Understanding Users
Every person who accesses a Liferay site is considered a User. Unauthenticated Users are considered Guest users. Liferay ships out-of-the-box with a default Admin user who has complete control of and access to the system. Roles and Permissions govern what users are able to see and do on a site.
Users break down into three general categories:
| User | Default Access | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator | Liferay Admin with full system access. | We strongly recommend that users change the password for this account promptly after installation. |
| Guest | Unauthenticated user with view access to publicly accessible Pages as well as limited ability to create and add content. | By default, Guest users can create an account on a Liferay Site to view and interact with Sites. |
| User | Authenticated user able to view restricted Pages and create content. | Users get defined default permissions and can be elevated to Organization or Site Administrators. |
Managing Users
To add and manage Users, open the Global Menu (
), go to the Control Panel tab, and click Users and Organizations.
Here, you can manage each User’s metadata (name, department, etc.), permissions, pages, and activation status.
Adding Users
Administrators can add Users through the Users and Organizations section of the Control Panel or through the API. New users can be created by administrators, can register themselves if open registration is configured, or can be synced from an LDAP server. See Adding and Managing Users to learn more.
Open Registration
By default, guest users can create User accounts.
See Configuring Authentication to learn more about configuring registration and authentication for users.
Configuring a User Directory
Organizations that manage users with LDAP can sync their LDAP server with Liferay to import users. See this article to learn more.
Managing User Access
User access is controlled by Roles and Permissions. Permissions define what a User can and cannot do. Roles are groupings of permissions. Permissions are configured by defining permissions for a Role and assigning Users to pre-set Roles. To learn more about managing access for Users, see Roles and Permissions.
Organizing Users
Liferay has several tools to help you organize and administer Users.
Organizations are an entity in Liferay that can group users in a distributed hierarchy. Practically, this means that large organizations can empower and delegate Users to administer their Organizations.
User Groups are another way to group Users to simplify administration and assigning Roles. User Groups are simple lists of Users that can have Roles assigned to them.