Restricted access other - can't work it out

Hi there,

I'm looking to publish my LOs using restricted access:other. We don't have a VLE, but are planning to host the LO's in our organisation website, which is basically an online resource hub with account sign up. I've tried adding the main website domain with https:// (pdunottingham.org) and urls for the specific sub-sections of the website where the LO link has been added to, but none of them seem to work: i.e. the LO cannot be accessed (screenshot of error message attached).

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. Is it that this option can only be used with VLEs specifically? Any ideas / help appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Filipa

Hi
can you check the source code where you have added the links to your website and share an example here? Is the website adding any additional parameters to the links?
Ron

Hi, It depends a bit how you want to host them.

The intention of the Óther'security is to make them only available through your website. So:

1. Put a link to your LO on the website (for example the play link, i.e. xerte.pdunottingham.org/play.php?template_id=45 ).
2. Change the rights of your LO to other, and fill in the main url of your website, so in your case pdunottingham.org . Nothing les is needed.

Now, the play link is only valid if 'called from' or embedded in pdunottingham.org

Does that make sense?

Hi Tom and Ron,

Thank you for your replies!
I have completed the steps suggested, but the LO still appears as access restricted when I click on it from within our website. I know that the url for the LO has been added correctly to the website, as the LO loads when I set the access to public and access it from within the website, so I guess it must be something to do with how the redirection to the LO takes place.

I can't access the source code myself, but will ask our website developers. Is there any way to see this from the Xerte end as well?
And does it make a difference at all that the Xerte installation and the website are hosted on different servers?

Thank you,
Filipa

Hi,

No, it should be ok that the websites are on diffrent servers and/or url's.

You could check the web log on the Xerte server and see what the referer entry is. Xerte checks whether the referer starts with th eurl stored in the óther'security. Make sure that there are no extra spaces or other whitespace in the 'other' field.

Hi Filipa
the reason I asked about the source code behind the links is because an organisation that I support directly had a similar issue and discovered that the VLE they were using where they were adding the links was automatically adding rel="noreferrer noopener" to those links and thereby preventing the passing of the referrer back to Xerte.

A far more reliable way to restrict access is to use LTI if your site/CMS supports it.
HTH
Ron