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1.3. U of L Plone User Accounts and Roles

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The basics of using a Plone web site account, the distinction between anonymous surfing and "logged in" web site work, and the description of user roles.

Plone web sites come in many flavors, ranging from personal websites with one user to community, organization, or business websites that could have thousands of users.  Users are often also called members. Each person who adds content to a Plone web site has their own user account.  A user account includes a user name and a password.  Some Plone sites allow people to sign up by visiting the site, clicking a "join" link, and filling out basic user information. Other sites have user accounts that are created by web site administrators, in which case people normally receive emails with the user account details. 

user accounts are centrally managed at the University of Louisville. If you have a U of L ULink or e-mail login, you can log-in to U of L's Plone CMS.

However created, a Plone user account allows a person to log in by typing their user name and password.  Passwords are case-sensitive, which means that you have to pay attention to the uppercase and lowercase letters.  For example, if your password is xcFGt6v, you would have to type that exactly for it to work.  Passwords that have some amount of strangeness to them are preferred over passwords like "racoon" or "boardwalk," but it usually doesn't matter what you use, as long as you follow the rules, such as having no blanks and avoiding really short passwords.

Anonymous vs Authenticated Web Surfing

The distinction between anonymous web surfing and authenticated (logged-in) web activity is an important one: 

Anonymous Web Surfing

     This is the normal experience for a person surfing the web. You type the web address of a web site into your browser and you look at web pages, watch videos, view images, but you don't have to log in. This is why this mode is called anonymous: anyone can do it just by surfing normally. Note the presence of the log in link the screen image below (top right). If there is a log in link showing, you haven't logged in -- and you are surfing the web site anonymously, as seen in the following screen capture of a UofL Plone web site:

    

Authenticated (Logged-in) Web Activity

     You know the authenticated mode of web experience if you have ever used a bank or credit card website, or any other website that involved a user account.  A bank web site will let you view your account information, fill out information forms, transfer funds, and do other actions, but only after you have logged in.  A Plone web site is not much different, except that in addition to basic actions, you can create new web pages and folders, upload images and files, and do more sophisticated things.  Compare the screen image below, captured after a user called "John Smith" has logged in.  Near the top right you see links for John Smith's name, my folder, preferences, undo, and log out. There is another important difference you see after logging in -- the main area in the middle now has a green header strip with tabs. This sort of header strip is present when a user has rights to change an area of the website.  John Smith has the user rights to change this main area.  The tabs in the green header strip for the main area will vary somewhat, but you can count on it looking like a tabbed interface with this particular green color. In the following screen capture, user John Smith has logged into a new Plone web site:

    

User Roles

Equally important is the distinction between different user roles on a U of L Plone web site. To illustrate the simplest case, let's consider these user roles, member, owner, and reviewer. Consider the different rights or "power" of these roles:

 

Member

  • has a UofL account, so can log in
  • but may need to login to access secured data or forms
  • can not publish content

 

Owner

  • has a user account, so can log in
  • can add content to their site(s) and has the power to change content

 

Reviewer

  • Usually an owner is also a reviewer, so has a user account and can log in
  • Can add and publish content
  • NOTE: Only published items may be allowed to appear in calenders, the event portlet, or the news portlet

 

You'll have a default member account, at least when you first use a UofL Plone web site. You may be given owner rights later, depending on your role on the web site. You can start editing and creating content once you're given owner or owner and reviewer

rights.

 

 After clicking the my folder link, you'll see a header strip for your member area that has a green color with tabs for contents, view, edit, properties, and sharing:

You'll be able to explore to find the differences between these tabs, but here are descriptions to help you start:

  • contents - shows a list of items in a folder
  • view - shows the view an anonymous web surfer would see
  • edit - shows a panel for changing a view
  • properties - shows a panel for changing general data for an item
  • sharing - shows a panel for setting rights of other members to see or edit content

You also see four menus in the green part of the header strip, actions, display, add item, and state:

Explore these also. Here are basic descriptions of these menus:

  • actions - shows menu choices for cut, copy, paste, etc.
  • display - shows menu choices for setting the display type (list view, summary view, etc.)
  • add item - shows menu choices for adding content items (images, pages, folders, etc.)
  • state - shows menu choices for setting publication state (private, public draft, public, etc.)

These menus and tabs will offer the main ways you interact with Plone. You will become very familiar with them as a matter of course.

 

Next: Logging In Previous: Visual Design of UofL's Plone Web Sites