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Understanding roles, part five – forum roles

On: November 18, 2019November 18, 2019 By: Mark

As the name implies, forum roles control the privileges to forums. Forums are the key structure in phpBB and where most of the action happens, so there must be a lot of ways to finely tune access to forums.

Forum roles are most typically used to control forum privileges as they simplify the process. I will also demonstrate a way of circumventing these roles to set more granular forum permissions.

User roles provide a broad set of permissions, many of which extend to work users do in forums. Allowing attachments to posts is one example. Since roles are bundles of permissions, permissions in forum roles may override some user role permissions.

Pre-defined forum roles

The following forum roles come built in to phpBB:

No Access. Can neither see nor access the forum. This should be applied when you want to hide a forum from appropriate groups and users. You most typically use it to hide forums from guests and bots.
Read Only Access. Can read the forum, but cannot create new topics or reply to posts. You often see this role applied to guests.
Limited Access. Can use some forum features, but cannot attach files or use post icons. This role is often applied to newly registered users.
Limited Access + Polls. As per Limited Access but can also create polls. This role is also often applied to newly registered users.
Standard Access. Can use most forum features including attachments and deleting own topics, but cannot lock own topics, and cannot create polls.
Standard Access + Polls. Like Standard Access but can also create polls.
Full Access. Can use all forum features, including posting of announcements and stickies. Can also ignore the flood limit. Not recommended for normal users. This is often applied to more privileged users such as moderators and administrators.
On Moderation Queue. Can use most forum features including attachments, but posts and topics need to be approved by a moderator. This role can be applied to a problematic poster known for making inflammatory posts.
Bot Access. This role is recommended for bots and search spiders. It does allow bots to read the forum, so if you don’t want bots to read the forum, the bots groups should use the No Access role.
Newly Registered User Access. A role for members of the special newly registered users group; contains NEVER permissions to lock features for new users. This gets around a quirk in phpBB where newly registered users can start new topics (which have to go through moderation) only because they are also in the registered users group. It’s strange that phpBB is not configured this way by default.

There is one other implied role: No role assigned. As the name implies, it indicates a lack of permissions in the defined context, so other forum permissions if they exist are used instead.

Setting forum roles

Generally, it’s best to attach roles to groups. Attaching roles to users can be done, but it makes it hard to fix permissions issues. Most likely, roles already exist for groups accessing your forums. However, when you create new forums, you often need to attach some roles to the users that will use them, generally through group forum permissions: ACP > Forums > Forum based permissions > Group forum permissions.

First, select the user group whose roles you want to change or add. In the Look up usergroup dropdown, select the group then press Submit.

On the next screen, select the forum or forums you want to add or change roles for, in the appropriate Select a forum select list or dropdown. The dropdown is used to select a set of forums inside a category. Then press Submit.

Finally, you have an interface for changing or adding roles for each forum for the user group selected. See screenshot below. In the Role dropdown, select the role to be applied for the forum and user group. When all are set as desired, press the Apply all permissions button at the bottom of the screen.

Creating new forum roles

You can define a forum role using similar procedures for user, moderator and admin roles: ACP > Permissions > Permission roles > Forum roles > Create role. In general, the existing roles make it unlikely that you will need to create other forum roles.

Overriding role permissions

While not a good idea generally, I should point out you can override forum role permissions for groups and users. Use either:

ACP > Users and groups > Users > User forum permissions

ACP > Users and groups > Groups > Group forum permissions

Here’s an example of how it can be done for a user’s forum permissions.

In this case, Jane Doe is a teacher and in the teacher’s group, so she has Standard Access role’s permissions to the teachers’ forums. This means she cannot post sticky topics, i.e. posts that stick to near the top of the list of topics in a forum.

We would like to allow her to post stickies but not change her permissions otherwise.

We first enter her name by entering it in the Find a member field and pressing Submit. See screenshot above.

Then we pick the forums where we want the permissions applied. In this case, it makes sense to select the Teachers forums category and the forums inside it. Once selected, press Submit. See screenshot above.

On the next screen, the role shows no role assigned because no user role has been applied. The user still has a group role applied. Click on the Advanced permissions link.

You can then select any permissions you want to grant. In this case, I granted the Can post stickies permission by changing it to Yes. Since multiple forums should be show on the screen, do this for each forum in the category. See screenshot below, which shows only the permissions for the category.

User forum permissions, advanced permissions

Clicking the Apply permissions button will make the permission stick for this forum, or do all then press the Apply all permissions button at the bottom. Now Jane Doe has the necessary added permission, but it was done outside of the forum role.

Understanding roles, part four – administrator roles

On: November 17, 2019November 18, 2019 By: Mark

It’s tempting to think of administrators as one size fits all, but you can have various kinds of administrators. The kinds of administrators are based on the roles they are given.

If you don’t want to be granular about administrator privileges, simply add the user to the administrator’s group: ACP > Users and groups > Groups > Manage groups > Administrators > Members. In the Add Users block, enter the usernames on separate lines that you want to make administrators. Use the Find a member link if needed, and press Submit when done. See the screenshot below.

These new administrators will inherit the Standard Admin.

There are four administrator roles:

Standard Admin. Has access to most administrative features but is not allowed to use server or system related tools.
Full Admin. Has access to all administrative functions of this board. Not recommended.
Forum Admin. Can access the forum management and forum permission settings.
User and Groups Admin. Can manage groups and users: Able to change permissions, settings, manage bans, and manage ranks.

The main role to worry about is the Full Admin role, because if you grant it, then you are giving the administrator virtually complete control of the board. The administrator is not technically a founder but might as well be since they can do pretty much anything a founder can do too except make themselves a founder or create additional administrators.

If you want to make someone a founder, you first must already have founder privileges.

ACP > Users and Groups > Manage users

Enter the user’s name and press Submit. In the Founder field select Yes and press Submit.

You can also create a new Administrator role if you want similar to the process used for moderators: ACP > Permissions > Permission roles > Admin roles > Create role

Large and busy boards might find a need to assign people to the Forum Admin and User and Group Admin roles.

These new administrators get into the Administration Control Panel the same way as you do: by selecting the link in the navigation bar or from the link that appears in the footer.

Understanding roles, part three – moderator roles

On: November 17, 2019November 18, 2019 By: Mark

In addition to having global versus forum-specific moderators, phpBB allows you to place moderators into various roles. The permissions of the role determine how much power a moderator has. These moderators roles come out of the box:

Standard moderator. This type of moderator can use most moderating tools, but cannot ban users or change the post author.
Simple moderator. This type of moderator can only use basic topic actions. They cannot send warnings or use the moderation queue.
Full moderator. This type of moderator can use all moderating features, including banning.
Queue moderator. This type of moderator can use the Moderation Queue to validate and edit posts, but nothing else.

There is nothing to stop you from changing the default permissions for these moderator roles. The process is similar to changing user roles.

You could create a new moderator role. Let’s say you have a popular and busy forum with a lot of topics that are out of place. You want to keep the primary moderator for handling the bigger duties, but delegate moving topics, splitting topics, merging topics and locking topics to another type of moderator via a moderator role.

ACP > Permissions > Permission Roles > Moderator roles

First I create the role called Special Moderator. Since a Full Moderator has all permissions, I’ll start with its permissions and take away permissions I don’t want the role to have.

I enter “Special Moderator” in the Create role field, and select Full Moderator from the Use settings from dropdown, then press Submit.

On the next screen, I first went to the Post actions tab and clicked on the No column to disallow all those privileges. I did the same on the Misc tab. On the Topic actions tab, I left these as is. See the screenshot above. Pressing Submit created the role.

With the group now defined, I can select members to have this role. Since I want these moderators to do this for any forum, it’s easiest to make them global moderators, but with the Special Moderator user role.

ACP > Permissions > Global permissions > Global moderators

See screenshot above. The first step is to add the users to get this role in the Add users block, then pressing the Add permissions button. The Find a member link makes it easy to find the usernames, if you don’t know them.

The next step is to assign the moderator role to these users. In the Role dropdown, I select the Special Moderator role I created, then pressed the Apply all permissions button. See screenshot below.

Done!

Understanding roles, part two – user roles

On: November 17, 2019November 18, 2019 By: Mark

User roles bundle sets of permissions that apply to what users can do on your board. There are six built-in user roles:

Standard Features. Can access most but not all user features. Cannot change user name or ignore the flood limit, for instance.
Limited Features. Can access some of the user features. Attachments, emails, or instant messages are not allowed.
All Features. Can use all available forum features for users, including changing the user name or ignoring the flood limit. Not recommended.
No Private Messages. Has a limited feature set, and is not allowed to use Private Messages.
No Avatar. Has a limited feature set and is not allowed to use the Avatar feature.
Newly Registered User Features. A role for members of the special newly registered users group; contains NEVER permissions to lock features for new users.

If you want to create a new role, there is nothing from stopping you. ACP > Permissions > Permission roles > User roles. Enter the new role name in the Create role field, then select the role you want to inherit the permissions from in the Use settings from dropdown. Then press Submit. Change the permissions as desired for each tab.

Once a new role is created, you generally want to assign groups or users to the role. Use one of the following paths:

ACP > Users and groups > Users > Manage users

ACP > Users and groups > Groups > Manage groups

Understanding roles, part one

On: November 17, 2019November 17, 2019 By: Mark

What is a role?

Roles are one of phpBB’s most useful but most obscure features. It can be a little hard to understand what roles are intended to do.

Roles essentially are a collection of permissions with a name. This collection of permissions can be assigned broadly to users of various types (users, administrators or moderators). For example, the Standard Features user role describes the privileges users with this role have.

You can view and change these permissions: ACP > Permissions > Permission roles > User roles > Standard Features > Edit

The screenshot shows some of these user permissions for the Standard Features role. The permissions comes in four sets, represented by a tab. The Post permissions are shown. It is green because all permissions are set to Yes. Change just one of these to No or Never, and the green turns into blue. The Profile, Misc and Private messages tab are blue, letting you know that at least one of the permissions on these tabs is not Yes. If the color is red, all the permissions on the tab are either No or Never.

Since these are user permissions, any user granted the Standard Features role will get these permissions, such as the ability to attach files. These are the default permissions. Forum permissions may override these settings.

What’s neat about roles is that you can change them at any time. Don’t want to allow this role to attach files? Change it to No or Never and the permission goes away immediately. A No permission might be overridden by a subsequent Yes permission, but a Never permission cannot be overridden.

Types of Roles

Four categories of roles exist:

User roles. These are broad permissions that apply to any user of your board.
Administrator roles
Moderator roles
Forum roles. These allow permissions to be finely tuned for individual forums. They are applied after any user role permissions and may override any user role permissions.