Make other members appear as Staff and create secret moderators

Make other members appear as Staff and create secret moderators

Paul B

XenForo moderator
Staff member
Brogan submitted a new resource:

Make other members appear as Staff and create secret moderators (version 1.0) - Does exactly what it says on the tin.

To make a member appear as Staff, they have to be explicitly made a Moderator (or Administrator).
However, if you don't add them to the Moderating (or Administrative) user group or give them any permissions, their current user title and permissions remain as they are and the only difference is they show up as Staff.

The only drawback is those members will be able to see the Moderator Toolbar but they won't have access to any reports or any inline mod tools.

If you make someone an...

Read more about this resource...
 
Users in the admin group do have the inline moderation tools available, don't they?
That needs to be explicitly granted i.e. they need to also be moderators. But as Brogan said, the moderation bar is visible to them with b3.
 
Hmm, interesting. I've always seen the moderation tools and I'm only in the admin group, not moderators. Maybe the import from vB brought some weird permissions with it.
 
It could be leftover from you vb import. Might want to try to use the moderation tools to see if they work.

I would really like to get a tutorial / theory behind the permissions. I can make several educated guesses, but it would be easiest to know what the full intentions are of the system.
 
Hmm, interesting. I've always seen the moderation tools and I'm only in the admin group, not moderators. Maybe the import from vB brought some weird permissions with it.
If you are the Super Admin then you will have user specific permissions.
You can check this by looking in Users -> User Permissions and your user ID should be listed under "Users with Custom Permissions".

You should also be a Super Moderator by default.
 
thanks for the chart. ive downloaded it for future reference.
not having run xenforo on a live site with moderators i had no idea this was so convoluted.
i really hope we either move away from this system or at the least have the logic of such a setup explained to us.

personally, i really hate moderator and admin distinctions in postbit or a sidebar or whatnot. i hope i will be able to grant people limited moderation abilities without advertising it to the world.

and id still love to set a usergroup as a moderator!
 
Personally I like the way it is implemented as it is very flexible and allows all the various combinations I posted above.
 
Hmm, interesting. I've always seen the moderation tools and I'm only in the admin group, not moderators. Maybe the import from vB brought some weird permissions with it.
If your a super admin, you will see them regardless. Just tested it myself on a dev board... admin as primary or secondary group, you must set the permissions to edit either at the usergroup level or go the very hard way by making them a mod, super mod, blah blah blah... all total nonsense and not needed.

If super admin, full access regardless what primary usergroup you give yourself. I just set myself to registered with no additional usergroups, and because my account is super admin, I have full access still.

Its only admin where you have to set specific usergroup permissions.

I think this additional groups is nonsense for mods and admins... what is the point? If you leave the primary usergroup as registered for admins and mods, when you set node permissions, the additional usergroup node permissions don't override the primary usergroup node permissions... so having mod or admin specific access is useless, as you would need to grant it to all registered users which defeats the ability of say a staff forum.

You must change their primary usergroup and work from that method.
 
I would really like to get a tutorial / theory behind the permissions.
I'm with you there, brother. The permissions had me a little stumped until I read that Default is the same as no in Jack Bunce's thread. That was a bit of an "ah ha!" moment.

But there are things that I still don't get, like why there is a Moderating group, yet if you add a user to it, you still have to "Create New Moderator" for that user, or they can't moderate. I see how it works in practice, I just don't fully understand the mechanics of it. Which I can live with, but it annoys me that I don't know everything. Because, you know, usually I know everything.
 
A big tutorial on permissions is certainly something we need to do at some point in the near future, but for the time being, take these little nuggets of wisdom:
  • In order to access the Administrator Control Panel, a user must be an Administrator.
  • Being an Administrator only gets you access to the ACP, nothing more.
  • In order to perform moderator duties, you must have moderator permissions.
  • There is no connection between having moderator permissions and being an Administrator, except that most Administrators will also have moderator permissions so that they can moderate.
  • The Administrative and Moderating usergroups are there primarily to allow differentiating username markup and a few enhanced regular-user permissions. Belonging to these groups does not make you an Administrator and does not necessarily confer moderator permissions.
 
Having a few problems here.

I am in the Admin group, Super Moderator with everything checked - yet i cannot see any kind of Moderator option anywhere?

Okay i found it:

Basically if you don't edit the user and manually select their user group from the drop down box to admin or moderator it doesn't work - shouldn't it auto set the main admins user group to admin not registered user?
 
could there be in the core product an option to make it viewable on the staff without the mod perms.

I though you edit the template:
Code:
<!-- block: sidebar_online_staff -->
    <div class="section staffOnline avatarList">
        <div class="secondaryContent">
            <h3>{xen:phrase staff_online_now}</h3>
            <ul>
                <xen:contentcheck>
                    <xen:foreach loop="$onlineUsers.records" value="$user">
                        <xen:if is="{$user.is_moderator} OR {$user.is_admin}">
                            <li>
                                <xen:avatar user="$user" size="s" img="true" />
                                <xen:username user="$user" rich="true" />
                                <div class="userTitle">{xen:helper userTitle, $user}</div>
                            </li>
                        </xen:if>
                    </xen:foreach>
                </xen:contentcheck>
            </ul>
        </div>
    </div>
    <!-- end block: sidebar_online_staff -->
to:
Code:
<!-- block: sidebar_online_staff -->
    <div class="section staffOnline avatarList">
        <div class="secondaryContent">
            <h3>{xen:phrase staff_online_now}</h3>
            <ul>
                <xen:contentcheck>
                    <xen:foreach loop="$onlineUsers.records" value="$user">
                        <xen:if is="{$user.is_moderator} OR {$user.is_admin} OR {$user.is_dj} OR {$user.is_tech">
                            <li>
                                <xen:avatar user="$user" size="s" img="true" />
                                <xen:username user="$user" rich="true" />
                                <div class="userTitle">{xen:helper userTitle, $user}</div>
                            </li>
                        </xen:if>
                    </xen:foreach>
                </xen:contentcheck>
            </ul>
        </div>
    </div>
    <!-- end block: sidebar_online_staff -->
like that would that be possible in the core? or would we need a Addon to do this?
 
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