothing inappropriate goes unnoticed for long.

Site owners soon realize that they either want "public" to go away for private adult sites so that people don't think stuff will be pushed outside the walls, or they want everything to be public for kids sites.

You have two choices now: 

  • remove an access level (levels) from the system entirely
  • change the rendering of the levels so that some are just not even shown

 

But of the two choices:  the first one (removing the level from the system) is really, really dangerous.  You don't want to do this as many plugins have a certain understanding of the world, and you're probably going to break something.  It might be OK to remove private, but you will be in a world of hurt if you remove public.  Only do this approach with a really good reason.

Instead, change the way they are rendered.  (for more information on this topic, see the document in this group called, "How to modify access controls for Walled Gardens".)

 

CHANGING ACCESS LEVEL NAMES

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This can be done by changing what they are called in the top level languages file, such as /languages/en.php.  So, using English, you might want to change a name from "Logged-in Users" to "All Members" as it is easier to understand.

 

CHANGING THE ORDER THAT ACCESS LEVELS APPEAR IN MENUS

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The order of the access options also matters a great deal.  If the default is "private" most people won't notice and suddenly, not a lot of content is accessible.  This might be OK in rare circumstances, but you want the default option to be the most applicable.

The best way to do this is to set it in the administration settings.  The other way to do it is in the rendering code in access.php - which you'll have to do if you need to change the order of more than one.  Again, this is risky.  There is a temptation to get the index of an element and put it somewhere else.  You'll say, "Well, that index is private, so I am going to put it later."

IMPORTANT

But... know that this code snippet is also used for groups.   If you remove or re-order elements, you will discover when creating or using groups that you get really weird results, as there are other labels and settings for those same numbers.  So when you make a code change, you need to check for the labels also so you don't move the group options.  (For more information, see "How to modify access controls for Walled Gardens")

 

  • Thanks, this is really useful, at least for me :-) Something really nice is going to happen to you!

     

     

  • Thanks Ed.  Will be setting up and playing with Elgg for the first time this week with the eventual plan of using it with some primary schools.  This guidance is very welcomed!

  • Greetings Ed,

    Thank you for this succinct Intro and heads up.

    I had a bunch of problems with the Walled Garden plugin so I went looking for other options and saw your group...Then I jumped over to the Site Access link you mention above (http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/shellcode/read/50313/site-access) I saw solid questions and considered answers, and thus was beginning to be inspired to try this plugin...THEN I jumped over to the version 2.2 thread, thinking it might have a nice clean set of fixes for the earlier version glitches...INSTEAD what I think I see is a cavalcade of new/open issues...What is your take, should I wait for the dust to settle and see if shellcode sorts it all out with a new release before installing this plugin?  Should I use the older version perhaps?

    Thx for your feedback

    Onehorse

  • I have a slightly different question.  How does one create a semi-walled garden?  Meaning, I want my site to be by invitation only.  Further meaning that any member of the site can invite a trusted friend to join the site.  The an invitation is sent out using the built invite mod, and a unique code that expires after x amount of time is sent.  The receipiant of the email address then would have to sign up using that link and the email address the link was sent to.  I have searched for such a beast with no luck; at least not for elgg.

  • is there a good way to stop elgg from loading walled garden css since in my theme it holds no style and is not used 

    i use walled garden but don't have any style information in it