Can I configure Joomla 2.5 to not allow authors to edit their articles after they have been published?

[nant]

I am trying to configure things so Authors can no longer edit their articles once they have been published.

The use case need I believe is obvious - if authors are allowed to alter published articles then this kind of defeats the purpose of editors and publishers.

I believe K2 has a built-in feature that if an author actually edits one of his already published articles, then the article is automatically unpublished (at least that is how K2 solves this case).

Am I missing a setting/feature or is this just a short-coming of Joomla that would need to be addressed somehow in the future?

Thanks for any response.
Nick

[Nick Savov]

Hi Nick,

Sorry, but this list is for Joomla Core CMS developers and discussion of
how to improve the CMS.

You should instead ask this question on the Joomla 2.5 ACL Forum. Here's
the direct link to it:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=673

Hope this helps!

Kind regards,
Nick S.

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[nant]

I know what this list is for.

As far as I can tell there is no way to not allow an author to edit his own article (with the Edit Own ACL setting on ofc) once the article is published.

I also searched extensively before posting here.

However I will start a new thread as you propose just to verify,

N.

[Nick Savov]

Thanks, Nick! I found your forum topic and replied in there with a
proposed solution. Hopefully that's what you were after.

In case anyone else is interested or finds this via Google, the forum
thread is at:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=673&t=771938

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[Nick Savov]

I misunderstood Nick's/Nant's dilemma. Here's a summary of the issue in
case someone else misunderstood as well:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=673&t=771938&p=2942168#p2942127

I wonder if we can satisfy both use cases by adding an "Allow (if
unpublished)" option to the "Allowed", "Denied", and "Inherited" within
the Edit Own field. Even then, the problem is that doesn't address the
"Allow (if unpublished or change to unpublished if published)". But maybe
that's what we want.

Any thoughts on how to best handle this in the core?

Kind regards,
Nick S.

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[Swapnil Shah]

I don't think the core needs to be able to do that. A system plugin that looks for the edit command and redirect to another page informing the author that the article has been published and they can't make any changes to it.

You can also do a template override and not output the edit button if the article meets a certain criteria, but If the author knows the article Id they can still edit the article by entering the proper URL.

Regards,


Neil
Sent from my iPhone

[hoochicken]

Hi,
that sounds to me a good idea.
Additionally an override for the edit layout can be made to, where it is checked whether the user is allowed to edit or not.
So even if a user should get around that missing edit button, he can't edit.
Greetings
Mareike

[nant]

@Savov - I like the idea of an allow-edit-own if not published setting as I believe it sounds like the right way to solve.

@Neil & @hoochicken

This workflow is standard practice in any publishing process. The authors and editors go back and forth improving an article and then the publisher takes over.
Once something is published it should not be allowed to change based on action of author.

This is one of the reasons that Joomla is seeing more and more third-party extensions that are taking over core CMS functionality (at least in my humble opinion).

K2 does solve this with a plugin (?) that unpublished an article if the original author makes a change. I believe that this approach is also not correct as the author this way is indirectly doing something that is not really allowed - that is to change the publish status.

The real solution is NOT to allow authors to touch published articles.

As I understand it, a template over-ride will just hide URLs and does not really stop the action itself (if someone can figure out the URL).

[nant]

Your system plugin idea sounds good also.

Which event should i trigger off?

Can you propose any sample code that I can look at to see how to figure out if an article is published and if user trying to edit has edit-own, edit, publisher privileges?

Thanks
N.

[Ole Ottosen (ot2sen)]

Hi Nick,

 

For joomla 1.5 there is a simple plugin for that exact purpose, to avoid any below Publisher to edit published articles.

Find it here:

'Limit article Edit' http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-a-security/site-access/content-restriction/10412

 

 

While it is not for J2.5 it may still get you forward in solving the issue at hand.

 

Ole

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/joomla-dev-cms/-/oSrv8w1hZ4MJ.

[nant]

Hi Ole!

Yup, already found this and have contacted the author.

If a real developer (lol, I do not consider myself a developer) can step in and propose something, I can help with testing and documenting.

Nick

[elin]

There is a known bug in the front end articles model (which uses the backend model that does not use access levels) that prevents seeing an unpublished item when you have only edit.own but not edit in the category.   I do think however that if you do show articles in the contact form for a linked user you get a list of all of their articles regardless of status. This is because it does not use the same articles model.

Elin 

[Niels Braczek]

Am 21.11.2012 11:59, schrieb Nick Savov:

> I wonder if we can satisfy both use cases by adding an "Allow (if
> unpublished)" option to the "Allowed", "Denied", and "Inherited" within
> the Edit Own field. Even then, the problem is that doesn't address the
> "Allow (if unpublished or change to unpublished if published)". But maybe
> that's what we want.
>
> Any thoughts on how to best handle this in the core?

In an onContentBeforeSave event, one could set edit.own to disallowed
for the current article, if state == published.

A system plugin setting permissions depending on general item changes
could be a good base for creation of a workflow.

Regards,
Niels

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[nant]

not sure this is the right approach.
from a ui view showing someone the edit icon and then the save botton only to block changes is later is wrong.