Access 1.2 – Control for individual pages, no-read settings and full capabilities management

   Amir

Announcements

February 4, 2014
25

We’re very excited to announce a major new version of Access – 1.2. This new release includes big new features, many fixes and performance improvements.

Access 1.2 has grown up from a minimalistic content-type access control to full access and privileges management for WordPress.

The New Access will let you craft the exact capabilities, anywhere in the WordPress admin, for any user type. It’s fully integrated with WPML and WooCommerce, letting you enjoy easy management with accurate results.

Choose what to do when there is no read permission

Until now, when Access blocked read permission, visitors got a 404 error page. Access 1.2 lets you choose exactly what to do when visitors cannot read content.

Choose what to display to people without read access
Choose what to display to people without read access

You can choose between:

  • The so friendly default 404 error page
  • A page template (PHP template)
  • A Views Content Template

If you want to create content sites, where non-paying visitors can see just a teaser of your content and your sign-up propaganda, you can easily implement it now, using a specialized template. Users who have read access will see the content with its ‘normal’ template. People without read access will see it with the template you’ve selected in Access admin.

Access control for individual pages

Access 1.2 lets you grant or block access to specific content in your site. Every ‘edit’ screen now includes an Access box.

Access box in content edit
Access box in content edit

You can create ‘access groups’ for pages, posts and custom type content. Then, use Access to control who can read that content in the front-end.

Manage capabilities for the WordPress admin

Access 1.2 goes beyond control for different content types. It also lets you select what different users can do in the WordPress admin.

WordPress admin capabilities
WordPress admin capabilities

For standard WordPress roles, or roles that other plugins create, you can view the capabilities. For roles that you create with Access, you can assign capabilities.

Full integration with WPML and WooCommerce

Access now lets you easily manage the capabilities for any plugin. It knows the capabilities of WPML and WooCommerce and lists them in simple and clear language.

WPML and WooCommerce capabilities
WPML and WooCommerce capabilities

This way, you can create multilingual and e-commerce sites and set up your custom roles for managing translations and the store.

WPML support requires WPML 3.1, which will be released in a few days.

Update to Access 1.2

The easiest way to get updates to Toolset plugins, including Access, is using our Installer plugin. If you are using Installer, you should see this update automatically in your admin dashboard within the next 12 hours.

You can always download updates from your Toolset account, under Downloads.

Ideas? Questions? Suggestions? Let us know by leaving a comment here.

 

Comments 25 Responses

  2. Hi Amir,
    I’ll always say that Toolset has been my best invested money on the Internet (that was just my way of saying thank you for such a great work).
    Now, to the point in this post: I think it would be great if you could give us an example of how it can be implemented what you say in the paragraph: “If you want to create content sites, where non-paying visitors can see just a teaser of your content and your sign-up propaganda, you can easily implement it now, using a specialized template. Users who have read access will see the content with its ‘normal’ template. People without read access will see it with the template you’ve selected in Access admin.”
    Thanks again!

  4. I cannot seem to edit permissions for existing custom roles created with Access prior to v1.2.

    Also, the texts in the table overlaps with the checkboes in many cases. See (http://imgur.com/1JY7YEx) and (http://imgur.com/ykhHuxo).

    And there’s this new notice message at the top of the page now (possibly related to Views): “Warning: The Post Type View uses the same name for singular name and plural name. Access can’t control access to this object. Please use a different name for the singular and plural names.”

    Other than this, it is a welcome improvement to Access.

    • You’re right about that and I forgot to mention in the blog post. The best solution would be to remove the older roles and recreate them. It’s a long story, why it’s not possible to change, but it’s really problematic, due to information that we didn’t save at the time.

      1. Create new roles. Set their level and the capabilities that you need.
      2. Delete the new roles. As you delete, WordPress will ask you to choose what role to migrate to. Choose the new role.

      Does this work for you?

      And, thanks for catching the English mistake.

  5. Hi,
    i suggest two features :
    – add collaps / Expand for each post type and taxomony section
    – inverse cells tabs for each group roles because you can have more than 5 roles
    – better information about custom roles, add title for each plugins

  6. Hello Amir.
    as we are “Views” heavy users, and since we give to the clients to access the backend as editors, we would like to have a per-page control of admin access. I’d like to protect from accidental editing by editors the template views or other “service” pages. Is it something in plans? It shouldn’t be complicated to implement.
    Thank you!

    • For now, the best we can offer is to use the Embedded version of Views:
      https://toolset.com/documentation/embedded-types-and-views/

      This lets you hard-code everything, so that your end users cannot accidentally edit it.

      Adding permissions to edit Views makes good sense. I’m adding this to our wishlist, but I’m not sure to what version we can add it. We already have other versions that are going to Views 1.6, so I can’t promise when.

  7. On my localhost I have Access controlling access to the pages and posts. The intention is that only admin and a specific group do have access to a specific page which is displayed on the main menu. My user “world” who is not part of that permitted group does see it as well and I cannot disable it.

    There active plugins in my WP 3.9 are only Type, Views and Access

    If I disable access to pages, “world” cannot see the main menu at all thus I must allow it. As said above regretfully I cannot limit viewing of only specific pages.

    Thanks for help

    • Are you talking about the items appearing in the navigation menu for the wrong users, or that the wrong users can actually read that content?

    • Detailed descriptio:

      Pages and posts are managed by Access; there are no other plugins activated.

      Main menu for users who are not-login should read
      Home Register Login

      after login role=producer – main menu should read
      Home “Manage Your Medicines” Search Logout

      role=”world” should see
      Home Search Logout

      I assigned page=”ManageYourMedicines” to access group=”drug-producer”, user “producer” is member of that group
      page=”ManageYourMedicines” was added to the main menu

      Fault:
      after login “world” can see exactly what “producer” does

      Thanks

      • I’m not 100% sure how this looks on your site. I’ve asked Gen, who develops Access to contact you and get the complete information.