Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Temporary Passwords by BOP5 (Allow admins to login as any user without user password)

Brought to you by BirdOPrey5 / Qapla.com

The purpose of this mod is to allow a site Super Administrator to login as any other user on the forum for troubleshooting purposes.

I know there are other mods that allow Admins to login as other users but they aren't truly logged in as the other user. It's more like they are getting a copy of the user's permissions ans settings. This is good for many things but it is not 100% exact and therefore can cause its own problems when trying to troubleshoot issues.

This mod is different. On the user's setting page in the Admin CP is a new box "Temporary Password" where an admin can enter a temporary one-time use password. When they save the user settings the user's old password is copied (while remaining encrypted) to another location and the temporary password they created becomes the user's new password.

As soon as possible they should then log in as the user with the password they set.

As soon as the Admin (or anyone) has logged in successfully with the temporary password the user's old password is restored and the temporary password is deleted.

In the mean time the Admin will continue to be able to use the forum as the user so long as they don't log out. If they do inadvertently log out they can set another temp password and log back in.

Due to the nature of the mod you should aways use the temp password as soon as possible- if you wait and the user tries to login when the temporary password is set they won't be able to.

I suggest using a 2nd web browser when using this. For example in Chrome you are logged in as yourself (Admin Account) but you use Firefox to log into the user's account. This allows you to quickly switch between accounts to troubleshoot.

If you change your mind and don't need the temp password after all simply return to the user's settings page in Admin CP and delete the temporary password and save changes. The user's original password will be restored.

If you uninstall the mod any temporary passwords you had set will be automatically undone and the user's original passwords restored.

There are no settings for this mod. Install it and it is active.

Only Super-Administrators specified in the config.php file can set or see temporary passwords, other admins will not be able to set or see temp passwords, the box just won't be there.

Compatible with VB 3.8.x & VB 4.x.x.

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Please "Mark as Installed" if you use this.
Donations always appreciated. :up:
Nominate MOTM if you LOVE it!

[ozzy47]

Ahhh ok thought you would have seen that.

[BirdOPrey5]

FYI the user settings page I mean is-

Admin CP -> Users (from side menu) -> Search for User - the page that comes up when you find a specific user.

Only super admins will see the temp password box. By default the only super-admin is userid #1 but this can be changed in the config.php file.

[ozzy47]

Just a quick note, this mod is up for MOTM, if you like it, vote for it, or any of the other mods in the poll.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=309039

[tbworld]

Thanks Joe, nice work!

[XGC Viper XI]

Installed and works great.

[zethon]

Joe's mod has saved my message board countless times and even saved my father's life!

[Dennis B]

Another excellent mod by BOP. Installing.

[Madpoodle]

Very useful mod, thanks BOP!

[Dragonsys]

This plugin does not seem to be compatible with this - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=288450

[BirdOPrey5]

No, unfortunately it will only work with the default VB password hashing.

Edit- it's also not a simple fix as the current hashing is done on MySQL where BCrypt needs to be done in PHP.