28 August 2014, 10:12

We've recently upgraded to version 1.9.1 from 1.7. I am finding that users in the institution I set up are able to share pages publicly - even though "Allow institution public pages" has not been checked in the settings for that institution. Users cannot create secret URLs but the URL from their page will open even when they are not logged in. (When the user removes the 'shared with public' permission from that page, the URL no longer opens but goes to the login page.)

I don't want students sharing publicly until their pages are ready and have been approved. This seemed to work in 1.7.

Any suggestions or workarounds? Am I misunderstanding this feature?

Thanks,
Janis

28 August 2014, 16:30

Hi Janis,

Thank you for this report.

I will look into this and see what I can find out.

Cheers

Robert

28 August 2014, 17:02

Thanks Robert. By the way, I just realized that our upgrade took us to 1.9.2.

Janis

29 August 2014, 13:41

Hi Janis,

I've not been able to replicate this issue - I do note that for users that are in more than one institution where one has it ticked and the other doesn't they can still add public access to the pages.

To allow me to do more investigation can you please let me know the exact versions of the 1.7 (from) and 1.9 (to) Mahara

Cheers

Robert

29 August 2014, 16:39

Hi Robert,

I'm pretty sure we were at 1.7.1 before the upgrade but it might have been 1.7.0. We are now at 1.9.2.

I tried again with two of my 'student' accounts and in both cases, it was only the Profile page that came up with the option to share with public. Other pages did not offer that option.

Both students are only in one institution.

Thanks for looking into this issue.

Janis

31 August 2014, 14:25

Hello Janis,

When you allow public pages, you automatically allow users to set their profiles to public as well. However, if you do not allow public pages, you can decide whether profiles can be public or not. You can see these settings in Administration -> Configure site -> Site options -> General settings.

If you don't want your students to make their profile pages public, you will need to take the check mark off from the check box. However, Mahara does not automatically set the profile to public. The students will still need to make that choice consciously.

The public pages settings seem to work correctly.

Cheers

Kristina

31 August 2014, 15:37

Hi Kristina,

I'm glad to hear that the site works as it should. Just to check that I understand correctly, the Allow public pages setting also automatically enables the Allow public profiles setting. In other words, if I want to have public pages at all, I need to accept having public profiles. 

Unfortunately, I was hoping for a setting that would restrict students in one institution from sharing ANY pages (including their profile page) publicly and some students in another institution to be able to share any page except the profile page publicly. In other words, I want to have the option to share pages, but not the profile pages.

Thanks for your help!
Janis

31 August 2014, 16:41

Hello Janis,

The current implementation is not that differentiated I am afraid. You can create a wishlist item at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+filebug if you want us to keep track of that and see if someone wants to implement that in the future or you can fund the development work for that feature and it could make it into the April 2015 release. :-)

Cheers

Kristina

31 August 2014, 17:39

Hi Kristina,

I guess I just didn't notice that in version 1.7 so apparently it hasn't been a big issue at our institution!

Thanks for your reply.

Janis

08 February 2017, 10:29

In addition to the informations above .... Puplic profiles also make the contacts (Kontakte) in the contact-block visible to the public. Also the name and the profile-image of users in the contact-list will be public.

So it is important to be able to deactivate public profiles.

Is there allready a whislist-entry? Can I set the configuration to disable public profiles in the database, because in the html-page the button is not configurable?

I have two institutions, one with public pages disabled and one with public pages enabled. So I have to "allow" public pages for mahara at all but public profiles should be disabled, because in one institution the public pages AND public profiles are not allowed.