Administration and modification - Mca

Users, Roles, and PagesUser accountsIf you are used to working within a network environment, or have worked withdifferent portals in the past, then you are probably comfortable with the term "users".For those of us who may not be very familiar with this term, can think of a websitethat you have registered with in the past. When the registration had been completed,a user account was provided to you. This account lets you return to the site and login as a recognized user.Everything that takes place on your portal revolves around users and user accounts.Whether users are required to register in order to use your services (such as amember site) or only a few user accounts are required to manage the content,functionality, and layout of your site, you will need to understand how to createand manage user accounts. Let's start with a general description of a user, and thenyou will see how to create and manage your users. In order to work through theexamples, you will need to bring up your portal and sign in as an administratoraccount, such as the one created during the initial portal installation describedin the previous chapter.Who is a user?The simplest definition of a user is an individual who consumes the services thatyour portal provides. However, a user can take on many different roles, from avisitor who is just browsing (unregistered user) or a person who registers to gainaccess to your services (registered user), to a specialized member of the site suchas a content editor, to the facilitator (administrator or host) who is responsible forthe content, functionality, and design of your portal. The difference between anadministrator account and a host (or super user) account will be explained later indetail. For now, we will focus on the administrator account that is associated with asingle portal. Everything in DotNetNuke revolves around the user, so before we cando anything else, we need to learn a little about user accounts.Creating user accountsBefore you create user accounts, you should decide and configure how users will beable to register on the site. You can choose from the following four different typesof registrations:• None• Private• Public (default)• Verified[ 52 ]