Restrictions with Custom Capabilities

[holowan]

Hi All,

After watching Jason's excellent videos on working with custom capabilities, I got fiddling with them on my site. But I can't seem to achieve what I'm after.

We have nearly 40 learning products that users gain full access to once they subscribe (regular subscribers are Level 1 users). We're using category restrictions to do this. I want to add a new product (category), but I don't want it to be available to regular subscribers -- only to a new group (or level) of subscribers. And in turn I don't want these new users to have access to content normally available to Level 1 subscribers. Does that make sense?

I could simply begin using Level 2, but I'd like my solution to be expandable...we may want to add 4 or 5 products in the future, and again these products would only be available to subscribers who have been granted access to them (and these subscribers wouldn't have access to anything else).

I thought this would be possible with custom capabilities, but what I'm finding is that the regular Level 1 subscribers also have access to content "marked" with custom capabilities; and users with access to the "custom capabilities" content also have access to everything else.

Am I missing something?!

Thanks!

Geoff

[Bruce C]

Hi Geoff!

Restriction of categories with custom capabilities is tricky. It takes custom code...

However, what I would suggest is that you watch the custom capabilities video again, and instead of guarding your categories with levels, you must move strictly to custom capabilities instead. That's probably what's causing the problem, as anyone with level 1 access can, in turn, access things from level 0.

Maintenance Mode is going to be your friend.

[holowan]

Hi Ace,

Thanks a lot for your reply! I understand exactly what you're describing -- so in other words, each of our training titles would be set up as a custom capability; then we'd simply set up users to have access to whatever combination of custom capabilities (titles) we want. Some might have one, some might have 20, etc. Do I have that right?

In terms of implementing this, I'm still weighing the pros and cons of actually doing this, but thanks again for the great info.

Cheers,

Geoff

[Bruce C]

That's exactly right, you cannot set up restrictions via level without having members of a higher level be able to see the content also.