Roles allow administrators to map real-world labels onto sets of permissions like, Designer or Writer allowing for almost natural language assignment in the form of a rule, called an Association.

While a single user or group can have any number of roles on a particular weblog, it is best practice to create broad roles which encompass all of the desired permissions so that each user/group has only a single role (or two maximum) on each weblog. This will greatly reduce your management burden in the future.

Default Roles

The system ships with a number of default roles which cover a number of popular personas and capabilities. These default roles are not special in any way. They are completely customizable in both name, description and permissions and can be deleted if the administrator finds them unsuitable. New roles can also be created in place of or in addition to the default roles.

• Weblog Administrator - Can administer the weblog.
• Designer - Can edit, manage and rebuild weblog templates.
• Editor - Can edit all entries/categories/tags on a weblog and rebuild.
• Editor (can upload) - Can upload files, edit all entries/categories/tags on a weblog and rebuild.
• Publisher - Can upload files, edit all entries/categories/tags on a weblog, rebuild and send notifications.
• Writer - Can create entries and edit their own.
• Writer (can upload) - Can create entries, edit their own and upload files.

Each of these roles can be modified or even deleted. Other roles can be created to better match your workflow and job descriptions.

Custom Roles When Upgrading

Upon upgrade, the system maps each users' sets of permissions to each default role and if a match is found, the default role is granted in place of the individual permissions. When the permission sets don't match up, a Custom role is created for them, system-wide and each user with that set of permissions on any weblog will be granted that Custom role.

After upgrade, these Custom roles can be edited, properly named to describe the persona or combined manually with the default roles. For best results, we recommend that all Custom roles are at least renamed making it easier to differentiate between each.

See also: Associations