document groups, Web Users, document flagged 'private' ?!?

A document is flagged as private whenever the document group that it belongs to is assigned or is linked to a user group. In other words if the document is assigned to a document group that is not yet linked to a user group then that document will be made public. Documents that are private to the manager users will not be private to web users if the document group is not assigned to a web user group and vice versa.

Why?!? I’m really not getting the rationale for this!
Any document, once assigned to a doc group for which web users are in charge, is flagged ’private’ and thus is not accessible from outside the back-end (i.e. is not available to site visitors).
At that point the only way for it to re-appear in the site structure is by the intervention of a Manager User, who re-assigns it to a document group which is not connected to any Web User Group.
As such web users seem pretty useless to me! they cannot edit documents that are already available to the public; instead of performing quick updates to pages without messing around in the back-end, they end up causing extra-work for the admin who has to switch groups to the documents ...?!?

Front-end (web user) login is for stuff like viewing "members only" sections of a site. A document assigned to a "members" document group, which "members" document group is connected to a "members-only" web user group. will only be visible to visitors logged in as "members-only" users. It has nothing to do with editing documents.

It is a bit clunky, and was originally an add-on to a system that had no front-end visitor validation at all, only a back-end Manager login. The whole thing is in the process of being redesigned and rewritten to be a single user validation system.

Ok thanks for the clarification!
I totally misunderstood the purpose of Web Users
- I’ll forget about them for now, I can do all I need with Managers roles and document groups

One thing would be (very) handy: adding multiple docs (and/or folders) to a document group with a single click; not by specifing doc IDs one by one; nore as it is now by going in each document details page and select th right checkbox for the document group;

I would add this features directly in the ’Manager access permissions’ -> ’Document groups’ page;
a ’Add documents..’ button on the side of each document group would open a site-hierarchy view where each doc and folder has its own checkbox...

should I cross-post this in the wishlist forum or is it already in the works anyhow ?!!?


Ciao!

Go ahead file it in Bug Tracker http://modxcms.com/bugs/

That would be a nice feature.

regards,

zi