Security Roles
Security Roles control several functions on your site. You can create roles to manage mailing lists and newsletter subscriptions as well as manage permissions to view and/or edit pages within your website. You may wish to have a “youth group page” role and allow users in that role to view, edit and manage only the youth group page. Furthermore, you can assign permissions on a module level, as well, so you have complete flexibility and security. You may also want some "members only" areas of your site, and you would manage this through a security role, as well.
There are also different ways to add a user to a Role. Roles can be assigned by an administrator (best for use when assigning permissions), added by a user (like a newsletter subscription opt-in) or given automatically when one registers. Three roles are already in place on all sites: administrators, subscribers, and registered users.
Administrators have permission to view, edit, and manage any page, module or setting on the site. You will likely want to restrict the number of people who have administrative privileges just to ensure the integrity of your site.
Registered Users is an auto-assigned role, meaning everyone who is given, or who registers for, a user account is automatically added to this role. You can think of this as the master list of persons with user accounts.
The Subscribers role is also auto-assigned, but is also a public role, meaning users can "opt out" of the role. You might send a newsletter to persons in the Subscribers role, and if they no longer wanted to recieve the newsletter electronically, could then edit their User Account and unsubscribe.
To add a Security Role:
1.) From the menu, select “Admin” and then select “Security Roles.”
2.) This will open the Security Roles list. You will be able to see all existing roles in this area, including whether or not they are public roles or automatically assigned.
3.) In the bottom left-hand corner of the page, click “Add New Role” to open the “Edit Role” page.
4.) Type in a name for your role, e.g. “Youth Page Editors”
5.) Type a description for the role.
6.) Determine if this is a public role (available to anyone who wants to be a part of it) and whether or not this role will be auto-assigned (to all registered users) or not. In most cases, you will not want the public to be able to assign themselves to a security role. An exception is a email/newsletter subscription where users may want to opt-in.
7.) Click Update at the bottom to add the new role.
Adding Users to a Security Role
1.) To add users to the new role, click on the blue pencil next to the role name. (This is also how you can change role settings should you ever need to.)
2.) In the bottom right hand corner above the Creation Date, click on the "Manage Users in This Role" link.
3.) Choose the name of the user you want to add from the drop down menu.
4.) If the user's term of service has an end date and you'd like to restrict access after that date enter the date in the Expiry Date field.
5. By default, the user will recieve an email alerting them of their new role. If you don't want to send this email, un-check the "Send Notification" field.
6.) To complete the process, click the "Add User" link to the right of the Expiry Date field. You do not need to update or save these changes. You can click anywhere on your site or go to Admin->Security Roles again to get back to the list of Roles.