Users: Site Access, Registration, and Posting

Drupal has a permission system which places users into roles/groups of users. A visitor who is not logged in is an anonymous user and a newly registered user is an authenticated user. An additional role has been added to this installation, an administrator which is given full access on the site. In the original account setup, the root super user account which was created first is not affected by the Drupal permission system.

Some configuration tips:

• Registration. The access control page will allow you to change whether users can register on their own, require administrator approval, or not at all. The email sent to users can also be changed here, as well as the registration page information guidelines that users see when registering.
• Posting comments. In the comment module section of the user configuration, the access control page controls whether or not anonymous users or authenticated users can post comments at all or only with moderater approval.
• Administrator view of comments. As an administrator, use the new comments display to see a table of all contents or those waiting for approval. The comments approval queue display provides a similar table for those comments awaiting approval..
• Making the site private. Iit is possible to lock the site up and grant access only to logged in users. On the access control page, make sure all boxes are unchecked under "anonymous users". Uncheck access comments and access content. Remember to "Save permissions" at the bottom of the page.
• Upgrading permission status. Many sites will need to have more than one site administrator. Visit the user list page and select "edit" for the user you wish to upgrade. name anywhere on the site and you'll find an edit account link. Look for Roles and check the appropriate box, then save your changes.

Note: The default registration permission settings on this site allows anyone to register. Before sharing this site publicly with others and immediately after having students register for the site in class, you should change this setting to at least require administrator moderation of new accounts.

Managing Users/Students

Populating the course: Registration

Assuming that your site is public on the Internet, you probably don't want to leave registration permanently open for anyone on the Internet to join your course site. Leave registration open for the first day of class; then change the user registration setting to "Visitors can create accounts but administrator approval is required." This will allos students joining the course during the add/drop to register with your approval.

Recommended: if your site is public on the Internet, for privacy reasons, encourage students to use a screen name instead of their full names. This little bit of anonymity still puts the writing/writer at risk since the writing is public, but not the student.

Student personal information

Using the profile module, you can require students to provide information about themselves during registration or make some profile information optional. The module will also let you set some fields to " Private field, content only available to privileged users, " allowing only the student and a teacher/administrator to see the content of that field on the user's account page. This feature is useful for having students provide personal information such as email address, full name, etc., so that it is not public to other students or the rest of the Internet.