I've started building a site for a neighborhood group and would like to build it like this ...

I have four basic groups ...

1) webmaster
2) home owners
3) special users
4) anonymous users

What I'd like to have happen is that the webmaster and anonymous groups work as normal but that the two other groups work a little differently.

Since I'm going to have many people logging in as a single XOOPS user (home owners), I want to remove most of the items in the User Menu. I effectively only want the "Logout" menu item to be displayed for the "home owner" group since I don't want one person changing any of the account information for all the others. I want to control the password, etc. The User Menu should look normal for the "Special Users".

Here's what I'm thinking of doing and if it makes sense might need a little direction on the best way to do it.

I figured I'd take the "Logout" out of the User Menu and create a special block to do nothing but Logout. I'd give everyone access to this block.

Then I'd take the altered User Menu and make it only available to the Special Users group. That way everyone will be able to log out but only the Special Users (i.e., users with an individual account) will be able to change account information, etc.

So the questions are ...

1) Does this make sense? Are there any unforeseen issues with having this kind of Many-To-One account?

2) How should I "doctor" the User Menu? Will I need to muck with the template or themes?

Appreciate any help and guidance.

David

you should be able to modify the user menu template from XOOPS administration -> templates

you would have to 'clone' the default template set, modify whatever templates you need to modify (user menu would appear under the System module listings), and then in General Preferences, set the newly cloned template set as default.



just out of curiousity, why do you have multiple users logging in as one? that would then require all users to login with that one account (using that single username/password), which seems to almost lose the point of having a login/logout function.

i'm not trying to criticize, i just don't see the advantage of such an approach, and i'm hoping you'll enlighten me

I agree with you 100% but haven't been able to convince the guy who's running the site that it would be better for each person to have their own account. He contends that many of the folks involved are "lower on the computer skills ladder" and he wants to make it as easy as possible.

We still need some login/logout since he will only release the account name and password to neighbors. Later when he needs to expand the level of granularity of access, those users will be individuals.

I'll play with the templates and see what I can come up with.

Thanks

David