[opinion] - rss and private forums

[opinion] - rss and private forums Started by emanuele · December 12, 2012, 07:53:48 am · Read 23368 times 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. previous topic - next topic

[opinion] - rss and private forums

December 12, 2012, 07:53:48 am

While trying to debug an issue with SMF, I noticed that accessing the rss feeds of a forum where guests browsing is disabled displays the login form.
Now, since rss feed are usually provided to feed readers, wouldn't make more sense to provide a properly formatted feed with a message: "this board is private, no feeds are available" or something along the lines?

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #1 – December 12, 2012, 08:20:43 am

Sounds reasonable... Or simply an empty feed, I don't remember off hand what is the accepted expected format for no news.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #2 – December 12, 2012, 12:42:54 pm

Or do you still provide the feed since its just a limited post snip ... sanitized for email etc ... It just seems a bit odd to have to enable guest browsing in order to enable an RSS feed to your users.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #3 – December 12, 2012, 12:50:24 pm

Well, the user with problems had all the boards hidden, guests blocked, banned everything that wasn't USA, guest access removed from any board, etc...
So he wouldn't be happy to show even a small snip I think.

Additionally RSS feeds respect boards permissions too, so it is not only about guests browsing.
And that reminds me that this forum has all the boards hidden to guests and that is the feed provided:

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="0.92" xml:lang="en-US">
	<channel>
		<title>My Dialogo Community</title>
		<link>http://www.spudsdesign.com/dialogo/index.php</link>
		<description><![CDATA[Live information from My Dialogo Community]]></description>
	</channel>
</rss>

Unrelated: missing save draft button text!

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #4 – December 12, 2012, 01:01:21 pm

If guest browsing is disabled, then imo the correct behavior is for rss feeds (for guests) to be empty... we can't send in rss format information they're not supposed to access at all.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #5 – December 12, 2012, 01:16:32 pm

Still it seems unnecessary to have to enable guest browse access & guest access to a board, etc just to provide an snippet of text ... seems to me that you have to expose/open to much when all you want to do is provide a little info.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #6 – December 12, 2012, 02:59:56 pm

Quote from: TestMonkey – December 12, 2012, 01:01:21 pmIf guest browsing is disabled, then imo the correct behavior is for rss feeds (for guests) to be empty... we can't send in rss format information they're not supposed to access at all.

This.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #7 – December 12, 2012, 03:22:13 pm

Nor did I say we should ....

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #8 – December 12, 2012, 04:51:46 pm

Yep, send nothing

However, is RSS still a thing? Safari/Chrome dropped their feed readers, are people still using it?

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #9 – December 12, 2012, 05:45:00 pm

It still gets used to some extent.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #10 – December 12, 2012, 08:10:18 pm

Yes, it is used.

TestMonkey likes external formats, so is not entirely objective anyway nor does need to.

Quote from: Spuds – December 12, 2012, 12:42:54 pmOr do you still provide the feed since its just a limited post snip ... sanitized for email etc ... It just seems a bit odd to have to enable guest browsing in order to enable an RSS feed to your users.

Not to your users (for those you provide), but to the guests themselves: the rss result for guests shouldn't be the login form... It's clear why that is, the forum first checks for

Code: [Select]

		// If guest access is disallowed, a guest is kicked out... politely. :P
		elseif (empty($modSettings['allow_guestAccess']) && $user_info['is_guest'] && (!isset($_GET['action']) || !in_array($_GET['action'], array('coppa', 'login', 'login2', 'register', 'register2', 'reminder', 'activate', 'help', 'mailq', 'verificationcode', 'openidreturn'))))
		{
			$this->_file_name = $sourcedir . '/Subs-Auth.php';
			$this->_function_name = 'KickGuest';
		}

before it even knows the request is for rss this time.
We could add an exception for 'rss' too... provided that it doesn't display anything for guests in this case.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #11 – December 12, 2012, 08:27:29 pm

Thats pretty much what I did on some of my boards, I control what rss "guests" can access via guest access permission restrictions on the boards, but I don;t require "allow guest access" to the forum for a simple post snip via rss.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #12 – December 12, 2012, 08:48:51 pm

In this configuration:

Quote allow guests to browse the forum

Off.

Quote membergroups who can access board1, board2

Guests, special_group1, special_group2

Results:
# A guest loads the forum in browser, board1, etc, any board, any action
=> login form
=> they cannot see any post, any title, from board1 or board2.
=> 'Allow guests to browse' takes precedence over any others.
This is the current behavior.
Keep? Drop?

In the same conditions:
# A guest loads a rss feed for the forum
=> the login form in the rss reader?
=> an empty feed?
=> a message?

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #13 – December 13, 2012, 09:12:25 pm

Maybe Another ACP Option^tm feature cat likes those

RSS Feeds => check (Main->News and Newsletters->Settings)
Allow guests to browse the forum => check (Configuration->Features and Options->General)
Allowed Groups: => Guest (Forum->Boards->Modify Boards->(select board)Modify)

You get the feed .... to me the RSS Feeds should be the master setting and not rely on the Allow Guests, which is IMO another thing altogether. I suppose there could be another setting in the RSS panel "allow guests to get feed" as well, but having to go to three panels in different areas to enable this feature is madness.

Re: [opinion] - rss and private forums

Reply #14 – December 15, 2012, 03:56:32 pm

OK! Cool. It's logical. (which is a blasphemy, as we all know...

)

TestMonkey thinks that SpudsMan faces in this thread the natural 'resistance to change' from us otherz.

Our brainz has wired that setting to a different meaning. You say that 'allow guests to browse the forum' refers to allowing guests to browse the forum! Ah, the horror.

OK. 'Allow to browse the forum' is a bad one, because it's forum-interface centric and yet we apply it to any output.
Gedankenexperiment: lets remove it or ignore it.
Then, I would ask: what about adding a setting named 'private site' = 'per invitation alone' = 'restrict at maximum any outgoing content from this site'. I would support adding it, because it's a maximum privacy choice. Place it near 'maintenance mode', because it's a very high level of restriction: maintenance mode restricts the use of the site to admins alone, 'private site' restricts the use of the site to registered members alone.