Access Control

Hi,

I have some questions about Access Control.

I want to have different webs and nested webs (a web inside a web) for different main topics.

For example:

Web A
- Web A1
Web B
- Web B1
- Web B2

Is it possible to grant users access to Web B2 but not for B1? And is it possible to grant Access for Web A1 but not for Web A?

I tried it but without success. I granted a user access for B and removed access for B1 but with having access to B, it seemed that this access overwrites all access granted in lower webs.

Also tried it with groups but the result was the same.

Hope you can help me.

Regards

Michael

Hello Michael,

One day I hope we will make a visualisation tool so that Foswiki PreferenceSettings and AccessControls will be more obvious to casual/new users.

Indeed what you describe is certainly possible, but there is a feature which may be tripping you up: the FINALPREFERENCES setting.

This allows you to prevent topics (and subwebs) from overriding a setting.

So if your "root" (top-level) WebB.WebPreferences topic contains

   * Set FINALPREFERENCES = FOO, BAR, ALLOWWEBCHANGE, ALLOWWEBVIEW

, then Foswiki will ignore any ALLOWWEBCHANGE and ALLOWWEBVIEW settings that you put into WebB/WebB2.WebPreferences.

So, please check your FINALPREFERENCES setting. This feature is documented in PreferenceSettings.

Also ensure there are three spaces, asterisk, space, Set, space, ALLOWWEBVIEW, =, space, <your setting>.

A common mistake is to do this in the WYSIWYG editor, which ignores spaces (instead you need to create a bullet point instead of [three-spaces + asterisk]).

-- PaulHarvey - 14 Jul 2011

Thank you so far. I checked what you said and found in both Webs the following settings:

Set FINALPREFERENCES = NOSEARCHALL, ATTACHFILESIZELIMIT, WIKIWEBMASTER, WEBCOPYRIGHT, WEBTOPICLIST, DENYWEBVIEW, ALLOWWEBVIEW, DENYWEBCHANGE, ALLOWWEBCHANGE, DENYWEBRENAME, ALLOWWEBRENAME

What and in which web do I have to change? ALLOWWEBCHANGE and ALLOWWEBVIEW is listed in both.

-- MichaelJenke - 14 Jul 2011

You need to remove any preferences from that list which you wish to customise in the subweb(s). For example, you probably want to remove DENYWEBVIEW, ALLOWWEBVIEW, DENYWEBCHANGE, ALLOWWEBCHANGE, DENYWEBRENAME, ALLOWWEBRENAME

-- PaulHarvey - 14 Jul 2011

Thank you very much. Now it works how I imagined it.

-- MichaelJenke - 14 Jul 2011