Setting Section Access

One of the simplest uses for Access Groups is to restrict access to a section (or sections) on your web site. Text/Image, List of Links, Mixed Media, and Data Access sections all allow you to restrict access from the general public to a specific access group (or groups). Attempting to navigate to a section with restricted access will prompt the user to log in.

Let's say you have a section on your site that you only want the faculty in your school to be able to read. Here's how you would set this up:

  1. If necessary, create a new Access Group for your faculty (see Configuring Access Groups for more information).
  2. Add or update the members of this group as necessary.
  3. Return to the Main Configuration Page and locate the section you want to restrict access to. Click the Properties link for this section.
  4. When the Section Properties page opens locate the controls for setting the section access (see screen shot below) and set as desired.
  5. Click Submit.

Section Access Controls

AccessGroups: section-access.png

The screen shot here shows the section access controls as found on the Section Properties page for Text/Image, List of Links, Mixed Media, and Data Access sections. For this example three Access Groups (Faculty, Parents, and Students) were created in addition to the default Site Owenr/Co-owners group.

The settings as show in the screen shot allows EVERYONE to access this page. If you want you faculty to be the only people to access this page you need to:

  1. Select the Access Groups Only radio button.
  2. Select the Faculty check box.
  3. Click the Submit button (not shown).

You could, of course, allow more than one group of users to access this section.

Editor, Contributors, and Secure Connections

When you look at the Properties of a Text/Image section you will notice similar controls for section editors and section contributors. These controls are specific to the Text/Image section type and do nothing to restrict browsing access to the section. For the purposes of this discussion IGNORE THESE BUTTONS. These settings are used if you are interested in having other users (e.g. students) add content to your site and are discussed elsewhere on this site. Again, these instructions only pertain to using the Section Access radio buttons and check boxes. See Editors and Contributors for more information.

AccessGroups: text-image-privileges.png

The "Require HTTPS Access For Public Sections" radio button also does nothing to restrict access from the general public. However, it does load the page over a secure connection. This is good if you want to collect information from the general public with a data table.