User Groups vs. Access Levels

[stlmoguy24]

Okay, I just downloaded and installed Joomla 1.7.2 and am trying to configure the basics of my website. However, I seem to be a little confused between the difference between groups and access levels. It appears as though you can set permissions for both types, so which would you use and why?

I am on creating a website for a non profit organization. I want not only parents of the organization to be able to log in, but also staff and board members. Parents I want to see content related to payments, upcoming events, and etc; staff I want to see notices, important dates, and maybe info concerning their paychecks; and board members I would like to be able to log-in and see past board meeting notes and so forth. So, would I be better to set up seperate groups for parents, staff, and board members; or, should I create parent, staff, and board member access levels? The only thing I can see wrong with creating them as groups is that a group has to be assigned a group parent. So, if I set board members to "Registered", I would either have to give all registered users (even if they aren't board members) the same permissions, or limit the permissions the board members have. So, all in all, I would be better to create them as access levels so I can give each one seperate permissions, correct?

[toivo]

Groups are like roles or job functions, and a group can have a parent group, in which case it will inherit the access levels of its parent group.

Access levels are defined as a list, and assigned to groups. Menu items, articles and modules have an access level, from which Joomla determines which user groups can access items, articles and modules.

More in the tutorial http://docs.joomla.org/Access_Control_L ... 5/Tutorial

[jonBuckner1]

Nice question

Nice reply...


Do a summary:
Usergroups are like job titles (manager, admin etc)

Access Levels provide access to content. Usergroups (job titles) get assigned to this access level.


Permissions are what you can do if you are in a usergroup that is in an access level.

[toivo]

This page has links to the latest tutorials: https://docs.joomla.org/Access_Control_List

The first two articles analyse and implement access control, based on job functions in the client organisation:
https://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issu ... -Based-ACL
https://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issu ... -based-acl

The third article show developers how access controls can be added:
https://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issu ... -overrides

[jonBuckner1]

Thanks for the links