NatSkin: Topic action buttons not showing for normal users

I installed NatSkin 4.10 and all of its required dependencies on Foswiki 1.1.9. Everything seems to work nicely until one user tells me he can not find the "edit" link to the topics. I then realized that the "edit/attach/new/more" buttons only show up for AdminGroup users. As soon as I moved myself out of the AdminGroup, I can no longer see those buttons. Once I switch back to the pattern skin, those links appear again at the bottom of the page. Right now I use Set SKIN = topicinteraction, metacomment, natedit, pattern to make use of those plugins installed together with NatSkin. But I really hope NatSkin can work for me. Any hint on what could have gone wrong?

-- RenMao - 28 Aug 2015

NatSkin only shows an "Edit" link on topics that you are allowed to edit. On topics that only members of the AdminGroup have access to those buttons won't be there.

-- MichaelDaum - 28 Aug 2015

Michael thanks for the prompt response. The issue is that I don't see those buttons for ANY topic. And once I switch to the pattern skin I can edit topics just fine. The following is my access control settings in WebPreferences:

Set DENYWEBVIEW =
Set ALLOWWEBVIEW =
Set DENYWEBCHANGE =
Set ALLOWWEBCHANGE =
Set DENYWEBRENAME =
Set ALLOWWEBRENAME =

Users or groups allowed to change or rename this WebPreferences topic: (e.g., AdminGroup)

Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = AdminGroup
Set ALLOWTOPICRENAME = AdminGroup

Basically everything is set to empty for the Main web.

-- RenMao - 28 Aug 2015

OK I finally found a fix for this issue: In SiteTopicActions, edit its meta preferences. There was an entry like this:

Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = *

After changing it to

Set DENYTOPICVIEW =

the action buttons appear for normal users.

-- RenMao - 29 Aug 2015

Sounds like this question was answered so I'm changing the status to "Answered". Fill free to change it back if this is wrong.

Just to clarify, it sounds like the wrong syntax in ALLOWTOPICVIEW setting in System.SiteTopicActions prevented non-admin users from viewing the System.SiteTopicActions topic so none of the actions would be visible. BTW, the recommend best practice is not to modify System.SiteTopicActions but rather to copy it to Main.SiteTopicActions which will over-ride the default copy in the System web. In this way, your local changes won't be over-written and lost if/when you update NatSkin.

-- Main.LynnwoodBrown - 28 Oct 2015 - 17:28