Display Name History Problem

[SMen]

The moderator member group on my system has the permission to view Display Name History, yet, for some reason, when they attempt to they receive a permission denied error.  This is the only Group, other than Administrators that has the permission and it is working fine for Administrators.

Can someone assist/advise?

Thank you

[Jim M]

Could you please provide a user's display name who is attempting to view it which we can review?

Please also ensure your access details are up to date.

We would need to look further into this for you, however the access details on file appear to be incorrect or missing. Could you please update these details by visiting your client area, selecting the relevant purchase, then clicking "Review/Update Access Information" under the "Stored Access Information" section. 

We look forward to further assisting you. 

 

[SMen]

Sure...  MBear is one that I just made a Moderator to test that the report was accurate.

I re-entered the passwords, in case they were incorrect.

 

[Marc]

Please check the htaccess details, as they appear to be incorrect

[SMen]

11 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Please check the htaccess details, as they appear to be incorrect

Not sure what issue you are having... I have verified the .htaccess twice now...  The username is case sensitive, what is entered is accurate and verified.

[Jim M]

The user, nor the moderator group, is setup in ACP -> Members -> Staff -> Moderators. You will want to add this group or user as a moderator and then provide them with this permission.

[SMen]

9 minutes ago, Jim M said:

The user, nor the moderator group, is setup in ACP -> Members -> Staff -> Moderators. You will want to add this group or user as a moderator and then provide them with this permission.

It WAS, when I tested.  Feel free to use a different moderator.

[Jim M]

Please disable all third party applications and plugins then switch to the default theme. Once I did that on your community with that user, I had no issues viewing the Display Name history.

[SMen]

2 hours ago, Jim M said:

Please disable all third party applications and plugins then switch to the default theme. Once I did that on your community with that user, I had no issues viewing the Display Name history.

Thanks Jim... but making my site look like a boiler plate isn't very appealing.  I really don't know much about the mechanics behind the scenes, but my understanding is that your third-party developer apps go through intense scrutiny and are literally not allowed to touch system tables etc.  I may be wrong in saying that....  But, its also my understanding why so many have left, and perhaps that has reduced the headaches you and the other staff have to deal with dramatically.  But for a small, and long-time, IPS user like me who pretty much gets this same response with every issue encountered, it is disheartening.

 

[Jim M]

17 minutes ago, SMen said:

Thanks Jim... but making my site look like a boiler plate isn't very appealing.  I really don't know much about the mechanics behind the scenes, but my understanding is that your third-party developer apps go through intense scrutiny and are literally not allowed to touch system tables etc.  I may be wrong in saying that....  But, its also my understanding why so many have left, and perhaps that has reduced the headaches you and the other staff have to deal with dramatically.  But for a small, and long-time, IPS user like me who pretty much gets this same response with every issue encountered, it is disheartening.

 

Third party applications and plugins from the Marketplace are reviewed at the surface for our certain rules and general breakage, however, we cannot perform in depth review of every add-on. For any issue you’re encountering you will want to disable all third party items to see if it is related. If after disabling, the issue is no longer present that would indicate a third party add-on is responsible. You will want to enable them one by one to see which one it is. Once you find it, you will want to see if there are any updates or if it’s compatible with the Invision Community version you’re on. If there is still an issue after that, you’ll want to contact the author for assistance.

Third party add-ons are still outside our scope of support and all risk is with yourself, the site owner.

While it is completely your decision to use these add-ons, we can only support our core software so the first step of diagnosis would be to disable the many which are installed and in this case, it resolved the issue so it would be up to you and the author of the add-on at hand to resolve it. I’m sorry I do not have better news for you. 

[SMen]

Jim, again, thank you for the information.  I understand this, and I do appreciate it.  I'm only expressing my opinion and my experiences and don't wish to incite ire with anyone.

However, some developers have expressed information to me contrary to what you have stated of your process.  Others are less than pleased when you single out their app as a "culprit" for causing an issue, believing there is no way their app could cause that issue.  Additionally, some problems are also resolved by IPS maintenance releases, even though support staff has claimed it is a third-part problem.  I don't typically worry about little things, or "fun" add-ons.  But this issue is a member group security setting, which I don't understand how the logic would be interfered with by a third-party app.  Point in case:  If I turn the setting off for the Administrator Group, they no longer can see the history.  The moderator group can see the icon for the history, but a permission error is displayed instead.  If I turn it off, they can not see the icon.  Why is one member group working properly, but not another?

A previous issue I had involved new user registrations.  They would all error on the users screen, though they would be created but missing pertinent info.  I received a similar text chain to this.  I found 2 apps and 1 plug in that individual or all together disabled prevented the problem.  However, after the next maintenance release, the problem disappeared.  A new problem appeared:  Anyone registering from a mobile device creates a valid account and an empty account.  I can live with that, I just have a lot of skipped member numbers.  All that being said, some of my issues have been solved by a third-party making a change to their app, but the major ones have been by IPS making a change.

I will do as you suggest and attempt to narrow it down to a particular app or plugin... but it still seems strange to me.  Of course, as said earlier, I no longer understand the structure of the current system as I did your systems of the past.

 

[Marc]

The reality is, we have to go down the route of most probable and work our way down the list. Unfortunately the most common causes, by quite a margin, are 3rd party addons and hosting issues. This is not in any way to say the issue may not be related to ourselves. It may be. But we have to check the most probable before anything else. After all, if someone took a specific car making a strange noise to a garage, and they have seen 1000 before whereby its being caused by a window seal they had fitted, you wouldnt check every other part of the car first. You would of course check that window seal, then go from there. This is all we are doing when we ask this.

With regards your issue, we would actually need to disable them ourselves when testing also. This would only be for a manner of a min while looking (most of the time not even that). If you can provide a specific moderator you know to be having the issue, we can then take a look from there, rather than us picking a moderator. As found there, Jim picked one you happened to know why.