MT Tutorial for Resetting Author Permissions

What do to when you've managed to delete all of your author permissions
A Tutorial aimed at MT users with a MySql Database and using phpMyAdmin

Note: Click on the smaller pictures for full screen shots, which will open up in new windows.

Ok so you've somehow managed to delete your author permissions - most importantly your main author - which means that you have lost a lot of control of your MT configuration abilities. That was a silly thing to do wasn't it?

Don't be embarrassed you are not alone. Yesterday I was helping a smart and rather tech-savvy person who managed to do just that. Here's a step-by-step tutorial (with piccies!) to take you through the process of putting things right.

First thing to do after you stop banging your head on the desk, is to make yourself a cup of coffee and get comfy. What we need to do is get access to your MySql database to change the permissions. There are a few programs out there but we'll be using phpMyAdmin.

Before you go downloading phpMyAdmin, go into the control panel of your host. The control panel is accessed through your browser. Your host should have given you the access details to this and hopefully you didn't delete the mail. Not many people check out their control panel but you should make yourself familiar with what's in there because there are quite a lot of nifty goodies. A hosting service I've just joined icdsoft.com already has phpMyAdmin set up and just sitting there in my control panel. If your host has it (or something else like MySQLFront), then skip the next few paragraphs and go straight into fixing the permissions. If not then we have a few steps to do first.

Download phpMyAdmin. Reach into the folder and grab the config.inc.php file. This is the only one we need to touch. Open it up in a text editor such as BBEdit (Mac users). There are explanations written as to what you need to change but let's go through the quickie configuration together.

Step 1. Change the url:
$cfg['PmaAbsoluteUri'] = 'http://www.yourhost.com/phpMyAdmin/';

You need to have the url path to where phpMyAdmin is.

Step 2. Change the MySql Host name:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'mysql.yourhost.com';

Step 3. Put in your name for the user:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = 'Your_Name';

Step 4. $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'yourpassword';

This is your password to the database. It may be different from the password you use to log into your server so be careful!

Next - put the file back into the folder and upload the whole lot onto your server, either via ftp or your control panel. Then open your browser of choice and type in the url for where the index.php file is. It will look something like this: http://www.yourhost.com/phpmyadmin/index.php.

If the php deities are smiling down on you this should be all you need to do. If you get an error then make sure you have typed in the correct url and have the correct path to the file. You may need to get the config.inc.php file and configure it again. There is documentation with the download and remember Google can be your best online friend (^^).

Let's assume it's all A O.K. and you have access to your database.

The welcome screen to phpMyAdmin looks like this.

In the blue side bar you'll find the table navigation. We want to check that you still have authors listed in the database. So let's click on it.

Click on "Browse" to see the list of authors.

Here is a table with the all of the author details.

Are your authors there? If yes, fabulous. If not then you'd better hop over to the MT Support forum and ask nicely for help (^^).

Now we are going to reset the permissions. Back to the blue navigation area - this time we want mt_permission.

Once again click on the "Browse" to see the table.

Click on the edit at the beginning to select which author to change the permissions for.

On this page it's the number in the permission_role_mask row that we need to change. To restore the author back to full powers enter the magic number 2046.

After you have typed in the number check down below the table where you'll see some buttons. Have "save" selected and click on the "go" button.

Go to your mt url (http://www.yourhost.com/path to where your mt.cgi files live) and log in. You should be as right as rain now! And now be able to fix it quickly if you ever manage to do it again...(you know who I am looking at!)

Posted by mjd-s at 2003年04月23日 18:02