Category Controller
Spawning out of my grander plans, I’ve developed a plugin that will allow be to filter the posts and comments that users receive based on their login. This is totally granular, allowing selection by user. Categories are used as the identifier, and the code is permissive rather than exclusionary. That is to say, a user needs to be given explicit permission to read a category before he will be able to see posts in that category.
In the search for a holistic solution to the requirement behind the code, i have also extended the functionality to hide the dashboard (properly, you won’t be able to put index.php into the address bar to get there) and to rewrite the comments editing admin page (which, bizarrely, does not use the WP hookable functions for retrieving lists of posts/comments – serious omission IMO). The reason for doing so is, in each case, the pages allow registered users to get to posts and comments (or see their existence) – which is not the object of the exercise…
There is also a customisable capability level at which this filtering won’t apply. And a sticky category of ‘public’ is applied so that you can still have posts that show up to your unregistered users.
This is a useful applet for me as it means that I can use the same blog installation to host the extranets for all my clients, and still maintain partitioned confidentiality between them.
and i’ve got to think of a better name for the plugin than CategoryControl. Any ideas?
Hi Justin,
1. Thanks for your work,
2. Info: You solved 2 problems I thought about for a long time.
=> I work in development aid, presently Sudan/Darfur, and committed to knowledge transfer I have first used a WP/XAMPP install on a USB stick to not only keep a project diary but to make certain portions of my posts accessible to others in the project office where I work.
“Like you I used categories to separate different “clientèle”: project staff, implementing partners – up to gov counterparts who could read only sanitized info but needed to be “informed”.
I later moved to Lighty2Go (a lighttp stack w. MySQL) but final target (in perceived “technical elegance and efficiency”) was always to use “SQLite”. Now it’s possible.
3. Where I would like to go.
For the last 4-5 years my target for “enabling “”knowledgeflows”” in development aid” was always to do “everything” inside the “Browser”.
=> acquiring knowledge => web site browsing
=> storing knowledge => texts in WP with tags
=> creating knowledge => WP with tags
=> sharing knowledge => writing email / publishing w WP
I worked with different compiled “temporary” solution in the last 5 yrs., all on USB sticks (DataProtection mainly) but now a great step is possible.
There is “PortableFireFox”, an extension called POW (Java webserver plus SQLite database), there is WP 2.3 / 2.4 with tags, there is your PDO “plugin” for SQLIte, now your “category controller” and there it is:
A potential “knowledge acquiring, creating / storing / publishing solution” to be distributed free on a USB Stick (plus some other OpenSource software for professional work: ganttproject, freemind, etc.)
By connecting the best blog system to SQLite you provided “my missing link”.
I will probably participate in starting / planning a school construction project in South Sudan. In touch with students / educators I will try testing the “validity” of my idea that increased “easy access to knowledge, participating in creating knowledge” will be “the” development issue to accelerate development.
Thanks again, keep you posted, bfh
thanks for sharing Bernd. it’s good to see that there will be practical (and ethical) applications for the plug-ins.
Justin, you mentioned that the SQLite plugin works with WP 2.4 but has problems with 2.3.
As the official 2.4 version will be skipped, what “snapshot” did you use?
All the best, bfh
_had problems_ is probably more accurate. I fixed it for 2.3 a while ago (at least i’ve had no complaints since the initial bugs were ironed out).
i used 2.4.1 – bleeding for my initial testing. i have not kept up with the snapshots due to holidays and office moves. i’ll probably update the code against the current bleeding edge snapshot at the same time as posting the various plugins towards the latter end of next week.