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BuddyPress Privacy Component: An Update


  • Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    Many people have been inquiring about privacy options in BuddyPress. Some of you are aware that I am currently coding a Privacy Component for BuddyPress. I decided that it is time to fill the community in on my component, providing more details and a timeline.

    My Privacy Component will be entering a private alpha early next week. After the alpha phase is complete, it will then be available as a public Beta. If it goes well, and Andy likes it, it may be included in the BP core for version 1.2. If you look at the BP roadmap, you will see that that is when privacy filtering is scheduled to be included in core.

    In this screen capture of one of the privacy setting screens, you can see that there are actually six user classification filters that can be chosen for each BP object. The sixth option, “Relationship Mapped”, is made available by a separate plugin which I’ll be releasing later. The default Privacy Component will offer five levels.

    My current estimated release date for the first public beta is the week of October 5. This date may change depending on the feedback from the alpha phase.

    More Details

    This is taken from the Privacy Component’s current readme.txt file:

    BPAz is a privacy control component for BuddyPress that provides a site’s users a mechanism with which to control who has access to which pieces of their personal data.

    == Description ==

    The BuddyPress Authorization component (also referred to as BPAz, BP-Authz, or BuddyPress Privacy Component) is a BuddyPress component that allows users fine, granular control over who has access to which pieces of their personal data. It provides this service by hooking into BuddyPress’ core functionality, thereby giving users the ability to control (grant or deny) access to each piece, or grouping of, their personal data.

    The term “auth” is often used interchangeably for authentication or authorization. There is significant difference in meaning between them. Authentication is not authorization. Authorization is not authentication. Authentication must come before authorization. Authentication is handled by WPMU, initially by the registration process and subsequently by the login script. Authorization deals with verifying and managing the access rights a given authenticated user has to certain objects.

    Because of this confusion, the process of authentication is now often referred to as A1, or AuthN, or simply Au. The process of authorization is now often referred to as A2, or AuthZ, or simply Az. Since authentication must come before authorization, the A1-A2 ordinality of the terms is evident. This also explains the alternate names BPAz and BP-Authz.

    BPAz deals with authorization by verifying and managing access rights an authenticated user has to other’s objects–although a user may choose to expose their data to non-logged in users as well.

    The core BuddyPress objects on which rights can be set:

    • xprofile fields
    • activity stream actions
    • friends list
    • groups list
    • messaging
    • blogs
    • wire
    • status updates

    The basic access levels configurable per object (some objects offer only a subset of these rights):

    • allow/deny anyone (globally public or globally private). This is accomplished by setting an object’s viewing rights to either “All Users” or “Only Me”
    • allow only “Logged in Users” to view a given object
    • allow only friends to view a given object
    • allow only a specific list of users to view a given object. This is also called per user access control. This is accomplished by setting an object’s viewing rights to “These Users Only” and then entering a comma-separated list of usernames (a member’s login name) in a textbox that becomes visible.

    NOTE: Per relationship-type access control is possible if you use my BuddyPress Relationship Mapping plugin. For instance, allow by friend, colleague, partner, client, customer, fan, etcetera.

    Site Administration of BuddyPress User Privacy Tools

    Site administrators have ultimate control and oversight over the configuration of BPAz’s features and functionality via an additional administration panel under the BuddyPress menu hierarchy. The BuddyPress Privacy Component is enabled by default for all object groupings. However, Site Administrators can disable user-configurable sitewide privacy, or even individual privacy control objects, by using the Privacy Settings administration panel. As the Site Administrator, you will always be able to see each user’s complete content. Users do not have any options to hide content from Site Administrators.

Viewing 25 replies - 76 through 100 (of 101 total)

  • foodin65
    Participant

    @foodin65

    I’m certainly ready to test it :D


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    @Bowe

    Haha! Yep, I’m mad now. Good bye.


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    Seriously, though…

    Although your cries may be fortuitous, they are in fact at the right time. I plan on releasing the first public beta of my BuddyPress Privacy Component late this Saturday. When it is up, I’ll Tweet about it (follow me @jeffsayre) and post the link here as well.

    I plan on first providing it via my website. I will uploaded it to my WP Repo account next week when I return from my trip–and have had a chance to make a few more tweaks here and there. This also means that you will be on your own for a few days. That should be just enough time for everything to blow up.

    Leave any feedback on the post on my website. As this plugin is designed around the default BP theme, if you have a custom theme, you may have to do some CSS tweaking. It should not be a big issue though.

    Happy Week-After Thanksgiving!


    Brajesh Singh
    Participant

    @sbrajesh

    wow,that’s great Jeff

    pretty excited to test it :)

    Thanks so much


    r-a-y
    Keymaster

    @r-a-y

    Originally posted by Jeff Sayre:

    That should be just enough time for everything to blow up.

    Nicely put! ;)

    Looking forward to the beta as well.


    Bowe
    Participant

    @bowromir

    I knew some intimidation would do the trick! That’s great news Jeff, looking forward to it!


    abcde666
    Participant

    @erich73

    Hey Jeff,

    can you install BuddyPress on your website (including your Privacy-Component) and we can test the functionality then at your website ?

    That would be a great way in order to test it.

    If you wish, we can also make some “bug-posts” or suggestions into your Discussion-Forum or wherever you like us to do so.

    Gonna see if we can blow it up ;-)


    @mercime
    Keymaster

    @mercime

    Hi Jeff, ready to test the Privacy Component as well ;-)


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    @Erich73

    All my sites are development sites on a private network. So, at this time, I don’t have a site with public access.


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    It’s ready and live! Grab it here http://jeffsayre.com/buddypress/

    A note about installation:

    First, please read the readme.txt file. You will read that it says, “copy bp-authz.php and /bp-authz/ into /wp-content/plugins/ and activate the plugin.”

    This means that you need to make sure that you have both the directory /bp-authz/ and the single file bp-authz.php in /wp-contents/plugins/. So, it should look like this:

    /plugins/

    …/buddypress/

    …/bp-authz/

    …bp-authz.php

    That last file needs to be at the same level as the /bp-authz/ directory. So, instead of simply dragging the main package directory BPAz into plugins, you drag the contents into plugins instead, leaving out the BPAz directory.

    It is a little confusing, but this is often the way 3rd-party BuddyPress plugins are packaged and installed—at least when developing with the BP skeleton component.

    Remember, I’ll be unavailable until late next week. So, please leave any comments on my blog post.


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    I seems that some of you who could not wait to test out the privacy component have not yet tested it out! It is available for testing. See the above post for the link.


    abcde666
    Participant

    @erich73

    Jeff,

    it would making TESTING much much easier, if you could set-up a BP-website including your plugin.

    Please grap a domain and a cheap server and put BP onto it including your Privacy-plugin.

    Then a bunch of us can test it. This would be most effective and we can set permissions, and can feedback to each other.

    Like: hey, can you see my profile or is it hidden ? No, I can not see your Profile, bla, bla, bla…..

    Let me know if you need a domain-name, I still have a few laying around….I can just point it to your webhost…..


    Bowe
    Participant

    @bowromir

    Haha Jeff you’re right, bit busy on other things.. I’ll try to have a good look at it asap!


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    @Erich73

    it would making TESTING much much easier, if you could set-up a BP-website including your plugin.

    Please grap a domain and a cheap server and put BP onto it including your Privacy-plugin

    I’m sure that might help some people, but I am not going to take my already-too-hectic schedule and add another duty to my list. If you do not have your own site running, then you do not need this plugin.

    People need to see how my privacy component works on their BuddyPress sites. Those who have already given me feedback have provided great suggestions based on the needs of their sites’ users.


    D Cartwright
    Participant

    @aekeron

    Indeed. It’s not that hard for anyone to setup a test BP installation – there’s no need for Jeff to run a demo when he’s already done tons of work on the privacy component :)

    I’ll be playing with this in the coming week I think. Is there anything missing from it that you don’t have time to work on at the moment? I suspect we’ll need to modify it slightly so if we can do that in a way that would save you a bit of work…


    abcde666
    Participant

    @erich73

    @Jeff,

    sorry about my post.

    Fine with me.

    Thanks,


    5622115
    Inactive

    Downloading it now. I have quite a few plug-ins installed, so this should be a fairly good test of how well the kids play together. I’ll let you know of any problems I encounter. Thanks for your time developing this much needed functionality of any social networking site framework.


    5622115
    Inactive

    So far, so good. Playing nicely with my other plug-ins. Perhaps this is a yet-to-be-made enhancement, or an existing functionality that I am over-looking, but it would be nice for the site admin to be able to define default settings, or at least have all settings default to “friends only.” Did I just miss this, or is that not possible yet? Again, thanks for a great plug-in and much needed functionality that should definitely be basic to any good social networking framework.


    Bowe
    Participant

    @bowromir

    I really like the plugin Jeff and it seems to run without any troubles! I would like to see an admin panel where you can set some default privacy options like travisreems suggested above me!


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    @travisreems & @Bowe

    Thanks for testing and for your comments. I will be beefing up the options that Site Admins have to configure the privacy component. It will be in the next version or the one after that.

    I have discovered, with someone’s help, that there may be a browser-specific issue with some of the filtering options. I’m investigating this now.


    Jeff Sayre
    Participant

    @jeffsayre

    If you have not yet tested or commented on my BuddyPress Privacy Component, now is the time. I am holding back on some of the work as I wait to see where the coding dust settles for BP v1.2.

    You can get the Beta component here: http://jeffsayre.com/2009/12/05/buddypress-privacy-component-released/

    For those who want to know more about BuddyPress, Privacy, and the issue of hooking your community up to other social networks, I’ve posted a new article here:

    http://jeffsayre.com/2009/12/21/oauth-buddypress-and-privacy/


    Diego
    Participant

    @dpinna13

    Thanks for the great work Jeff. I’m actually testing it, and seems pretty good. I’m interested seeing progresses in blog and friends privacy.

    Would it be possible to edit the starting config? eg. all new user privacy options could be set on “all logged in users”?

    If you like so, I could start translating the next version of the plugin in italian.

    Thanks a lot


    gpo1
    Participant

    @gpo1

    @ Jeff Sayre

    impressive with this OAuth, BuddyPress, and Privacy plugin and this is the future..

    So OAuth would make your site expand more maybe with FB and others !


    sakthig
    Participant

    @sakthig

    Waiting for long time to release of this plugin

    only Jeff can answer for this?

    Awaiting for the release!


    peter
    Participant

    @peterzandqvist

    Hello. Is this plugin aliver? I sure could use it? Or is there any other plugin out there that makes the same stuff happen! Need that 0-1 security for members and not members for one of my pages on my site!

Viewing 25 replies - 76 through 100 (of 101 total)
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