Why can't my user see the private groups they are members in?

Question

I just installed Drupal Commons 7.x-3.x. I configured two private groups, and added a normal user to them. That user can see content posted to those groups, but it cannot see the group itself, or post content to the group.

Why?

I've added the user as an administrator in the group.

I've cleared all the Drupal Caches on the performance page.

I've cleared my browsers cache.

I've logged the user in and out.

I've rebuilt node permissions.

I've run cron manually.

I've double checked the people/permissions to make sure the user had permission to create groups, just in case that mattered.

No matter what I do, if I try to go to commons/groups/privategroupname with my non-user1 user I get an "Access Denied" page.

If the user wasn't a member, it would not be able to see the content in the list on the /home page.

Public groups work fine.

When creating the private groups, I selected: "Joining requires an invitation. The group and content is hidden from non-members." in the Privacy Settings.

So, I'm at a loss. Help!

Answer 1

I think this has to do with publishing the content.

If I published a group that was marked as invite only, it would then show up in the list of groups as invite only, and content would only be viewable by members. Seems like an imperfect solution though, as to me, an invite only group should be hidden. But if you do use this solution, be sure to mark the content type to default to published.

There's problems with Drupal and unpublished content sometimes. In this case, the usual solution (Views won't display unpublished nodes when explicitly told to) didn't seem to fix it.