MODx Security Model

I am intrigued by MODx’s security model and am glad to see a model that allows web visitors to be permitted in some areas and denied to others. Many CMS’ have the ability to password individual pages and so on, but it seems that very few have the security abilities of MODx. Because MODx is obviously still in its infancy, I am interested in trying to understand the applications of this security model. Hence I’m wondering if others can point me in the direction of other CMS’ that have a similar security model (but perhaps one that has had longer to develop, has had more plugins made for it, and so on). I have looked into all the usual suspects (Joomla, Drupal, etc) but none of these seem to offer that kind of functionality.

MODx is an amazing product and I hope development continues full steam!

Not sure whether this is useful info in response to your question or not, but due to MODx’s flexibility, you could conceivably have whole areas of a site only visible to staff users for example, or different "user groups" being able to see different pages, right down to displaying certain content on a page for one type of user and something else for another, or even allowing specific types of user the ability to post comments etc.

It’s all do-able by writing MODx snippets and the user system is something I’ve been dying to toy with but since I’ve not had a site where I need to register users yet I’ve not had a chance to get stuck in.

I’d really appreciate it if anyone else has something to add to this. Again, I’m looking for other CMS’ that have a similar security model allowing group access to particular pages or documents.

MODx does that.

"MODx does that."

I realize and I love that about it. What I’m wondering is whether there are other CMS’ that have a similar security system.

I’m sure there are similar systems, and I’m sure there are better ones (currently ... ). MODx has allowed me to support my family for more than 2 years, so I’m quite happy with it.

What I don’t think you’ll find so readily in as many solutions is TVs with @BINDINGs, the community and the outrageously simple template system.

:)

"I’m sure there are similar systems, and I’m sure there are better ones"

That’s just the thing. I’m sure there are similar ones too, but I haven’t been able to find them. Like I said, I’d like to get an idea of how the features of MODx, and particularly the security features, can evolve. To do that I’d like to look at some CMS’ with similar security features, but I haven’t been able to find any.

To be honest I don;t think there are any other CMS’s who handle user/admin access/security in the same way.

The way MODx’s system works is to allow you to add various groups which have various abilities within the manager and the site (Manager groups) so that you can perhaps havea group of folks who can only edit, not create or delete pages for example, or have a group set up solely for editing web users (frontend users) for the purposes of banning problem users for example.

Then there’s the web users, which when you combine them with document groups, you can allow people into certain sections of the site that others can’t access.

You can also (if memory serves) apply document groups to individual web users as well which has it’s uses.

There’s plenty of things you could do with this, such as have content available for paid subscribers and have hidden sections for site staff that don’t neccessarily need to access the Manager area to name a couple.

It’s a powerful, novel approach if somewhat confusing the first time you try and get your head around it

But yeah, I don’t think any other CMS does it in quite the same way. Usually it’s a lot more difficult to give individuals specific permissions in this way.

Don’t confuse groups and roles! Roles are applied to individual Manager users, and define what they can do.

Groups just collect groups of users, and connect these user groups to document groups, so that once a document is assigned to a group only users belonging to the corresponding user group can even see the document. At this point, web users and web groups are separate from manager users and manager groups; this will change in the near future.

Sounds good to me as I found that a bit confusing