How membership in the site works:

We've got a little crew here that takes care of the daily maintenance on the site. As such, I have to establish guidelines and make sure that they can be followed. Being humans, sometimes one or more of us get things wrong.

The crew is me as Admin, I have the needed permissions to do almost anything. Piper is next, she has my passwords and can log in as me if needed. She, Cat and one other person are the Subadmin crew and they have the widest array of permissions to do things on site. Subadmins can post pages and announcements and can convert one kind of post into another and can change the kind of account someone else has.

Next are the Moderators and Editors, about half a dozen of each; trusted members who have the permissions needed to keep the site from looking like heck because someone posted bad HTML. The Moderators can also unpub comments they consider inflammatory and refer them to me. The Editors can edit all the kinds of stories and even post things as belonging to someone else, useful for setting up author pages and such.

Next are Authors, Contributors and Illustrators. An Author is someone who has posted a story and had their account upgraded so that they can edit after posting and see their own kudos. A Contributor is currently someone who needs extra storage space in their account for uploading pictures or files. An Illustrator is someone who loads a LOT of pictures and needs a whale of a lot of storage and is trusted to use bigger pictures but not on the front page.

Next are Members who have lots of needed permissions to post content and view the site. They also get PM accounts.

Next are Authenticated Users who are in a transition state between being Visitors and being Members. This is an account status built into Drupal and I can't change the name of it. An Authenticated User is a Visitor who has clicked on the link in the sign-up email sent out. When I check them out, I upgrade them to Member by hand. They have the same permissions that Members do but no PM account yet.

Next are Visitors who have applied for an account and been granted some permissions but not all that a Member gets. They need to answer their authentication email to get upgraded to Authenticated User then Member. Sometimes when I see a Visitor who has been very active logging on for a week or more but still hasn't answered their email, I figure that they may have email problems and upgrade them by hand.

Next are Guests. There are two special Guest accounts so that savvy users can make comments without creating an account here.

Next are Anonymous Users, a built in Drupal account type that I cannot change the name of easily and is basically everyone who comes to the site but does not have a login account. Anonymous Users can read stories but generally see a reduced home page when that code works right. :)

Lots of things are automated here. I don't approve stories or blogs or comments before they are posted or new members before they get some posting privileges but many things happen after things are begun by other people. And it makes it easier to do those things if they are nearly mechanical. It sure makes it easier for a group of people who aren't always in communication to do them.

First, membership. Someone applies for membership by creating an account. This is automated and they have to pass a Turing test to prove that they are human, this keeps the bots out mostly.

Everyone gets a Visitor account just for applying and an email sent to the address they are given. Visitors have restricted posting access as above. If they reply to the authentication email by clicking the link, the system gives them Authenticated User status. Later, if they login on more than one day, I upgrade their status to Member or if they login frequently over a period of a week or so even without replying to the auth email. If they only login on the day they applied and never click on the auth email, I delete their account after two weeks.

Even if someone gets a Member account but does not use it after the first week for more than two months, I delete their account. Accounts that are older than four months are exempted from being deleted for inactivity and any Author account is exempted. I try to check the new accounts list every day but sometimes a day or two goes by without it being checked.

Speaking of Author accounts, when someone posts their first story it shows up on the front page with New Author in the right hand column. This signals to me and my crew that someone needs an entry in the Author Menu and an account upgrade to Author status. Other upgrades are handled by request.

Okay, this has turned out to be a longer post than I thought. In a day or two I will make another post on how the rest of what goes on behind the scenes happens. :)

Hugs,
Erin