Mitch Sellers wrote
I just want to note that since the system was NOT designed for this, please be sure to take security into consideration before putting this "solution" into a production environment.
Thanks, Mitch -- that's a great point to highlight. My intial thread reply began by mentioning that this was not a core feature (I even called it a "trick"), but I failed to sound a cautionary note regarding potential security concerns.
We've used this method on a number of sites to expose PAGES and FILE MANAGER without granting full ADMIN access. However, we have been very careful with who we grant rights to -- only people who have been adequately trained in managing DNN content and understand the full impact of deleting a file or web page under DNN (no more fileid or pageid associations).
As for the "not designed for this" assertion, I have to make a small point of distinction (based solely on my own opinion): I'd agree that you would say the admin modules are "not intended for this", but.... By their inherent design (leveraging the same design as "regular" modules), the admin modules support assignable security rights, assignable tab locations and the same dynamically-generated default "Module Settings" UI that "regular" modules enjoy. It is the very design and feature set of the DNN framework, pages and modules that the "trick" relies on to assign additional security roles to ADMIN modules and expose them outside of the ADMIN tab area. So, I fully agree that the intention of the admin modules is not for sharing/moving, but the core DNN design does, in fact, fully support both the sharing of rights and assignment of tab locations for ADMIN modules (i.e., these features work "by design").
On a separate note, it's way-cool that Mitch took a few moments to stop and post a helpful response as he's busy writing an entire book on the subject (DNN module programming):
-mamlin