Simpla Admin

ENews Users

Anyone can create an account on a ENews website (see Register), and once they have registered an account they are able to log in and become a user of your site. As a user they are given special permissions and features that anonymous users aren't able to use, many features can be added through third-party modules. ENews comes with some built in features to encourage users to sign up and begin participating in your website and this chapter will highlight what users can do with an account and how Admin users can manage users.

Registration

ENews requires users to register in order to post new articles or comment on existing ones. Registration also offers many other benefits such as unique profile URLs where they can see a history of their submissions, votes and comments as long as change template or disable categories that they have no interest in. The registration process consists of filling out a username, password, email address and CAPTCHA. The email address is then used to send a confirmation email that they will need to use for validation of their address. This email validation process is necessary to reduce the chances of spammers registering on your site. The email validation process can be disabled though from the Admin Configure section.

Profile

Each users is assigned a profile page that lists personal information that the users wishes to share with the community. This includes data such as their real name, homepage, location and various IM software screen names. All of these input fields are optional and will only display if the users chooses to fill them in. The users is also able to change their avatar which is saved in 2 different sizes (large and small). That avatar will commonly be used to represent the users in comment sections or next to the author name of a submitted story.

Profile pages also allow users to connect with each other through a basic friendship system. The friend system allows users to mark each other as friends. The friendship system is a basic concept that we are continuing to work on and you will probably see it advance to a more complete relationship management system through future releases and modules.

Lastly, the profile settings page allows a user to change which categories they want to be displayed across the site. From here they can uncheck categories that they are not interested and by doing so any stories from those categories will be removed from the site as long as they are logged in. This helps users filter out irrelevant content.

Managing Users

Admins need a way to manage the thousands of members that participate in your website, so we've built in some tools to help make things easier on you. First is the ability to "killspam" users. Should you find a user who is posting only spam posts to your ENews site you can click on a "killspam" link (found in some templates) next to the story that will disable the user and remove all of their stories and comments from the site.

The second method to manage users is from the Admin panel. From the Admin panel click on Manage then Users. There you will find tools for searching, validating, editing and disabling user accounts. You can also quickly create a new user account from this page.

New users

Normal user registration is automated and immediate. By default, Elite News Line requires a user to validate their email address in an effort to reduce spam users. A unique username, email address and password (and an optional CAPTCHA confirmation) are required when registering a new account. Upon successful registrations, users are taken to their Profile page. There they can modify their profile and site preferences.

New users can also be created by a God administrator from the User Manager page in the admin panel.

User Levels