vbDrupal is the Drupal fork project that combines the content management of Drupal with one of the best community forums-- vBulletin. In this article we will explore how vbDrupal preserves all the independent permission and access controls of both Drupal and vBulletin while adding a way to bind permission roles together. Exercise care to keep exact control of your website.

Originally posted at vbDrupal Permissions Configuration, used with permission.

Note: This article assumes that you understand and can implement:

1. Usergroups in vBulletin and roles in Drupal
2. Be able to set/edit their permissions and access controls

In vbDrupal, the ability to associate vBulletin usergroups to specific Drupal roles enhances the functionality of the two systems. At the time of this writing, this association only points in one direction, from vBulletin to Drupal. A vBulletin usergroup can imply a Drupal role, but not vise-versa.

Administration Settings:

The first user labeled userid 1, will be the system administrator. It will have all access abilities throughout the Drupal and vBulletin areas. Any members whose primary group is the Administrators usergroup, id 6, will have full access to the Drupal area, as well. The system administrator must be available or at least one person must be a member of the Administrators usergroup to set up the Drupal area initially.

Configuration:

Create the vBulletin usergroups that you desire, and any additional Drupal roles that you may need. You can of course create new roles and usergroups at any time.

As an example, we have created a new role called blogger and have given that role the ability to make blog entries in Drupal.

In the past to give users this Drupal role, we would have to edit each Drupal profile for all users we would want to include, as shown below.

With vbDrupal, we can go to the admin/access/roles page and edit the desired role for updating. All the defined vBulletin usergroups will be displayed, as shown below.

In this example, we have used vbDrupal to associate the Administrators, SuperModerators and Moderators usergroups with the blogger role. Note that we can imply multiple usergroups to any particular role.

All users in Administrators, SuperModerators and Moderators usergroups are now automatically included in this Drupal role. Now when we go to a particular user who is in one of those usergroups we will see that the blogger role is implied.

Using vbDrupal in this fashion, you can set up your site so you only need to manage the usergroups in vBulletin with the Drupal roles. Permissions automatically update for the users!

Of course, if you want to include others into the blogger role, you can manually add them by editing their profile, without including them into any of the above vBulletin usergroups.

Extra:

One exciting way to automatically enable more access is to link Drupal roles with more privileges in with the vBulletin usergroups that are associated in the ‘Promotions’ system in vBulletin . Thus, when someone is promoted (due to post count, reputation level or some other criteria) they are automatically given more access and privileges in the Drupal portion of your site. Likewise, if they are demoted, they are automatically stripped of privileged access.