[falabart]

Good Morning,

I am managing a company intranet with bbPress, and I have a problem with user roles.

I need that among all the users there is only one Keymaster (me) that manages the entire forum and that the rest are only participants.

The problem is that if I assign users the Participant role, they cannot create topics or reply to created topics. In fact, with the role of Moderator they cannot do it either. Only the Keymaster role allows you to do that, but it also gives permissions that I don’t want to give to all users, like deleting topics.

Another problem I run into is that my user database is connected to my company’s Active Directory. And every time it is updated (once a day) the roles I have assigned manually are lost …

Could someone help me with these problems?

Thank you very much.

[Robin W]

ok, it may be hard to help for a site we cannot see, but let’s see where we get to.

So first question is

you say ‘The problem is that if I assign users the Participant role, they cannot create topics or reply to created topics.’ – so can you desbribe this eactly eg ‘they get a message saying you are not permitted to…’ or ‘they create a topic but when they press submit nothing happens ‘ etc.

[Robin W]

second question is

you say ‘And every time it is updated (once a day) the roles I have assigned manually are lost …’ – what roles are you assigning, and how are you doing this eg ‘I go onto the dashboard and do this and then do that and then give them the xx role in then yy area’

[falabart]

Hi Robin,

Thanks for your answer.

Sorry for not showing the site, but it is a private Intranet that requires you to be an authorized user.

If a user with a Participant role tries to create a topic, the following message appears:

“You cannot create new topics.”

Similarly, when a user with a Participant role tries to reply to a previously created message, the following message appears:

“You cannot reply to this topic.”

[falabart]

Regarding the second question,

I go to the Users section of the WordPress backoffice, and once there I select all the users and go to the top tab: “Change forum role to …” and select “Participant”.

So that role assigns me well, but when Active Directory syncs again, those roles disappear, leaving it blank. This happens to me even though in Settings – Forums I have “Participant” selected in the “Roles” option.

[Robin W]

great – thanks for your helpful responses. Appreciate the intranet, been there !

is this website just for bbpress, or are you running a bunch of other stuff on it – just need to know as it will help how we go forward

[falabart]

In addition to bbpress, the intranet incorporates other functionalities: static pages, blog, messaging, gamification …

[Robin W]

thanks

so is this a new installation of bbpress, a new problem with bbpress, or when did this start

[falabart]

This intranet was developed by an external agency with whom we no longer have contact.

I have run into this problem since the project was handed over to us.

Is there no place in bbpress to determine the actions that each role can take? Do you know if the “Participant” role can by default create topics and reply to messages?

Thanks for your help.

[Robin W]

yes, participants should be able to create topics and replies viz :

bbPress User Roles and Capabilities

I strongly suspect the issue is with active directory, you already have said that it rolls back settings, which makes me suspect that the entire WordPress database is being rolled back – if you create say a test post on the website, does it stay overnight, or does it disappear – this would help determine where to go next.

[falabart]

Active Directory updates the database daily, adding or deleting users. This database also synchronizes the WordPress roles of each user. But the bbpress forum roles do not appear in our Active Directory …

Would forum roles need to be synced from a specific Active Directory field?

Would this help the role “Participant” have the permissions it should have?

[Robin W]

so if you look at

dashboard>plugins

do you have an active directory integration plugin such as

Active Directory Integration / LDAP Integration

[falabart]

I have that plugin installed and it is working.

But what I would like (but I don’t know if it is possible) is that there is only one Keymaster (the administrator of WordPress) and the rest of the users are Participants by default, being able to create and respond to topics.

[Robin W]

yes, that’s what I’m trying to get you to 🙂

So if you were using a WordPress user database, then the roles I posted a link to above would give you exactly what you want – participants would be able to post.

However I suspect this plugin references the AD database, and is not storing bbpress roles – so when it looks for permissions it finds no roles to allocate permissions against, so does not allow access.

now bbpress roles are stored in the same part of the database as WordPress roles, so it may well be that this plugin is not storing these settings, hence no access.

I’ll put a post in their support forum to see if they can help

[falabart]

Yes, users were imported from Active Directory, and WordPress user roles were synchronized from an Active Directory group created for this purpose.

Sorry, I don’t know very well how this forum works … who will you ask for help? Will I receive an answer in this post or should I look for it somewhere else?

Thanks for your help and for your patience.

[Robin W]

ok, I’ve done some more thinking whilst trying to compose a support ticket.

so the once a day ‘update’ what is this supposed to do and which way – eg are you adding and deleting users based on AD, or updating AD based on WordPress/bbpress

Does your WordPress/bbpress site have a local user database or is the AD database used for authentication?

[falabart]

The process was as follows:

First, we added a field to our Active Directory, where we related each user to the WordPress role.

Then we downloaded that database from Active Directory to WordPress, syncing users and their WordPress roles

Also, once a day, WordPress syncs with Active Directory by rewriting the database with the modifications for that day.

Therefore, taking into account that the database is overwritten every day, I think that the most logical thing would be for bbpress to automatically assign the forum role of “Participant” to all users, except the administrator.

[Robin W]

that might well be the best pragmatic solution – contact me via

Contact me