Creating roles and setting up role-based access control

Creating roles

The default Drupal install comes with two roles: anonymous user and authenticated user. We will add two additional roles: one for the course instructor, and an admin role.

While you can use the primary account to administer the site, it is not a good practice.

To create roles, navigate to http://yoursite.com/?q=admin/access/roles (or, administer -> access control -> roles)


Setting up role-based access control

The site now has four roles: anonymous user, authenticated user, instructor, and admin.

To set role-based access control, navigate to http://yoursite.com/?q=admin/access (or, administer -> access control)

Rather than describe each assigned permission, I have attached a screenshot showing the permissions I assigned.

The admin role will be used to administer the site.

In the current set up, I have allowed anonymous users the right to see content posted on the site. For privacy and security reasons, and specifically with younger students, some teachers/schools might not want to allow this. To prevent anonymous users from viewing any content on the site, simply remove the "access content" permission in the admin -> access section. Then, configure a special splash page for anonymous users using the front page module at http://yoursite.com/?q=admin/settings/front_page (or, administer -> settings -> front page).

With regards to the access rights for the instructor and authenticated user role, I attempted to balance ease of use against a wide array of options. The instructor role has sufficient rights to do whatever they need to do in order to run the site without being overwhelmed by options. There is no technical reason why the course instructor should not have full admin rights as defined by the admin role.

The authenticated user role -- the role students will use -- has the right to see all content on the site, and the right to create blog posts. All student work on the site will be blog posts.