Groups and newsletter

fkelly · Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 3:04 pm

Since I don't see a separate category for the newsletter I'll put this here for now. Basic issue is that I have set up a nsngroup for my board of directors (9 people). There doesn't seem to be any capability in nsngroups to send an email to this group. No: I should correct that but you have to be an admin and go into the admin screens to do so. If you are just a member of the group you really don't have any capabilities that I can see.

Now if I go into html newsletter as admin I can send an email to any nsngroup. That's great but I believe that I have to be an admin for the newsletter to even compose a newsletter.

The problem is setting all 9 people up with admin id's and passwords and the fact that they'd forget them in about 5 days and be asking me what their password is. Plus they'd have to be logged into both admin and their normal username. IS there a way around this, any way that you all can think of to send email to groups? Forums works the same btw, you have to be an admin to see the mass email function.

It would be nice if we could assign admin privileges to a group such that if a person was a member of that group they'd inherit the privileges and not have to be logged in as admin or even have a separate admin id.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4873

It's a nice idea - but would significantly change the way Nuke handles admin...or the way the module works.

fkelly · Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 5:54 pm

I'm struggling with this whole issue and trying to see how others handle it. It just seems like we should have finer gradations of administrative privileges including some that don't require putting a user with privileges into the authors table and all that entails. Like in nsngroups being able to send emails to a group you belong to. Or in html newsletter being able to send emails to any predefined groups or at the very least to any groups you belong to. Maybe other sites have authors tables with dozens of admins with different kinds of privileges and if so I'd like to hear that. I just can't imagine that myself, it seems like a maintenance headache and security risk. But it also seems like it might be the only way to let people on the site do what they need to do.

montego · Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 6:20 pm

Sounds like a new module to me! Wink

I personally will not be moving down that path for the HTML Newsletter as I am wanting to be very, very careful with any accidental mass mailings and any malicious use of that.

I wonder if some form of mailing list tool is what you're after. Maybe not, but it just struck me and thought I'd mention it.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4873

There are a couple of other options here, too. One is a private message sent to the members of a group, and the other is a private forum the notifies all members of a group. Not sure if there is a forum mod for either of these, but if so...

fkelly · Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 6:46 pm

Those both might be good options Kguske, if there was a forum mod for them. But I guess I'm looking for something more generic. I realize it's a significant change and would take time but I don't think the way Nuke handles admin functions is exactly the cats meow. We really need more "granularity" in assigning privileges and I think we need to be able to avoid adding unnecessary entries to the authors table. That, IMHO should just be for people who actually administer the site.

Lot's of systems use groups for this purpose. But Forums groups in Nuke is totally bolted on and has nothing to do with core Nuke and nsngroups is, while useful and an improvement over base Nuke, still very undeveloped and featureless, not to mention admin unfriendly. What I think we'd want to be able to do is assign pre-defined privileges to groups (like if you are in group x you can send out email thru Html newsletter) and have the modules test for those privileges where they currently test is_admin(). The users in group x would NOT have to be in the authors table nor would they have to sign into administration. Add to this, an admin friendly way of finding users and seeing which users are in which groups and changing/adding that and we would have the cats meow.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4873

I agree that the standard group functionality isn't of much use. I also wish there was more functionality in NSN Groups, and some addons provide some level of NSN groups integration (both addon newsletters allow admins to send newsletters to groups).

Unfortunately, that wish doesn't change that status quo. Nuke's admin function allows a webmaster to assign admins by module, but what you're describing is different and would require modifications to the module itself. Forums has better group permissions flexibility that most modules, and given the direction Montego gave, that might be the quickest route to what you're looking for. That said, there are functions that allow you to determine if a user is in a group, but determining if the group has a certain permission is uncharted outside of the forums.