Support

Hi -

Here's a enhancement request / idea for 'ya.  Allow flexibility to designate parent and child menu items as Public or Private (Members Only).  This would allow a more functional menu layout by allowing additional Members Only web pages to appear anywhere throughout the menu structure.  Right now "Members Only" content is restricted to a single menu option.

Example Menu Layout 

Home [Public]
Board of Directors  [Public]
 - Meeting Schedule [Public] 
 - Meeting Minutes [Public]
 - Financial Reports [Private]
Homeowner Info [Private]
 - Landscape [Private] 
 - Rules and Regs [Private] 
 - ByLaws [Private]
Next Item [Public]
Next Item [Private]

 Business Rules could be as follows:

• Home Page must always be Public 
• A parent menu item can be either Public or Private
• If a parent menu item is private, then all child items must be private
• If parent menu item is public, then child items may be either private or public.

Just a thought ...

Thanks,

Gary

Understand your idea.

We have been discussing this back and forth when we were implementing the private pages functionality. The reason we ended up deciding to keep all member-only pages under one node is usability for members. In this way member when he logs in can easily see what private pages are now available to him. If they were spread out, member would have to go through the whole site (and few people would ever bother to do it - this is actual feedback we had from many administrators who were using such functions in other systems).

A secondary reason was also to keep admin interface simpler. Now to make a page member-only admin simply moves it under member-only node. Otherwise each page would have to have an option Public/Private and we always hate to add options into interface since it confuses many less experienced users. 

We know that there are still other pros and cons and we do plan to introduce more flexibility in this area later in the year.

Your feedback - and a very detailed and comprehensive description is highly appreciated.

After reading your comments I tend to agree that it doesn't make much sense to mix public / private submenu options.   I'm building out my site for my Homeowner's Association and most of the information we want to publish is strictly "Members Only".  Trying to cram all the private pages under the single private option makes navigation a bit difficult.  If I had the option of designating each parent menu option as either public or private it would make a big difference (child options would inherit from parent)

Here's how I envision our site navigation - 

Home (public)

Announcements (Private)

Events (Private) 

Homowner Info (Private)
- Landscape
- Architecture Board
- Rules & Regs
- By Laws

Board of Directors (Private)
- Minutes
- Committees
- Financial

Master Assn (Private)

Management Company (Private)

Links (Private)


Register (public)

Contact Us (public)

Well .. that's food for thought .. I appreciate the dialog and consideration

 
Gary Vogt
 

Since you are using only two levels, you can do it in this way:

Home (public)

Register (public)

Contact Us (public)

Member-only (Private, including all children)
- Announcements
- Events
- Homowner Info
-- Landscape
-- Architecture Board
-- Rules & Regs
-- By Laws
- Board of Directors
-- Minutes
-- Committees
-- Financial
- Master Assn
- Management Company
- Links

Also, Member-only page can contain links to all the pages with a brief intro - to motivate people to login. Look at these guys: http://www.riverplace100.org

And these guys seem to plan to leave many of similar pages in public access: http://radiance.cloverpad.org (Though they are still setting this up)

 Thanks again for feedback.
 

Thanks for advice .. I didn't realize I could have more than one level off the main menu option.  

I also don't understand your comment ... "Member-only page can contain links to all the pages with a brief intro - to motivate people to login".  Does that mean the toplevel member page should appear when user is not logged in?

One very minor suggestion would be remove or fix the display of the the "lock" icons from menu options.  They seem to interfere with text of of the submenu options.   See this screenshot.  Since all the items under the Members Only section are restricted; flagging each of them with the icon is a bit redundant (and distracting)

You are right, my mistake. Top level page will not be visible until people login. But what some people do is create a public page with links to member-only pages (system will ask for login if a public visitor follows a link).

Re lock icon - yes, we know that on some themes lock icons interfere with longer page names. The reason we kept the lock on all pages under Member-only section is for consistency with visibility indicator (eye) and to communicate to less experienced users that these pages are indeed secure once they are moved under Members-only section. I made a note for our team to revisit this issue.