[Marty McClearen]

I’m struggling with making “Simple WP Membership” work with “Connections”.
Simple Membership uses WP users database to control access to the site (only members get in). I wanted an automated way to maintain an online directory of members that went far beyond what Simple Membership could do, so I have installed Connections. I bought the Pro-pack to accomplish this and have so far installed the Form, Link, Widgets plugins.

My goals are:

1. the site should be moderated (no user account can be created
   without approval).
2. the site should be self serve (that means the
   user creates their account and then fills out their own directory info).

I’ve tried reading the instructions but some things are still unclear. I have to use the Simple Membership registration for to create the member so that the Link plugin with sync a new directory entry to match it. Then I will need a way to allow the user to edit his/her “profile” and/or Connections directory entry.

I hope all that is not too confusing, but I’m pretty confused right now myself! Can you point me in the right direction?

[Marty McClearen]

As with many “technical” problems, if you keep banging your head against it long enough (and if your head is hard enough) you will usually make some progress.
I have managed to get things working pretty well with the goals above, so for now I’m OK with that. However, in the process, I’ve run into a few things I’d like to bounce off you…

1. The “Form Plugin” form is extremely light colored when you add and entry. For some reason it gets darker when you follow the “Edit Entry” link after it has been created. It almost appears to be a “contrast” issue as everything is extremely light gray first time around.
2. The red “Remove” buttons are cut off just about at the letter “v”.
3. The “Add to Address Book.” link is misleading to me. It sounds almost like you would click this to add another directory entry. I’d very much like to be able to change the text of this to say “Download vCard” (and for that matter I’d like to be able to change the label for all the other links too).

Please let me know what you think…
Thanks much,
Marty

[Steven Zahm]

@ Marty

re: As with many “technical” problems, if you keep banging your head against it long enough (and if your head is hard enough) you will usually make some progress.
I have managed to get things working pretty well with the goals above, so for now I’m OK with that.

Good to hear you’ve got much of it figured out. I am working hard to simply this more.

re: For some reason it gets darker when you follow the “Edit Entry” link after it has been created. It almost appears to be a “contrast” issue as everything is extremely light gray first time around.

Hmmm, very odd, nothing I’ve ever seen before. Form uses the exact same CSS for styling when adding as it does when editing. Perhaps the theme is overriding the styles a little. I would have to actually see the issue in order to provide some guidance.

re: The red “Remove” buttons are cut off just about at the letter “v”.

This is almost certainly due to the theme or maybe another plugin overriding the style of the button. If you can share a link, I should be able to provide a fix.

re: The “Add to Address Book.” link is misleading to me. It sounds almost like you would click this to add another directory entry. I’d very much like to be able to change the text of this to say “Download vCard” (and for that matter I’d like to be able to change the label for all the other links too).

To change the add to addressbook link, see this FAQ.

Let me know what text you do want to change… most text I try to pull as much as I can from the core Connections plugin, but extension will have their “own” stings. The FAQ I linked to will still apply, but you would have to use a different text domain to change them.

[Marty]

Steven, I have a new issue. Somewhere in one of the plugins I have installed (may have been “Frontier Post”), there was a requirement for all users to be at least “Authors”. I made a global change to all users to this status. Now when I go into the connections directory entry for someone other than the logged in user, the “Edit Entry” link is showing up. Prior to my changing everyone to “Author” this button only showed up on your own entry. Is there some way I can change this to show up only for the current logged in user regardless of their “role”? Thanks, Marty

[Steven Zahm]

@ Marty

I suspect that you need to go to the Connections : Roles admin page and take away all capabilities excerpt add/edit entry OR add moderated/edit moderated capabilities. By default, users of the Author role have full privileges to the directory which might explain why all users would see the edit entry link.

[Marty]

Steven,
Really struggling with this one. I am working in the “Connections:Roles” admin page. Short summary again: using “Frontier Post” so users can post messages to the site. It requires that users be set to WP Author role in order to function properly.
– before I changed the roles: any user could view directory entries AND they would see a link to edit their entry, but this link would not appear for any entry but their own (current logged in user).
– after I changed all users to “Author” role: ALL users can see the link to “Edit Entry” and can in fact edit any entry.
It doesn’t seem to matter what I do or how I change the “Connections:Roles” settings, I either loose the ability to edit ANY entry (including the currently logged in user) or I have the ability to edit ALL entries.
What bugs me is that it was working just fine (you could edit your own entry but no one else’s) until I changed the roles of the users to Author.
Any more ideas on how to proceed with this fixing this?
Thanks, Marty

[Steven Zahm]

@ Marty

If you can give me a temp admin login and an affecter user login, I’ll take a look, but I am pretty certain all that is need is to adjust the capabilities of the Author role in Connections. Both logins can be posted here as a private reply.

[Marty]

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[Marty]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Marty

It was the role capability settings for the Author role… you still had capabilities assigned which would let any author still manage any entry. I’ve adjusted them and now the users with the Author role will only be permitted to edit their own entry.

[Author]

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