In the last tutorial, we set up the User Permissions for the top level gallery of our Portfolio so that only Registered Users can access the Portfolio. Now we can create our first User Group.

As mentioned previously, we want to have two second-level sections in our Portfolio structure. These are the Clients Area and Art for Licensing sections. Let's work on the Art for Licensing section first. This section will have one album that contains all the art that I want manufacturers and publishers to view. However, the album will not contain any actual images. It will contain many sub albums and these sub albums will contain the artwork categorized into Halloween, Christmas and Animations.

As you would expect, we don't want all Registered Users to be able to access this area. That is to say, we don't want existing clients to be able access this part of the portfolio. On the other hand, each potential manufacturer or publisher will be able to view the Art for Licensing album and all its sub albums. Instead of settings permissions for each individual manufacturer or publisher to view this album, we can lump all these users together into a group and give the group permission to view the Art for Licensing section. Then, as new manufacturers and publishers are added to the group, they too will automatically have permission to view the Art for Licensing album and sub albums. When a member of this group logs in, they will only see the Art for Licensing album and its sub albums but they will not even be aware that the Clients Area exists.

To create this group, we first need to decide on a name for the group. Let's shorten the "Art for Licensing" to just "Licensing". Now, click on the Site Admin link to enter the Site Administration area and click on Groups. In the Group Management section, we already have the Everybody, Registered Users and Site Admins groups. Click the Create Group button. For Group Name type in "Licensing" and click Save. When you return to the Group Management page, you will see that Licensing has been added to the list of groups.

Next we will add a user to this group so that we can test the login process. But before we can add a user to the group, we need to create the user. Click on the Users link in the menu to go to the User Management section. Here we already have the admin and guest users. Click on the Create User button. For our test user's Username let's call him "Smyth" and for his Full Name we will use "John Smyth". We can use the Admin's email address for testing the email system and give the test user a Password that you will easily remember. When we click the Create User button, we will be back on the User Management page. You will see that our new user has been added. If we click on the Edit button, we can verify that the correct information has been stored for this user. At the bottom of the list is a checkbox next to Lock User. We will want to check this box to prevent the user from changing the account information. Click Save.

Now that we have our test user, we can add this user to our Licensing group. Go back to Group Management and click on the Members link next to the Licensing group. Type "Smyth" into the input box and click Add.

Before we can test the login process, we need to create the top level Art for Licenting album.