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I had a discussion this week with a kiwitrees user about the privacy setting “show to visitors”.

It reminded me that many people misunderstand the meaning of “visitors” in this context. For clarification it is:

The user cannot access the private data in this family tree

If you think about it, that means a “visitor” has no greater access rights than a casual browser EXCEPT that the “visitor” is registered, and logged in, to your site.

This is a user classification introduced in the first release of webtrees, many years ago. Its main purpose was as a default for users allowed to “self-register”, with no approval from an administrator required. It ensured that administrators could review the registration before they allowed the new user full “member” status or greater freedoms.

But when I created kiwitrees, that “self-registration” feature was one of the first thinks to be removed. It is a dangerous option and can cause major headaches with heaps of random or spam registrations.

So, my question is: Does anyone deliberately use the “show to visitors” setting anywhere? If so, where, and does the explanation of its function change your logic for using it at all?

My reason for asking is that I can’t think of a good reason for keeping it, and would, therefore, look to remove it from future releases.

That would simplify privacy settings to:
Show to members
Show to managers
Hide from everyone

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

I use it for unregistered visitors/casual browsers to the site. And to not have certain modules available to those unregistered. When going through the modules, I ask if I want unregistered visitors/casual browsers to access or those who’ve registered.
Right now privacy is set to “visitors”, maybe that needs to be changed. to members. And/or the term “visitor” to “unregistered”.

----- [updated: 31Aug2023]

 Alter-Drukarsh connections |The Garelicks|Journal 3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1
The Royals |The Kennedys|The Gerrer Rabbis  3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1

Great feedback, thanks.

But let me add a little more explanation…

When you set access to anything, such as menus, modules, etc, as “show to visitors” what you are actually setting is “show these only to registered visitors or higher.

So – do you actually have any users with their user role set to “visitor”?

• If you don’t, then, in reality, you are giving access only to “members” (or higher), the next level higher than “visitors”, because no actual “visitors” exist on your site.
• If you do have registered “visitors” (rather than “members”), then I need to understand why before I think about removing the role.

macalter wrote:Right now privacy is set to “visitors”, maybe that needs to be changed. to members.

Yes, that would be my plan if I go ahead with the change. Anywhere currently set to “show to visitors”, or any user designated as “visitor”, would be changed to “show to members”, or “member”, automatically during the upgrade. The term “visitors” would no longer be required anywhere within kiwitrees.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

Seems there’s a terminology misunderstanding as I’ve always deemed “visitor” to mean anyone showing up at my site and trying to view records. NOT someone who’s emailed me and I’ve granted them “visitor” status — of which I’ve never known existed in that way.

When I say my The Royals site doesn’t need username/password, then I set everything to visitor. Dead or alive, unrestricted. Modules are set to visitors or above for most everything.

However, my Alter-Drukarsh site requires username/password to see beyond dead people. Dead being more than 96 years if I recall. Modules are set to members or above except for things like seeing the home page and the login.

Sounds like we’re on different pages.

----- [updated: 31Aug2023]

 Alter-Drukarsh connections |The Garelicks|Journal 3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1
The Royals |The Kennedys|The Gerrer Rabbis  3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1

macalter wrote:

Sounds like we’re on different pages.

Not at all. You have confirmed that I can remove kiwitrees’ setting “show to visitors”, replacing it with “show to members”, and your site will work exactly as it does now.

The fact that you, and others, are confused by the term ‘visitors’ as used by kiwitrees is exactly why I raised this subject. I want to remove the confusion.
Your understanding of “visitors” is perfectly reasonable. The problem is that kiwitrees uses a different definition. I want to fix that, by changing kiwitrees.
Your explanation is very helpful.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

It’s not only kiwitrees but its predecessors obvioulsy had the confusion of terms, and that’s now 12+ years 🙂

If you interpret what I am doing to mean go ahead, perfect. Confused or not, it means that my settings are okay for purposes I want. And the update containing the change doesn’t change that, will only appear with different words.

----- [updated: 31Aug2023]

 Alter-Drukarsh connections |The Garelicks|Journal 3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1
The Royals |The Kennedys|The Gerrer Rabbis  3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1

macalter wrote:

It’s not only kiwitrees but its predecessors obvioulsy had the confusion of terms, and that’s now 12+ years

Almost correct. Greg introduced it, against my (and others) advice in a very early version of webtrees, in 2010. It was never part of PGV.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

If you remove “visitor” and use “member”, how will I (as a new user) know the difference for no username/password (casual viewer) or with username/password (registered) required to use a feature?

----- [updated: 31Aug2023]

 Alter-Drukarsh connections |The Garelicks|Journal 3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1
The Royals |The Kennedys|The Gerrer Rabbis  3.3.12 -  PHP Version 8.1.17 - mySQL 8.1

macalter wrote:

If you remove “visitor” and use “member”, how will I (as a new user) know the difference for no username/password (casual viewer) or with username/password (registered) required to use a feature?

Same as now, surely. This is what casual viewers see at your Royals site:

The casual viewer has to read your message about not needing a user name/password. Also, there is no link shown to request a user name and password on the login block.

Changing settings from “show to visitors” to “show to members” will not change anything there. BOTH of those settings (now) only apply to people who are logged in.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

Does anyone deliberately use the “show to visitors” setting anywhere?

Yes – I use it extensively – in Admin-Modules- Blocks, Charts, Lists, Reports, Menus .. etc to mean ‘ Show to anyone who accesses the site’ (I have to admit that I had never realised that a ‘visitor’ was a category of registered user but treated the term to mean ‘casual Internet browser’). I have just logged out and checked a few things which are set up as ‘show to visitor’ e.g. sidebar sections, and they are visible to me as a non-logged in user, as intended. However, if you act as I believe you have proposed and change ‘show to visitors’ to ‘show to members’ this will not produce the same result at all. Surely we need to have a category which means ‘show to everyone’ and that’s the way ‘show to visitors’ appears to work for me at present. I have a feeling that I have misunderstood something here!

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14