Additional groups not visible on /about page

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

I upgraded to Discourse 3.5.0.beta6-dev (da0b303568) this morning.

After the update I was met with a red banner across the top of the site saying:

Admin notice: you’re using the discourse-add-groups-to-about theme component. This feature is now available in Discourse core. You should remove this theme component.

I did as I was told and deleted the component: Add groups to the /about page

I then went to my Discourse site settings and re-applied all the about page settings that I used in the old component:

But none of the groups are appearing on the about page:

Here’s how it used to look, before I deleted the component:

I’ve tried viewing in Safe Mode too, but no difference.

[Moin]

I think the show_additional_about_groups site setting is still hidden

config/site_settings.yml

But you need to enable that for the groups to show up.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

@Moin

the show_additional_about_groups site setting is still hidden

Oh no

I can’t re-install the theme now because the big red warning banner is visible to all users, even people who are not logged in

[Moin]

If you are self-hosted, you can enable the setting

Using Hidden Site Settings

This is a how-to guide about Hidden Site Settings, how to enable them, and why you might want to adjust them. Required user level: Administrator Important: Console access is required for some steps. In Discourse, hidden site settings refer to configuration options that are not readily visible or accessible through the standard admin dashboard interface. These settings are part of the backend configuration that can control various advanced or potent…

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Thanks @Moin

Do I have to do this manually or will this bug likely be fixed in a future update?

[Moin]

I think a migration which was added 3 days ago should have enabled that setting. DEV: Migrate add-groups-to-about component settings to site settings by Drenmi · Pull Request #32910 · discourse/discourse · GitHub So , no idea if that will still happen on your forum and why it didn’t happen when you updated

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Great insight, thanks

Is the show_additional_about_groups setting visible in your admin panel?

[Moin]

No, but I haven’t installed the component. Maybe that’s why the migration didn’t happen for me. But I wasn’t really interested because I don’t use the feature.

In fact, I follow the PRs on GitHub mainly because the screenshots help with translation, especially for features like this that are not available in the interface at first.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

@Moin

No, but I haven’t installed the component

But if this is now in core, isn’t the option available to everyone now?

[Moin]

It’s in core, but the show_additional_about_groups setting is still a hidden site setting, so it’s not visible.
I think the migration enabled it for sites which used the component before. I am not sure if it will be enabled for everyone or simply be removed. I think it is only needed during the migration process.

If I have understood correctly, the idea is that the show_additional_about_groups setting is added to core. Then a check is added to the theme component so that the groups are only displayed if show_additional_about_groups is false. This means that it simply continues to work as before. Afterwards everything is built in core, but only displayed if show_additional_about_groups is true.
After the settings have been automatically migrated, show_additional_about_groups is activated. Now the code from core shows the groups and no longer the component.
This migration was added 3 days ago. Then 2 days ago the notice was added in the component that was displayed to you.
I don’t know why the migration obviously didn’t work for you (neither the settings were automatically applied, nor was show_additional_about_groups activated).

I think it is definitely an oversight that the global warning does not check whether the user is an admin.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Thanks for the insight @Moin - very useful.

@Moin

It’s in core, but the show_additional_about_groups setting is still a hidden site setting, so it’s not visible.
I think the migration enabled it for sites which used the component before. I am not sure if it will be enabled for everyone or simply be removed. I think it is only needed during the migration process.

Hmm, so I guess that’s on for everyone by default then, everyone that wasn’t previously using the theme component?

And mine is simply not displaying any of the groups on the About page because my setting is stuck on false in the background still?

@Moin

an oversight that the global warning does not check whether the user is an admin.

You wouldn’t believe how many emails and queries we’ve had from our members about this warning banner

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

@Moin I’ve applied this via the rails console:

SiteSetting.show_additional_about_groups = true

And the extra groups have now re-appeared.

Thanks again for all your help and insight

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

@Richie

the big red warning banner is visible to all users

thanks for pointing it out, I’m going to get this fixed so others won’t run into this

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Wait is there a bug here left to resolve or is this just a Support topic at this point?

[Moin]

I thought the migration should have moved @Richie’s configuration from the component to the core settings and should have also enabled the hidden site setting show_additional_about_groups. A reason why it didn’t work could be that he changed the name, because that’s easily doable in the interface.
Is there a reason why the migration relies only on the name instead of also checking for a component where the remote_url from the remote_themes table matches? That would catch renamed components as long as they were installed from the official repository.

The hidden site setting, which wasn’t enabled because the migration didn’t happen, prevented core from showing the groups, and instead, the component still showed the groups. But the global notice from the component told him to delete the component. Then core still didn’t show the groups because show_additional_about_groups was still disabled, and it wasn’t easily possible to enable it.

So if the automatic migration didn’t work, how do admins migrate manually? Copying the configuration isn’t the problem. But when do they switch between the component showing the groups and core showing the groups without needing to enable the hidden setting?
Maybe it would have been better to enable the show_additional_about_groups for everyone or show it in the interface before adding a notice to the component that it should be deleted. Then a manual migration would have worked, and core would show the groups afterward, so deleting the component wouldn’t leave admins without any groups on the about page.

Right now, when an admin adds groups to the about page extra groups site setting, nothing happens because the hidden show_additional_about_groups setting isn’t enabled. That feels like a bug, even though from a developer’s perspective, everything is working as expected. I think it would be easier for an admin to understand what happens if the setting were visible instead of hidden.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

@Moin has summed up everything perfectly.

None of my settings were copied across, and when I did copy them the groups were still not visible on the /about page because the hidden setting prevented them from appearing and I had to use the Rails console to resolve the issue.

This is how I got stuck:

@Moin

when an admin adds groups to the about page extra groups site setting, nothing happens because the hidden show_additional_about_groups setting isn’t enabled

And this is the eternal question

@Moin

That feels like a bug, even though from a developer’s perspective, everything is working as expected.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

@ted / @kris.kotlarek / @hugh any thoughts here? Does the migration Ted made need a refinement?

@Moin

Right now, when an admin adds groups to the about page extra groups site setting, nothing happens because the hidden show_additional_about_groups setting isn’t enabled. That feels like a bug, even though from a developer’s perspective, everything is working as expected. I think it would be easier for an admin to understand what happens if the setting were visible instead of hidden.

This feels very weird, why not simply delete the show_additional_about_groups site setting and just have it be true?

One less setting to worry about and the setting about page extra groups will always work as expected.

[ted (Ted Johansson)]

Hello, @Richie, @Moin!

We used this hidden site setting in the process of porting over the theme component. Due to a problem with the migration it wasn’t enabled correctly when the data was migrated.

Now that the port is done, we don’t really need this setting any more as @sam pointed out. We can simply look at the list of configured groups.

There’s a PR that does that here:

DEV: Have about page extra groups depend on groups selected

[Moin]

Great! I thought it would have to stay until the next stable release to make sure that the component does not show the groups in addition to core for those who migrate then.