phpBB • Free and Open Source Forum Software

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.

There are four types of Permission Roles:

Permission Roles can be maintained by clicking the corresponding link on the ACP Permissions tab. Roles provide a convenient permissions template to use when assigning permissions to either users or user groups. A Role’s permissions settings can be viewed or edited by clicking the green-gear for that role.

Most standard Roles use combinations of Yes and No, meaning that if one user is assigned two different roles from being a member of two different groups, for instance Limited Access and Regular Access, the Yeses will override the Nos and leave the user with Regular Access.

The Exceptions are the ones with Never settings, such as the User Roles No Avatar , No PMs and Newly Registered User Features, and the Forum Role On Moderation Queue. These four Roles use Never settings, and therefore override the Yes settings that would have been granted by other roles.

You should never use one of these four roles, or any other Never settings with your Registered Users group. Doing so will take those permissions away from everyone, including yourself.

If a Role’s permission settings are not quite right for your forum -- for instance, you don’t want anyone to be able to hide their online status -- you can add or subtract a permission to or from a standard Role. Then wherever that role is used, that permission will be changed.

You can also create your own custom roles by typing a new name into the Create role box, selecting a role to copy from in the Use settings from dropdown, and click submit. Then you can customise your new role and use it for assigning those permissions.

Using such custom roles is simpler than editing the advanced permissions for multiple forums and should reduce the resources required by your forum when checking permissions.