User Management

Craft’s “Users” represent humans in the system. These may be member accounts, or records that represent people in general.

The first user account is created during installation. If you stick with the Solo edition, this is the only account you will be able to create. If you need more (or you want to support public registration) you can upgrade to the Pro edition, which offers additional user accounts.

# Admin Accounts

Admin accounts are special accounts that can do everything within Craft, including some things that don’t have explicit permissions:

  • Everything within the Settings section
  • Make other users Admins Pro
  • Administrate other Admins Pro

The user account you create during installation is an admin by default.

Considering how much damage an admin can do, we strongly advise caution when creating new admin accounts; only create them for those you trust and who know what they’re doing.

# User Groups

If you have Craft Pro, you can create User Groups to help organize your site’s user accounts, as well as batch-set permissions on them.

To create a new User Group, go to SettingsUsers and press + New user group. You can give your group a Name and Handle, plus any Permissions you want every user within the group to have.

After you create your groups, you can assign users to groups by going into their account settings and choosing the Permissions tab.

# Permissions

Craft Pro allows you to set permissions on users and groups, such as the ability to access the control panel, edit content within certain sections, etc. You can apply these permissions directly to user accounts as well as to user groups. When you apply permissions to a user group, all users that belong to that group will inherit them.

Make sure you trust users with access to settings that accept Twig code, like the Settings section and the System Messages utility. It’s possible to do malicious things in Craft via Twig, which is intended primarily for trusted admins and developers.

The permissions Craft comes with are:

Permission Handle
Access the site when the system is off accessSiteWhenSystemIsOff
Access the control panel accessCp
↳ Access the control panel when the system is offline accessCpWhenSystemIsOff
↳  Perform Craft CMS and plugin updates performUpdates
↳  Access [plugin name] accessPlugin-[PluginHandle]
Edit users editUsers
↳  Register users registerUsers
↳  Moderate users moderateUsers
↳  Administrate users administrateUsers
↳  Impersonate users impersonateUsers
↳  Assign user permissions assignUserPermissions
↳  Assign users to this group
See note.
↳  Assign users to [group] assignUserGroup:[UserGroupUID]
Delete users deleteUsers
Edit [site name] editSite:[SiteUID]
View entries viewEntries:[SectionUID]
↳  Create entries createEntries:[SectionUID]
↳  Save entries saveEntries:[SectionUID]
↳  Delete entries deleteEntries:[SectionUID]
↳  View other users’ entries viewPeerEntries:[SectionUID]
    ↳  Save other users’ entries savePeerEntries:[SectionUID]
    ↳  Delete other users’ entries deletePeerEntries:[SectionUID]
↳ View other users’ drafts viewPeerEntryDrafts:[SectionUID]
    ↳  Save other users’ drafts savePeerEntryDrafts:[SectionUID]
    ↳  Delete other users’ drafts deletePeerEntryDrafts:[SectionUID]
Edit [global set name] editGlobalSet:[GlobalSetUID]
View categories viewCategories:[CategoryGroupUID]
↳  Save categories saveCategories:[CategoryGroupUID]
↳  Delete categories deleteCategories:[CategoryGroupUID]
↳  View other users’ drafts viewPeerCategoryDrafts:[CategoryGroupUID]
    ↳  Save other users’ drafts savePeerCategoryDrafts:[CategoryGroupUID]
    ↳  Delete other users’ drafts deletePeerCategoryDrafts:[CategoryGroupUID]
View assets viewAssets:[VolumeUID]
↳  Save assets saveAssets:[VolumeUID]
↳  Delete assets deleteAssets:[VolumeUID]
↳  Replace files replaceFiles:[VolumeUID]
↳  Edit images editImages:[VolumeUID]
↳  View assets uploaded by other users viewPeerAssets:[VolumeUID]
    ↳  Save assets uploaded by other users savePeerAssets:[VolumeUID]
    ↳  Replace files uploaded by other users replacePeerFiles:[VolumeUID]
    ↳  Remove files uploaded by other users deletePeerAssets:[VolumeUID]
    ↳  Edit images uploaded by other users editPeerImages:[VolumeUID]
↳  Create subfolders createFolders:[VolumeUID]
Utilities
↳  Updates utility:updates
↳  System Report utility:system-report
↳  PHP Info utility:php-info
↳  System Messages utility:system-messages
↳  Asset Indexes utility:asset-indexes
↳  Queue Manager utility:queue-manager
↳  Caches utility:clear-caches
↳  Deprecation Warnings utility:deprecation-errors
↳  Database Backup utility:db-backup
↳  Find and Replace utility:find-replace
↳  Migrations utility:migrations

You may not see all of these options, initially—only ones that are relevant based on the current content schema will be displayed. For example, everything under View categories will be hidden until you have at least one category group.

Plugins may register their own permissions, which can appear in a top-level group, under Access the control panel, or within Utilities.

See the Extending Craft User Permissions page to learn how to register custom permissions from your module or plugin.

# Checking Permissions

You can check whether the logged-in user has a specific permission by using its handle, replacing any bracketed items in the table above with the desired value (So accessPlugin-[PluginHandle] would become accessPlugin-commerce).

{% if currentUser.can('accessCp') %}
  <a href="{{ cpUrl() }}">Visit the Control Panel</a>
{% endif %}

For UID-driven permissions, you can either hard-code the value in Twig, or look it up dynamically.

{# Store the UID directly in the template: #}
{% if currentUser.can('createEntries:4fcb3c63-9477-4b5f-8021-874d64f819ce') %}
  <a href="{{ siteUrl('account/vendors/add') }}">Add a Vendor</a>
{% endfor %}

This is not strictly necessary, but the handle of a given resource is often much easier to understand in the template context.

UIDs are safe to use like this because they’re tracked in Project Config and will be consistent across environments.

# Requiring Permissions

You can also require the logged-in user to have a specific permission to access an entire template:

{% requirePermission 'accessCp' %}

# Public Registration

Craft Pro has the option of allowing public user registration, which is disabled by default.

To enable public registration, go to SettingsUsersSettings, and check Allow public registration. With that checked, you will also have the ability to choose a default user group to which Craft will assign the publicly-registered users.

Once you set up your site to allow public user registration, the last step is to create a user registration form (opens new window) on your site’s front end. For a full list of params a user can set during registration (or when updating their account, later on), read about the users/save-user controller action.