disable viewers ability to alter preferences in that album

It is not possible for users to change their username, however they can change their password. My solution to this was looking up the username files in albums/.users and removing the write permissions for the webserver. This way users will get an error when they try to change their password or any other information connected to the username.

There's no PHP editing involved here. Just do the following:

<LI>Make a change to the username you want to protect<LI>Browse to /albums/.users with FTP<LI>Sort files by date<LI>CHMOD 444 the 3 most recent files (note: their filenames should be identical, one without extension, one with .bak and one with .lock

[/]

I just tested it on my own site and it seems it is possible to change the password, but in fact it's not. It's not possible to login with the new password, only with the old one :wink:

So the only problem with this approach is that people (who are not allowed to change the password) think they can change the password and they don't get an error when they do so. But in the end, they can only login with the original password. Works perfectly for me...

I also am confused as to which files to change.

Thanks
Richard

I guess this is another way to do it, but it disables the preferences for all the users. If you want to disable changing preferences for only 1 (or more) users, you have to lookup that username in the albums/.users dir. They look like this: 1040309610_1754202938 and these numbers with .bak and .lock.

I made the changes to albums.php
and commented out the lines suggested by dsm,
and all users are now disabled from preferences.
This is exactly what I wanted to do!
Thanks to all the posters and dsm especially!
Richard

By the way..how does one view the hidden files using ws_ftp?

Hi
i've just installed Gallery some days ago and i really like it.. so i startet with my first mods on the script (actually on gallery 1.3.2) as i saw your thread i realized the problem and here is my (easy to use) solution to it.

first open your albums.php file and find the following line:
$adminCommands .= '<a href="#" onClick="'.popup("user_preferences.php").'">[preferences]</a>&amp;nbsp;';
in an unchanged script this would be line 128.

now replace the line above it which looks like this:
if ($gallery->userDB->canModifyUser()) {
with this:
$generalUsers=file("general_users.txt");
if ($gallery->userDB->canModifyUser() &amp;&amp; !array_search($gallery->user->getUsername(),$generalUsers)) {

then save and close your albums.php file

now creat a new text file named "general_users.txt" in your gallerie's root directory (where albums.php is too) and write down the list of users you want not to edit their pereferencies. use a new line for each user and do not put any spaces or any other letters behind or before the username. it is essential that there is only one single user name and nothing else on every line! otherwise it won't work.

after you have done all this, none of the users in your general_users.txt file should see the pereferences link anymore.. whereas others will still be able to see the link.
so this will probably do the job for most of you.
BUT. if you had a nasty little hacker on your page who knew you where using Gallery he could still enter user_preferences.php behind your Gallery's url and edit his user's details. so if you want to protect your gallery from even these users you have to do a little mod to the user_preferences.php script:

open your user_preferences.php file and find the following lines:
if (!$gallery->user->isLoggedIn()) {
exit;
}
in an unchanged script these would be lines 32 to 34.

after the "}" insert a new line and then add the following lines:
$generalUsers=file("general_users.txt");
if (array_search($gallery->user->getUsername(),$generalUsers)) {
exit;
}
CAUTION: DO NOT replace anything.. just add these lines!

after this is done, save your file and try to open your gallery, login as a user from your general_users.txt file and then see if you still see the link.. you should not..
if you don't see the link anymore, replace whatever there is behind your gallerie's root directory with "user_preferences.php" and you should see a blank page, instead of the whole preferences dialog..
if this is all ture, you've done it right.. if it doesn't work.. please read more careful :wink:

hope i could help somebody

greetings from switzerland
pascal

Nicely done. thanks for solving a problem for me.