All about permission profiles

If you are an administrator, you can control precisely who can post to, add attachments to, moderate, etc. each and every board on your forum. In SMF 1.x, this was handled by setting up default board permissions, and then using "local board permissions" on each board you wanted to be handled differently from the default. In SMF 2.x, most of this is handled with something called permission profiles. If you are interested in making a board invisible to some members, you will want to read about Administration Center » Boards » Modify Boards.

Basically, permission profiles describe, for each member group, what that member group is (and, sometimes, is not) allowed to do. Every board on your forum uses a permission profile. If you don't pick a profile for a board, then SMF will use the default profile for that board. Board profiles do not control who can view the board. To control which member groups can view a particular board, use Administration Center » Boards » Modify Boards.

There are two basic steps in this process
 * 1) For each board, pick the permission profile you want to use for that board.
 * 2) If you don't already have a permission profile you need, set up a new one.

Caution: if you don't keep this in mind, it is pretty easy to "accidentally" edit your default profile. Any changes you make will affect not only the board you started with, but also every other board that uses the default profile. If you want a board to have special permissions, choose (or create) a new permission profile for it.

That sounds a bit vague, doesn't it? But just keep those two basic steps in mind as you read along and you should be able to get your board permissions set up the way you want them.

See board permission profiles
To see which boards are using which profiles, go to Administration Center » Permissions » Board Permissions This is a list of all your boards. It is listed by category. Within each category, the boards in that category. Within each board, any child boards of that board. For each board, there is a profile name.

See or edit permissions for a profile
There are two ways to get to a permission profile. Either way, you'll wind up with a list titled Permissions for Profile: and the profile name. This is a list of member group names, some statistics, a link to "modify permissions", and a check-box. Below this list, there is a set of Advanced Options.
 * 1) In the list of board names at  Administration Center » Permissions » Board Permissions, click on the permission name shown next to a board name.
 * 2) Or else, go to Administration Center » Permissions » Edit Profiles  and choose a profile name.

See or change permissions for a member group in this permission profile
Simply click on the member group name. Suppose you already chose the Default profile. Now choose the Guests member group. You will now see a page of information titled Permissions for group "Guests" in profile "Default". You see a bunch of check boxes. If a box is unchecked, that member group does not have that permission in this profile. If it is checked, the member does have permission in this profile.

What if a member belongs to more than one group
If you have permissions set up in the most basic way, then permissions "add up". If that permission is checked on one member group OR another to which a member belongs, that member will have that permission. Here is an example.
 * Member SparklyPony belongs to "club members" and also "club officers".
 * "club members" does not have permission to Announce topic in the Default profile
 * "club officers" has permission to Announce topic in the Default profile
 * Therefore, member SparklyPony has the permission Announce topic in the Default profile

What does "permissions set up in the most basic way" mean? It means the way things are set up when you install SMF 2.x for the first time. If you want some fancier ways of controlling permissions, have a look at Administration Center » Permissions » Settings, select Enable the option to deny permissions . Then, for every member group other than "Guest", you will see, instead of a single checkbox for each permission in a profile, a choice of "allow", "do not allow" and "deny". Choosing "deny" will prevent members of that membergroup from having that permission even if they also belong to another member group that is allowed that permission.

Keeping track of how all the permissions add up can get tricky.

Assigning permissions to a board
This step is easy.

But what if I want a member to have very special permissions, different from all other members
Create a special member group just for that user. Move that user into that member group. You might want to remove one or more other member groups from that member. To change member groups for a user, go to Administration Center » Members » View All Members then choose a member name, and choose Account Settings from the member menu.