Documentation
3.7. Permission Overload
On your board, you will need to control what users can and cannot do. With the flexible and detailed system that Olympus provides, you have very extensive possibilities of specifying and managing user and group permissions. There are basically two type of permissions - Global permissions, which apply to the whole board or are not related to forums and posts, and Forum based permissions, which can be used to control specific permissions for each forum.
To understand how to set permissions and to know how to use the interface, it is important to recognize the different types of permissions and tools that the Permission tab in the ACP provides:
- Global Permissions
These affect the whole board and are not bound to specific forums. They include user permissions, which limit the use of the UCP, searching, private messaging, using of avatars/signatures etc. Administrator permissions are also set here, as they are Global.
- Forum Based Permissions
These permissions are set for each forum/user or group combination individually. They can be divided into two types: User permissions and Moderator permissions. The first control if a user or group can see the forum, post in it, and so on, while the Moderator permissions control if the user or group can do moderator-related actions in it.
- Permission Roles
In order to ease setting of permissions, you can create roles, that have a pre-defined set of permissions and which you can then assign to users or groups. phpBB already prepared some predefined roles for you to use - e.g., in forum based permissions, you can make each user a Standard Moderator, Full Moderator or Limited Moderator, etc. If you didn't have roles, you would have to set every single permission individually for each user.
- Permission Masks
In this section, you do not set or change anything, but you can view the final permissions a user or group has depending on your settings in the other sections. This feature is particularly useful when you need to debug your permissions and for example, you cannot find out why someone doesn't have the permission you want him to have.
Figure 3.6. Global and local permissions
Global and local permissions
Note
Each permission can be assigned to a group or a user. We recommend you to use group permissions when possible - a simple example why: When you want to add a moderator to a forum, instead of assigning individual moderator permissions for each forum to him, you will just add him to the group which already has those permissions.
When setting permissions, you will encounter three possible values - NO, YES and NEVER, with NO as the default value for each permission. If you set a YES, it overrides the NO, however, if the permissions is set to NEVER, you cannot override it by setting it to YES in another place. If you still have problems understanding this system, see the Permissions Masks section.
3.7.1. Global Permissions
Global permissions are the first section you will find under the Permissions tab. They are used to assign user, global moderator and administrator permissions. This section has four subsections:
- Users’ permissions
These are used to assign any of the above mentioned permissions to a specific user. Generally, it is better to assign permissions to groups as described here to ease their later management.
- Groups’ permissions
Exactly the same as the above with one difference, here you will be specifying a group whose permissions will be edited.
- Administrators
This page tells you what users or groups on your board have access to the ACP. It allows you to edit their current permissions and add new administrators or administrator groups.
- Global moderators
Similarly to the section mentioned above, this page allows you to see the board's Global moderators, they are users which can moderate every forum on the board. phpBB added a predefined Global Moderator group for you with preset permissions.
In order to add or change permissions to a specific user or group, click the appropriate section. Then select the group name from the drop-down box or type the user's username. See Figure 3.7, “Choosing a group when setting permissions” for an image of the screen.
Figure 3.7. Choosing a group when setting permissions
The screen you will see after you click Groups' permissions. Here you select the group for which you will edit permissions.
After you select a user or group, you will see a page where you can finally set specific permissions. Notice a few things on the page - the drop-down box, where you can select what type of permissions to change, the Advanced Permissions link, which will allow you to assign more granular permissions, and the Role drop-down box, which allows you to assign a predefined set of permissions for the current case.
Figure 3.8. Setting global user/group permissions
The screen you will see after you select a user or group in the first two Global permissions sections. Here you edit global permissions such as profile control, search, private messaging etc. By selecting Global moderator permissions or Admin permissions from the drop-down box, you can change additional settings for the user.