Minerva Knowledge Base version 1.3.5 released

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New version of MinervaKB has been released and this time main feature is ability to restrict content access based on user role. Not authorised user are met with friendly page with content teaser (or only title) and optionally a login form. There were also some minor fixes.

Here’s a full changelog:

1. Added content restriction functionality
2. Possibility to restrict articles globally, by article or by topic
3. Customizable login form for restricted articles
4. Fixed compatibility with Impreza theme
5. Fixed bug with search results under the breadcrumbs
6. Client-side SCSS moved to separate files

Now a little more details.

Restrict content

Possibility to restrict content by user role is a feature often requested by our customers. While we currently do not plan to turn MinervaKB into a full-blown membership site solution (though it may change 🙂 ), we also think this is a very useful option.

First of all, here’s an example of restricted article: Restricted article

As you can see, it has a teaser of article content, a message and a friendly login/signup form. Here’s how it should look (colors are different here):

To achieve similar result, you need version 1.3.5 installed (already available on Envato). First, go to MinervaKB – Settings and in Restrict Access tab turn on this switch:

Note, that by default all content restriction functionality is off. You don’t see options and you don’t see not restriction meta boxes on Article / Topic admin screens. This is the approach we’re going to stick to with all the new features not related to basic KB functionality, as we believe flooding WP dashboard with all the features you plugin has to offer is not user-friendly. We think that site admin must have the ability to disable parts he’s not going to use.

The options

Now, let’s turn the switch and check the options.

As you can see, you can configure the message and its looks, can set global restriction for all articles. You can also set restriction for individual articles and topics, of course. In that case, leave global access setting at Not restricted.

To restrict access for some specific article, simply go to article edit screen and select minimum required role to read this article:

Press Save. That’s it, your have restricted access to an article. Default settings for restriction are set to useful defaults, so your restricted page should look good right away.

More options

Of course you can go and tweak it as much as you wish. Here are (some of) the options available:

And some more.

As a final touch, you can disable our styling altogether and the plugin will render default WordPress login form using your theme styling.

Conclusion

That’s it for this release. We think there is a lot more to add for content restriction, but for now we want to hear more requests from you in order to properly add and mix most useful features together.

Version 1.3.6 is already in progress and will feature another important improvement: search results page.

Stay tuned.