In this section we look at the different types of usergroup, and the various mechanisms available for manipulating and controlling users' membership of usergroups.

Everyone who visits a website built using neatComponents is a User. Every User is a member of one or more usergroups. The usergroups are used primarily to determine their permissions, as it would be too onerous administratively to specify permissions directly on a user by user basis.

Some users will log on to identify themselves. If they do, we can then use the permissions system to let them see extra parts of the site, or even allow them to do administrative tasks like editing the site or managing users.

Every user who logs on is identified individually, however to keep the management easy their permissions are assigned by way of user groups: each user can be assigned to one or more user groups, and each part of the site can assign permissions to the various user groups.

There are a number of built-in user groups and you can create an unlimited number of extra user groups, using the User Group Manager.

Learn more about the User Group Manager...

Whilst you can create any number of specialist usergroups to give segments of your users special priviledges,  there is one usergroup that everone is always a member of. This is the "Visitor" usergroup.

Any user, regardless of whether they are logged on, is a member of the Visitor usergroup, and typically a website will be set up so that the public-facing pages will give the Visitor usergroup View permission.

Every component in a neatComponents website has Access Permissions associated with it. This means that the website designer can control exactly who has permission to view every page, access every form or edit any content. 

Access Permissions vary from site to site, but usually there is 'Visitor' access plus a number of levels of 'Registered' access. 'Visitor' is the base User Group and  allows open public viewing of a page or component; it is the simple brochure-ware view most people are used to. The Registered users need to log in to the site for access. This may be simple -view-access to restricted areas, or to give submission or edit access.

In order to simplify the management of possibly large numbers of Users, neatComponents provides a number of easy to use management systems: