Improve "error" message for visitors

[joelle]

Sometimes guests don't get to see the whole deal until they either sign in or register. This may apply to add-ons like IP.Gallery or IP.Blog. If guests are not allowed to see content, they get this harsh reply "An Error Occurred" which lets probably a lot of users feel bad and some may just leave.

Why not tell the visitors what to do instead in order to gain access to the content they are looking for and save one click by just sending them to a page where they can log in or register.

Check out the mockup and the original message.

[bfarber]

Because much of the time we have no way to know if they login if they will then have permission to view the content.

Consider, for instance, you have a members group and a premium members group. A guest visits and clicks on a profile, which they don't have permission to view. Now, say the members group does not either, but the premium members group does. What you are suggesting is to tell that guest to login or register so they can see the page, but what if they login as a member, and still get an error. That is almost as confusing.

This goes for much of the site, since most permissions are configurable per-group (or rather, per-permission mask).

[joelle]

So there may be an extra query to see if users are logged in or not. If they are not logged in they would see the above suggested page, and if they are logged in, they would need to see a different dynamic "error" page which may be edited by the admin.

Multiple "error" information pages would be necessary for that.

[changeindia]

indeed, i would also like to see some better screen.