Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Dave Emsley -
Number of replies: 11

Hi There,

I am running Moodle 2.5.4 and want a course with guest access and a forum with guest access also,

 

I've edited the role of the Guest so that all the settings for forum are ALLOW:

Activity: Forum
Add questionmod/forum:addquestion Allow            
Delete own posts (within deadline)mod/forum:deleteownpost Allow
            
Reply to postsmod/forum:replypost Allow            
Start new discussionsmod/forum:startdiscussion Allow            
View discussionsmod/forum:viewdiscussion Allow             

 

Still not working.  Does anyone have any ideas why not?

 

Cheers

 

Dave

 

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In reply to Dave Emsley

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Dave. Please see Forum FAQ How do I enable guests to post in a forum? (The simple answer is - you can't. See Forum settings section 12.3 Guests and posting in a forum. )

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Dave Emsley -

Hi Mary,

Thanks for such a quick response.  If I do create a 'visitor' role can I make someone who enters as a guest into a visitor without them doing anything so they can post in the forums?

 

Cheers

 

Dave

 

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In reply to Dave Emsley

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

FYou would need to create the visitor account and enrol that person into the course. Then I would put a message at the top of the course - this course is open to guests without logging in but if you want to post in the forum then log in with username visitor password visitor (or whatever)

For example - look at the literacy lightbulb quiz here - they can see the whole course but are told to log in if they want to take the quiz (guests can't take quizzes either) http://school.demo.moodle.net/course/view.php?id=118

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Dave Emsley

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Joe Amatrucola -

Dave

I think you're encountering the same issue that a few of us have encountered, and tried to address in the forums and bug tracker.  See the discussion here.  In my case, I have a site-wide role called AllStudents that contains every student in the school.  We have guest access open on nearly all courses, because we want people to see what's going on in others' courses.  I use the AllStudents role in various courses where we would want all students in our school to be able to participate (in a forum, in a feedback activity (survey), etc.)  If you check out the details in the bug I logged [MDL-37743], I was able to get 99% of the way there by properly permissioning the AllStudents role with the necessary permission to post to the common forum - WITHOUT enrolling them all in the course.  The problem I ran into was that the students could do everything they needed within the forum, except reply to a post.  The Moodle code explicitly prohibits replies (not posts, edits, or even deletes) unless the user is enrolled in the course.

If, after reading the details, you agree that there are reasonable cases for when users who are not enrolled in a course, once properly permissioned, should be able to participate in a forum, please vote for the bug.

Thanks
Joe

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In reply to Joe Amatrucola

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

This is an interesting post and tracker issue Joe because you seem to be suggesting non-enrolled users can start discussions and edit them but not reply. I will investigate this further because I had always assumed it was all or nothing with regards to non-enrolled users and forum participation.

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Joe Amatrucola -

Thanks, Mary.  Yes, that's exactly what I've found.  The core issue I'm arguing in the bug is that with such an elegant, granular permissioning system in Moodle, it's not appropriate for the core code to explicitly override those permissions with a hard and fast rule that says that a user must be enrolled in order to reply to posts in the forum.  And, you have accurately described what I have found. The only action that the code explicitly prohibits is replying to forum posts.  Once properly permissioned, the non-enrolled user can successfully view discussions, start new discussions, edit any post, or delete any post. It is just replying that seems to be explicitly prohibited via the code.

I appreciate any attention you might be able to give this topic.  As it stands, I modify the code in /mod/forum/lib.php within forum_user_can_post() each time I upgrade Moodle to work around this bug.

Joe

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In reply to Joe Amatrucola

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Ok (for my own interest) can you post your All student role details Joe? I made a role (based on nothing) setting add discussions/reply to forums/view discussions and view all courses without participation, and when I gave this system role to a user they could reply to forum posts without being enrolled in the course. The course had guest access which you said yours do also? (I suspect I must be doing something wrong because your tracker issue refers to the code explicitly forbidding this, and I don't understand code; hence it would be good to compare and contrast the roles.)

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by David Manning -

Hi Mary, 

Old post, but the bug still exists so here's some more details: all logged in users are in the "authenticated user" role. If this role is given ALLOW permission to "reply to posts", any logged in user should be able to reply to a post without needing to join the discussion. 

In actuality, logged in users who aren't enrolled are prompted to enrol in the course in order to reply. I've upvoted the bug. 


Regards, 


David

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In reply to David Manning

Re: Allowing Guests to Post in a Forum: Moodle 2.5

by Dale Davies -

I've just discovered this too, a guest in a course (authenticated user) can be given permissions to add and edit posts, but replying will not work.

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