Who Does What?

With a robust content management system like Drupal, you can define roles pertaining to who can do what on your web site.  Getting a handle on roles early in the process, if not right from the start, smooths out both the design and development phase, along with training people as to what their role is and what it can do.

The first thing to address is, what is a role?   A role is a set of rights and permissions that can be granted to individual users.  For example, the role of a Visitor to your site may only view certain pages or not be allowed to leave comments.  A Site Administrator may be granted total control of the site, determining not only what goes onto the site, but who can create content and edit it through managing users.

Some common roles and rights are:

Site Administrator - Allowed to manage all content and users.  The Site Administrator may also have permissions to add new features or change the layout.

Content Manager - Allowed to add or update content. 

Authenticated User - User with an account on the site.  Must be logged in to access portions of the site.

Visitor or Anonymous User - Any non-authenticated person who comes to your web site

Many people may share a role, such as Content Manager.  If, through the process of gathering content, you discover that different content requires different managers, then create more specific content manager roles.  In the case of a real estate site, one role may be allowed to update listings, while another may be allowed to both create and update listings.  Plus, one person can be assigned more than one role.  It can seem complicated, but documenting it and examing roles as the site develops helps when training administrators and managers.