Profiles and permissions -- what does it mean? There is some overlap between profiles and permissions. There are things that SEEM like permissions that are not in permissions. And there are things that some might think seem like profiles, but aren't. Once you get friendly with these terms, you'll understand much better how to control what members of your forum can and cannot do on your forum.

Profiles

There are two types of profiles -- member profiles and board permission profiles.

• Member Profile -- Describe individual members. When you click on your "Profile" link, or click on a member's username to see their "Profile", you are looking at the member profile. This is a list of information about the user's account settings, forum profile, some settings choices the user has made, and links to things like posts, stats, and even a link to send a user a message.
• Board Permission Profile -- Or simply "Permission profile" for short. Describe which member groups can do what things on certain boards. Admin sees this list from PermissionAdministration Center » Permissions » Edit Profiles. This is a list of things called "Board Permission Profiles". Each Board Permission Profile is a list, for every member group on the forum, which things (start topics, reply to topics, edit own posts, delete own replies, etc) each member group can do in that board permission profile. These board permission profiles only have effect when they are applied to a board. These board permission profiles have a similar function to the local board permissions of SMF 1.x. Several boards can use the same board permission profile, so in SMF 1.x terms, each board permission profile is really a kind of "reusable local board permission". But that is a hopelessly awkward phrase, so the developers came up with term "board permission profile" for all of our convenience. For more about default board permissions and board permission profiles, please read All about permission profiles.

Permissions

There are two basic types of permissions -- permissions to do everything that is not board-related, and board-related permissions. The ability to view a board, interestingly enough, is not a permission at all.

• General Permissions -- describe, in general, what members of each membergroup area allowed to do on the forum. The permission set here include all sorts of permissions for things that are NOT boards. They also include all the permissions for the Default Board Permission Profile.
• Board Permission Profile -- See above. Note also that Default is a board permission profile, and can be edited from PermissionAdministration Center » Permissions » Edit Profiles.

• Permission Profile -- Admin sees this from Administration Center » Permissions » General Permissions

Other things that seem like profiles, but are not called that in SMF

Edit Member Groups -- Administration Center » Membergroups is a list of membergroups. When you click on the group name, you see a list of information about the membergroup, as well as a list of all members. When you click on the modify link, you see additional information and settings for this membergroup. If a list of information and settings about an individual is a member profile, and if a list of information and settings about board permissions is called a board permission profile, why is this list of information and settings about a membergroup not called a membergroup profile? Perhaps some SMF users already feel that there are already one too many things calling themselves "profiles", and using the "profile" term yet again would only be more confusing. So we will just call this "modify membergroups" and leave it at that.

Other things that seem like permissions, but are not

Who is allowed to see this board -- In SMF, the ability to see a board is not handled with permissions. To see which membergroups are allowed to view a board, see Administration Center » Boards » Modify Boards and click the "modify" link on the same line as the board name. To see which boards a given membergroup can see, see Administration Center » Membergroups » Edit Membergroups, choose the "modify" link on the same line as the membergroup name, and click the [Show boards] link.