Member groups limited to view channels

Question

I have a EE website with around 20+ member groups and members from each of the membership groups should only have access to browse (front end only) certain channels of the website after signing in (front end).

Example: Membership group 'College 1' and 'College 2' should only be allowed to view channel 'book3', 'book5' and 'book7' when they browse the website (front end). I can do it in the template with condition, but it might be a bit messy to update the templates every time I add/remove a member group.

I've been trying to search for a solution, but have not found any yet, hopefully you have a solution.

Is this a function that is built-in in ExpressionEngine or if there are module you can recommend?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can limit the ability to view channel content by channel/member group combinations using HooBlong.

Bear in mind this is still in beta.

Don't be put off by the fact that the module can also be used to assign a member to more than one group - the front end channel control that you are looking for is built in for all memberships.

Answer 2

You should try Zenbu module (http://zenbustudio.com/software/zenbu).

Answer 3

Although it may get complicated with 20 member groups, the basic way in EE is to wrap your content (either portions, or the whole page) in conditionals in your templates like:

{if group_id == 7 OR group_id == 8}
    show content
{/if}

You can also use something to limit access to a whole page by redirecting if not in a group:

{if group_id != 7 AND group_id != 8}
    {redirect="template_group/template"}
{/if}

To make things easier to manage, you might also make your most common 'access' conditionals snippets.