Understanding Contribute Roles


Each Contribute-enabled site comes with three predefined roles: Administrator, Publisher, and Writer. These roles are preset with a series of options that illustrate the use of roles:

  • Administrator. Grants access to all primary functions, including publishing, deleting files, creating new files from any source, and unrestricted editing. Pages editable in Contribute can be sent to another program, such as Dreamweaver, for editing.

  • Publisher. Has basically the same settings as Administrator, except that the ability to delete a published file is withheld from this role. The Publisher is further restricted from editing a page's source in an external program or from inserting third-party Contribute extensions such as those for PayPal and Google.

  • Writer. Access is limited to general editing of pages; all modified pages must be submitted for review and cannot be directly published or deleted.

Tip

Carefully review all the settings for each role before assigning it. Some default settings, such as those for creating new pages, styling content, or inserting graphics, might not be in line with your organization's goals for its site.


New roles can be created at any time, and existing roles can be altered or deleted as needed. Any changes made to a role's permissions go into effect the next time a user in that role uses Contribute to work on the site. A site's role definitions are stored on the same server as the Web site in a Contribute-created folder and file. The folder, named _mm, is placed in the site root; the leading underscore character designates the folder as hidden, so it is not accessible to casual visitors. By centralizing the role settings on the server, Contribute ensures that any changes implemented by the Administrator are applied as soon as possible.

Roles can also be reassigned when necessary. If you're using Contribute Publishing Services (CPS) with the User Directory service option enabled, the reassignment is handled automatically: The next time the user logs in, the new role settings are applied. If the User Directory service is being used, the user must create a new connection, by either importing a new connection key or entering the information manually. In these situations, it's highly recommended that you generate and distribute to the user a connection key with the new role embedded.

Although there is no real limit to the number of roles you can create, you might find that too many roles become problematic to manage. If Contribute is used with a large Web site or intranet in which there are a great number of content contributors in discrete departments, you might find it more effective to create several Contribute sites, one for each department. (This approach is outlined in the sidebar "Structuring Large-Scale Sites" in Lesson 2.)



Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3(c) Training from the Source
Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3: Training from the Source
ISBN: 032128884X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 130
Authors: Joseph Lowery

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