There are a bunch of different types of things members can be allowed to see and do on the forum, and a few different places that these different things are handled. Most of the things that members can do are handled by allowing membergroups, while a few of these things can be applied to individual members, regardless of which membergroups they belong to. If you are not familiar with any of the terms in this paragraph, please read about them now.
- Almost everything members can do on forum boards, topics, posts is set through board permission profiles.
- Except that permission to view a board is set from modify boards.
- Permission to do things that are not related to boards, topics, posts (calendar, etc) are set in "General Permissions".
- All of these permissions are set for membergroups, rather than for individual users.
- You can give an individual users the ability to control who can join a membergroup in
- You can give an individual user the ability to act as a moderator for a single board from modify boards
What is a Board Permission Profile
A board permission profile is usually referred to as a permission profile and, sometimes, just as a profile. It is used by the admin to control what different membergroups (and, therefore, the members in those groups) can see and do. A board permission profile is completely different from the member profile. A member profile is also usually just called a profile, which can be confusing if you aren't clear on which type of profile is meant.
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.
Board Permission Profiles are only found in SMF versions 2.0 onwards. For more about default board permissions and board permission profiles, please read All about permission profiles.
What about board permissions in older versions of SMF
In SMF 1.0.x and SMF 1.1.x, there was a default set of board permissions set in "General Permissions". This is similar to the way the default board permission profile is set in SMF 2.0. For individual boards, SMF 1.X admins could set "local permissions" for each board. This was similar to having a separate board permission profile for each board.
Why the big change in SMF 2.0
Creating board permission profiles allowed admins to reuse "local board permissions" on several different boards. So in SMF 1.x terms, each board permission profile in SMF 2.x is really a kind of "reusable local board permission". But that is a hopelessly awkward phrase, so the SMF 2.0 developers came up with term "board permission profile" for all of our convenience.
Who can manage membergroup members
This is done in Edit Member Groups At Administration Center » Membergroups , which is a list of membergroups. Click on the group name, to see a list of information about the membergroup, as well as a list of all members. Click on the modify link, to see additional information and settings for this membergroup. Enter the member names you want to manage membergroup members.
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, check 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 is allowed to view, check Administration Center » Membergroups » Edit Membergroups, choose the "modify" link on the same line as the membergroup name, and click the [Show boards] link.
