User Management Overview

User Management Overview

Once you’ve set up your WebBoard conferences, you need users to participate in those conferences. WebBoard lets you grant various levels of authority and access to WebBoard users. For the most part, your users will be able to read and post messages. However, you may decide to give some users special privileges to moderate conferences or to manage entire boards, including conferences. If you are hosting boards for other people, you may want to give them manager or moderator privileges. Or, if your WebBoard is running on an intranet, you may want to let each department choose a manager or moderator, though only you, as WebBoard administrator, can actually assign manager status.

WebBoard maintains its own user login name and password database, which is distinct from the user database for the operating system, network, or web server. Users can self-register and create their own login names and passwords when they log in for the first time. Or, the WebBoard administrator or a board manager can add users to the WebBoard database. As you might expect, no-auth boards (those that require no login) do not save user names in the database.

In addition, WebBoard can be set up to use either users’ real names or login names to identify them in WebBoard postings and user profiles. You may want to use login names to ensure some amount of privacy or anonymity for your users. If not, users can maintain some anonymity by making up a fictitious WebBoard name.

There are six types of WebBoard users, each with a different level of privileges and security. In descending order, these are the WebBoard administrator, manager, moderator, user, guest, and unauthenticated user. The WebBoard administrator has complete control over the entire WebBoard site, including all boards, conferences, and users. The manager has control over an entire board and can add or delete conferences and users on that board. The moderator has control over specific conferences on a board. Users can read and post messages while guests can only read messages. Unauthenticated users are sort of a hybrid between users and guests. They can only visit specially designated no-auth boards in a sort of anonymous mode, but if they want to post a message, they must identify themselves.

Tip
Since the Administrator, Managers and Moderators have special privileges, they should consider having an additional basic user account for themselves so they can see the boards and conferences from a user's perspective.