Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 3 ■ Creating and Managing Users
As soon as the account is created, Drupal sends an e-mail to the e-mail address entered by the user and
displays a success message displayed on the screen: “Thank you for applying for an account. Your account
is currently pending approval by the site administrator. In the meantime, a welcome message with further
instructions has been sent to your e-mail address.”
If you configured your system to allow users to create an account but an administrator must manually
approve that account, you’ll need to visit the People page and edit that user’s account, changing the user’s
status from Blocked to Active. Until the user’s status has been changed, they will be unable to log in to your
site with their user ID and password. If you selected the option where users can create an account and the
account does not require administrator approval, the user will be able to log in to your site immediately.
Resetting Users’ Passwords
One of Drupal’s features that saves site administrators hours of work a year is the ability for users to reset
their passwords without having to e-mail a site administrator asking someone to reset their password for
them. If you log out of your site (clicking the logout link at the top right of the page), you’ll note that in the
right column, under the “Log in” button, there is a link for resetting your password (refer to Figure 3-8).
Clicking this link reveals a page where the visitor can enter either their user ID or their e-mail address.
Entering either a valid username or a valid e-mail address (where “valid” means that it exists as either
a valid user ID on your site or a valid e-mail address associated with a user account on your site) results in
Drupal generating an e-mail that is sent to the user with a “one-time login” link that allows them to reset
their password.
Summary
In this chapter, I covered the process for configuring how Drupal handles user accounts and the approach
for creating user roles and assigning permissions to those roles. I discussed the decisions that you as the
site owner must make when setting up your site, including whether you will be the only person who has the
ability to administer the site and create content, or whether you will have others who will be responsible for
those areas.
If there will be others assigned to tasks of creating content or managing the site, then you’ll want to
configure the base settings for user accounts, create roles for those who will be performing activities on your
site, and set the appropriate permissions. You’ll also want to define whether only administrators can create
accounts, visitors can create their own accounts without an administrator approving their accounts, or
visitors can create an account but an administrator must approve it. Once you’ve made those decisions and
set the parameters discussed in this chapter, you’re ready to start adding users to your site.
You can have all the visitors you can handle, but they probably won’t stick around long if they can’t
find the content they’re interested in on your site. That’s where taxonomy comes in, which is what we’ll talk
about next.
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