Invitation only private board

[cfillion]

I just updated. Security issue is fixed.

[Mariku]

Wow, fantastic! Thank you so much, it really is very important functionality for my forums.

I have not had the time yet to try it out, but will soon, and will let you know how it goes.

Again, thanks heaps!

Matt

[Mariku]

cfillion,

installed and currently testing your plugin.

Looks great, seems to be working fine so far!

Where can I find which number a user group has, so I can set it correctly in the settings?

Finally: Would you be able to give a little more explanation of the "Who can use Invitation Management" settings field? I can't quite figure it out so far.

As a dreamer's feature wish for the future some time: More batch editing ability, so that I can for example delete or set up multiple invitations at once - would be very helpful for large boards.

Again, thanks heaps for making this plugin, it was desperately needed!

Cheers,

Matt

---

Hi again,

now for some reason I can't access the invitation management anymore, despite being logged in as administrator. I get this error message:

You do not have permission to access this page. This could be because of one of the following reasons:
Your account has either been suspended or you have been banned from accessing this resource.
You do not have permission to access this page. Are you trying to access administrative pages or a resource that you shouldn't be? Check in the forum rules that you are allowed to perform this action.
Your account may still be awaiting activation or moderation. (Resend Activation Code)
You have accessed this page directly rather than using appropriate forms or link.

You are currently logged in with the username: XXXXXX

I have never send or set up an activation code for the admin account that I am logged in with to access the invitation management, in fact that account was created long before I even installed the invitation system plugin.

Any idea why this is happening?

I think probably it's because of some of the group numbers I have typed into the settings; just can't figure it out. Currently, I have:

- who can administer invitations 1: 4. Administrators
- who can administer invitations 2: nobody
- Who can use Invitation Management: 4
- Usergroups that normal users can invite: 2

...but I'm not really sure I understand what those mean.

Interesting: Just found out that if I set "Who can use Invitation Management" to 2, I can access it again!

AAAAA! Now I understand. I was indeed logged in as administrator, BUT I have set MyBB so that that administrator account is displayed to the public not as an administrator account, but as a "registered" account. I think your plugin is reading the actual account as seen from the perspective of another normal registered member, and not from the perspective of the actual system, which would "know" that I'm an admin.

That's not ideal, because it means in order to be able to use the plugin, I either need to allow "registered members" (group 2) to use the invitation management, which I don't like too much, or I need to display my admin account as an admin account, which I also don't like to do.

I'm a bit confused. What is the exact difference between "Who can administer invitations 1" and "Who can use Invitation Management"?

Cheers,

Matt

---

There's another problem now. So far, I can't figure it out.

When trying to register as a new user, by using the registration code that user received via email, I keep getting the "You have been locked out of the invitation system. If the problem persists, contact the administrators" error.

Matt

---

One more hint: When logging out from the "invitations management" page, it doesn't actually log me out. If I just type in the ACP address into my browser again, I'm back in the ACP.

Cheers,

Matt

[cfillion]

Ok, I hope that I will answer all questions. ^^

Where can I find which number a user group has, so I can set it correctly in the settings?

Admin CP > Users & Groups > Select a group. Look at the URL. Group id is after "gid=".

The "Who can use Invitation Management" settings means wich usergroups can access Invitation Manager as a normal user.
Normal users can view only invitations that they created.

More batch editing ability, so that I can for example delete or set up multiple invitations at once - would be very helpful for large boards.

Things like upload an email list and send an invitation to each email or give invitation to all members in a usergroup is planned.
By "delete" you mean to check invitations you want to delete then click on a "Delete selected invitations" button?

Any idea why this is happening?

Because your usergroup is not allowed to access Invitation Manager nor as an administrator than as a normal user, as you found later.

...but I'm not really sure I understand what those mean.

who can administer invitations 1 and 2: you can set 1 or 2 usergroups that have administrative privileges in the Invitation Manager.
Usergroups that normal users can invite: You set here wich usergroups a normal user can invite (eg. do not put 4 in this field because normal users should not be able to invite administrator).

AAAAA! Now I understand. I was indeed logged in as administrator, BUT I have set MyBB so that that administrator account is displayed to the public not as an administrator account, but as a "registered" account. I think your plugin is reading the actual account as seen from the perspective of another normal registered member, and not from the perspective of the actual system, which would "know" that I'm an admin.

That's not ideal, because it means in order to be able to use the plugin, I either need to allow "registered members" (group 2) to use the invitation management, which I don't like too much, or I need to display my admin account as an admin account, which I also don't like to do.

My plugins check the primary usergroup settings. You can set primary group to Administrator and display group to "Registered".

When trying to register as a new user, by using the registration code that user received via email, I keep getting the "You have been locked out of the invitation system. If the problem persists, contact the administrators" error.

Restart your browser. If you submit form more than "max login attempts" setting+2, you will be locked.

One more hint: When logging out from the "invitations management" page, it doesn't actually log me out. If I just type in the ACP address into my browser again, I'm back in the ACP.

The Invitation Manager is not a part of the Admin CP.
So you has been logged out in your board but not in the Admin CP.

[Mariku]

Thank you so much for your quick and detailed answer. I think I'm getting to the point soon where I am confident that I have a handle on this.

Just to tell you a bit about the background and why I'm so keen on your plugin: I am probably going to be quite a "power user" of your plugin, because I am in the process of setting up a forum that will have up to some 20.000 members, and these are divided into small groups of thirty to fifty people, where each group will have their own "private" forums that only their group can access - and I'm trying to build a pyramid-like invitation system where I invite the group leaders, and then they are fully responsible for inviting whoever they want to have in their forum. So it's a little more than just a handful of friends who want to keep their forum private... it is necessary to do it this way for me because I will not have the time to manage all those sign-ups and group additions manually myself, on the other hand, I want some accountability as to which group / who invited whom - which will help to encourage people to act responsibly.

I have one more question for now:

When I am logged in as admin, and go to "invitation management": How / where would I be able to see who invited whom? I see the invitations, and who was invited, but can't see who sent the invitation. It almost looks to me as if I'm not getting administration privileges in the "invitation management", but I'm not sure what would be part of that.

Things like upload an email list and send an invitation to each email or give invitation to all members in a usergroup is planned.

Fantastic, exactly what I meant!

By "delete" you mean to check invitations you want to delete then click on a "Delete selected invitations" button?

Yep.

Another feature that would be fantastic for the future: It would be great if I could set the default group that the newly invited user is added to, depending on which group the inviting user is in. For example, ideally, I would like to be able to specify that all users who are invided by people who are in group X will automatically be assigned to group Y, or even to multiple groups like primary X, additional groups Y and Z. Not sure if I'm explaining it well, hope you understand.

I think your plugin can have a really bright future! Thank you so much for making this.

Cheers,

Mat

[cfillion]

When I am logged in as admin, and go to "invitation management": How / where would I be able to see who invited whom? I see the invitations, and who was invited, but can't see who sent the invitation. It almost looks to me as if I'm not getting administration privileges in the "invitation management", but I'm not sure what would be part of that.

Make sure that the "Show created by notice in Invitation Manager" setting is activated.
If so, admins should see who created invitation (if it is not him).

Another feature that would be fantastic for the future: It would be great if I could set the default group that the newly invited user is added to, depending on which group the inviting user is in. For example, ideally, I would like to be able to specify that all users who are invided by people who are in group X will automatically be assigned to group Y, or even to multiple groups like primary X, additional groups Y and Z. Not sure if I'm explaining it well, hope you understand.

I don't think it can be done easily, but maybe I can extend the "" setting so you can do that:

Allow group n°5 and, if user is in group 17, allow group 18.

Make sure also that the "Usergroups that normal users can invite" setting is set correctly.

EDIT:

I want some accountability as to which group / who invited whom

In profile? Great idea.

[User 2877]

I already have one done that's unreleased for MyBB Central. It requires an invitation code to be upgraded into a new usergroup. So members can join but you can restrict their site access until they are given an invitation code to the upgraded VIP group.

I'll release it in the coming months.

[Mariku]

cfillion:

If so, admins should see who created invitation (if it is not him).

Err, thanks, that was the problem - so far, only that one admin had created invitations, so it was him. Have created invitations by several different admins now, and now I can see who created which on (except my own, as you say, which is self explanatory).

Another feature that would be fantastic for the future: It would be great if I could set the default group that the newly invited user is added to, depending on which group the inviting user is in. For example, ideally, I would like to be able to specify that all users who are invided by people who are in group X will automatically be assigned to group Y, or even to multiple groups like primary X, additional groups Y and Z. Not sure if I'm explaining it well, hope you understand.

I want some accountability as to which group / who invited whom

What I meant by this / accountability is this: I would like to create a tree type structure of invitations. I would ideally like to be able to grant power to particular admins to send invitations which invite new users to particular groups only. Either it can be based on individual admin, so I manually define which admin can invite people to which group; or even better, it can be based on which groups the admin is in, so for example I would be able to specify that all admins who are in the group X can invite people into the group X, and all admins who are in the group Y can invite people into the group Y, Z and K.

The aim would be that if anyone goes "rogue" on the forums in whatever way, I can look up which admin invited the person. In 99% of all cases in my application, admins would only invite people who they know and see in real life regularly. So when I then contact the inviting admin and tell them "hey, please get your people back in line there", they can then talk to that person in real life - which would allow for a quick resolution of the issue without much fuss, because a face to face conversation often works much better than online moderation.

It would allow me to take advantage of the fact that the admins in my forums know almost all people who they invite into their "corner" of the forums in real life. It would delegate responsibility to the admins to especially keep an eye on the users they have invited, which would allow for large boards to have a strong incentive of behaving responsible without a massive moderating workload on the main admins. It would also mean that the admins will have a good incentive to be caerful who they invite, which in turn again is good protection for the forums to prevent trouble in the first place. If, to an extent, I am responsible to "clean up" after some rogue member who I have invited, if by no more than having to tell them to get their act together, I will make sure I only invite quality people. It's preventing trouble before it even starts.

I'm not sure if I would display that information who invited whom in the profile, but yeah, maybe that would be an interesting option as well, because it would again delegate work load, because then anyone who comes across a rogue member can look up who invited them, and contact the inviting admin so they can personally talk to that rogue member. Hm, not bad.

I don't think it can be done easily, but maybe I can extend the "" setting so you can do that:
Allow group n°5 and, if user is in group 17, allow group 18.
Make sure also that the "Usergroups that normal users can invite" setting is set correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean by that, is there something missing?

One thing that is possible not hat hard to implement (but what do I know...) which would be really helpful is if one could sort the display of all invitations by the user name who has issued them. So, if all invitations that are issued by admin X would be together, one row below the next; then, all those of admin Y, etc. For my application it would make life a lot easier, because I will frequently have to work through many invitations and look up correlating data batch-wise, and being able to see at a glance which admin invited which users would speed up that process a lot.

In general, I think your plugin will work for me as it is already, but I'm also very much looking forward to seeing how you will even improve it further next - when you have the time, no rush, better do it properly than in a hurry. Again, thanks so much for the work, very much appreciate it indeed.


labrocca:

Sounds interesting. Let us know when it's released stable so we can try it out.

Cheers,

Matt

[cfillion]

I don't think it can be done easily, but maybe I can extend the "" setting so you can do that:
Allow group n°5 and, if user is in group 17, allow group 18.
Make sure also that the "Usergroups that normal users can invite" setting is set correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean by that, is there something missing?

Oops, I mean the "Usergroups that normal users can invite" setting.

I'm not sure if I would display that information who invited whom in the profile, but yeah, maybe that would be an interesting option as well, because it would again delegate work load, because then anyone who comes across a rogue member can look up who invited them, and contact the inviting admin so they can personally talk to that rogue member. Hm, not bad.

If you have another idea than in profile, tell me.

One thing that is possible not hat hard to implement (but what do I know...) which would be really helpful is if one could sort the display of all invitations by the user name who has issued them. So, if all invitations that are issued by admin X would be together, one row below the next; then, all those of admin Y, etc. For my application it would make life a lot easier, because I will frequently have to work through many invitations and look up correlating data batch-wise, and being able to see at a glance which admin invited which users would speed up that process a lot.

Great idea. I will also add this to the Search function.

EDIT: Done & Awaiting approval.

Completed features/fixes:

Version 1.3
- Added "Max attempts for registration" setting
- Added "Sort by" feature
- Fix bug with account activation
- Added "Mass Delete" feature
- Fix a theme issue
- Additional usergroups support for Invitation Manager admin/normal access
- Applied search to more fields
- Added "Referred By" in profile
- Display list of referred users in profile
- Set wich group can invite wich group
- Abort installation/activation if the "Use Referrals System" setting is enabled
- Added a third admin group
- Added Invitation Manager in Who's Online page

v1.3 is a huge update.

EDIT 2: Don't know what appened, but it seem that the new file didn't get uploaded in the mods site. I re-submitted the update.
Returning back to the "Awaiting Validation" status.

[cfillion]

Released now.
http://community.mybb.com/thread-113141.html