phpBB - admin "not authorised to access this area" - Moderator Control Panel

I have just installed my first VM image (TKL phpBB) and I must say: NICE! Too easy really!

Problem though.

I logged in under the default admin account. Then had a bit of a play round but didn't change much. I then went into the Moderator Control Panel (required a second login - same user and pass - worked fine). I changed a few things but nothing important, then logged out.

Thats all good, but then I went to log back. It allowed me to log in as admin, to the user control panel. But when I went to the Moderator Control Panel it says "You are not authorised to access this area." WTF?

I don't have any other users!?! So I'm not sure how I can fix this? I guess at this stage its fairly simple as there is no data (so delete VM, start again) but I would like to know if this is a known issue with phpBB or a TKL phpBB bug or simply something dumb I did without realising!

Thanks

PS I tried removing cookies - no dice!

PPS Tried restarting VM - no difference...

Replies (5)

Strange! Try to isolate it...

Reply 1 2009-12-29

Since it works at first and then stopped working all of a sudden then I'll venture to guess one of those inconsequential changes you made is the culprit. This may be a bug in phpBB or you just didn't realize the consequences of those configuration changes you made.

What would be really useful is if you could start again and try to figure out exactly which configuration tweak was responsible. That will be a big help in getting to the bottom of this.

Yep I'll start again and be a little more careful!

Reply 2 2009-12-30

I'll have a look at it when I'm at work a bit later. As using the VM images is so easy and I've got no data to transfer it will be straight forward. I'll take careful note of any setting I change and report back.

Doh!

Reply 3 2010-01-07

Amazing how such a simple thing like the phrasing of an error message can make all the difference. I can understand why you were confused!

Meanwhile I added a tip to the appliance page to hopefully prevent others from falling into the same trap. Great job tracking this down.

I've worked it out!

Reply 4 2010-01-06

I've just got back to this and just did a clean install (of the VM image - took all of about 2 minutes - sweet!) I haven't done anything at all and now I don't even need to login a second time to access the 'Moderator Control Panel'. It would seem that I confused myself and it was in fact the 'Administrator Control Panel' that I was referring to initially in my original post (this does require the second login - but only once for the current logged in session).

I logged in and out a number of times and all went well, so I edited settings in the Admin CP and saved. I could log in and out fine, could log in and out of the Admin CP fine but could not access the Moderator CP.

I then reloaded TKL phpBB (for a 3rd time) and was very careful. This time it dawned on me what I had done. I had deleted the only forum (the example forum) and so there was nothing to moderate! I think it may be good to have a more useful error message when this occurs because I couldn't work out what was going on! A simple error message saying that there are no forums to moderate would have meant that I knew what was going on straight away rather than have to work it out myself.

Anyway, I'll post it as a suggestion over on the phpBB forums. In the interum perhaps it may be useful to make a note of that (in the example forum) when you do your next release of TKL phpBB?

Thanks again guys for a great product!

According to this thread on phpBB forums...

Reply 5 2012-01-16

According to this thread on phpBB forums if your cookies are set up correctly then it should only show on your first login (and on some of the admin pages).