Guest access to courses

Guest access to courses

by Frank Burger -
Number of replies: 6

So, here I am: tail between my legs, with the apparent knowledge that some months ago, I must have changed a setting that's now preventing me from doing something that should be easy...

I've read the instructions / watched the videos on how to make a course available to users who are not logged in. Triple checked everything, and it just doesn't work. The only thing I can imagine is that in a sudden fit of security consciousness, I disabled something that's now killing me.

Specifically, when I turn on Guest Access for a course, then enter the URL for that course, I get "This course is not available to students". It's not hidden, and the availability dates are not enabled - I have no ideas.

Any help?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Frank Burger

Re: Guest access to courses

by Frank Burger -
Forgot to mention... Moodle 3.8+ with Adaptable.
Also wonder if this feature is a little buggy? In order to get the "course unavailable to students" message, I need to make the Guest Login button visible, even though I'm not using it, and it's not mentioned in any of the instructions. Without that button visible, the course URL just redirects to the login page.
In reply to Frank Burger

Re: Guest access to courses

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Is the course open to students? (In the course settings, Course visibility needs to be Show.)
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Guest access to courses

by Frank Burger -
Yup, course is set to Show, and is fully accessible to enrolled students. Only getting the message for Guests.
In reply to Frank Burger

Re: Guest access to courses

by Acqua Alta -
Hi Frank,
Maybe you stumbled upon the same issue as me:
MDL-66002 (The capability category:viewcourselist affects guest access to courses).

As you can see in the comments,I got a mix-up when reporting between the "Actual results" and the "Expected results", and it's my bad. Anyway, the confusion was solved after a while.
It was decided that this is not a bug, and although I understand why I still think the user experience could be improved somehow.

If this isn't the issue you are facing, and I just wasted your time reading this, I'm sorry smile
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Acqua Alta

Re: Guest access to courses

by Frank Burger -
Yes, this is it exactly! And it seems like there's a spirited discussion to go with it, so I'm not sure I understand the bottom line. For now, until any changes are made in the code, would I need to Enable category:viewcourselist for the Guest role?

(My goal is to allow a specific course to be accessible to un-authenticated users)
In reply to Frank Burger

Re: Guest access to courses

by Frank Burger -
YES!! That worked. I have no idea if it's intended to be that way or if it will be "fixed" later, but by changing that permission from Not Set to Allow for the Guest role got what I needed.  Sadly, it seems there's no way to bypass clicking on "Log In as a Guest", even though the documentation says otherwise. I'll post an update if I figure that part out.

Thanks so much Acqua Alta!