Scenarios and Use Cases for Access Control and Privacy
Access Manager allows administrators, companies, and organizations to control and restrict access to their Knowledge Base.
Below are typical examples of how you can utilize Access Manager for your business or organization.
I want to block all KB articles for people who are NOT logged in
In this scenario, I want all my articles and categories to be private. Only WordPress users (subscribers, contributors, authors, and editors) can access the content.
- All logged-in WordPress users can access your knowledge base content.
- Subscribers and contributors can read articles.
- Authors and editors can create and write articles.
- Site visitors will not see any knowledge base content (limitations apply).
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager add-on
Practical examples:
- Internal Knowledge Base for your teams, suppliers, management, office clerks etc.
- Wiki-like website for paying members
- Documentation for paying users of your software
- Members of your community and club
I want ONLY users with specific Roles to have access to my KBs, Categories, and Articles
In this scenario, I want to prevent the public from accessing my content. In addition, I want to limit the number of my WordPress users that can access my KB content.
- WordPress users that have selected WordPress Roles will have access.
- WordPress Roles can be custom roles from WooCommerce and other plugins.
- The User can belong to one or more KB Groups. Each group will have access to selected categories and articles.
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager with KB Groups and Custom Roles add-ons
Practical examples:
- WooCommerce shops that let WooCommerce staff and managers access internal articles.
- Learning management software that assigns Roles to users in each learning group.
- Different departments and teams with their own KBs or Categories and Articles.
I want to have a mix of Public Articles and Private articles
You can either setup a single Knowledge Base where you have both public and private articles, or you can create separate public and private KBs.
Select which categories and articles are protected and make them private.
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager add-on.
Practical examples:
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- Public wiki with members-only articles.
- Organization of public documents with a private repository of articles.
- Free and paid-for articles for learners.
I want to limit each team to have access to their categories and articles
In this scenario, companies and organizations have teams or departments and each has its own knowledge base category.
For example, Team A can access KB Category A, B, and C while Team B can access C, D, and E.
In addition, Team B could have access to selected articles in KB Category A but not the whole category.
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager with KB Groups add-ons
Practical examples:
- A school has students, teachers, clerks, and managers in separate groups with their own categories and articles.
- A business separates each department such as web design, accounting, inventory, and management.
I want to sell access to my articles based on user subscriptions and memberships
You will need to setup a subscription with a plugin that will allow users to register and then give the new users a certain WordPress custom role, for example, “Content Subscriber”.
You can map “Content Subscriber” to any KB Groups that you create. KB Group then control which KB Categories a user can view.
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager, KB Groups and Role Mapping add-ons
How to set it up:
- Your subscription software assigns your users the XYZ role.
- In Access Manager, create group AAA with access to certain articles.
- In Access Manager, map XYZ role -> group AAA -> KB Subscriber role (the subscriber can only view articles)
- In Access Manager, you can then assign your editors to group AAA with the KB Editor role.
I want to provide my users access to specific articles, but I don't want them to be able to browse or search the KB
You want to provide users with a link to a specific article without displaying article links, a search box, categories or other articles.
You want users to only see the one article that’s relevant with no ability to browse and find other articles.
Assumption: The user does not know the search results pages URL format if Advanced Search is enabled.
Using KB configuration, hide the KB navigation, search box, breadcrumbs, back button, and the next/prev links for articles. This will affect all articles in the KB (use a separate KB if needed for this purpose).
Create a unique slug for each article, for example how-to-do-this-xej33jliahf0av9, so that users cannot guess links but can read the given article.
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager add-on (here)
Restrict users from Group A to only see KB A, users from Group B only see KB B
Some users will have only access to KB A and others will have only access to KB B
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager and KB Groups add-on
How to set it up:
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- Create Group A within KB A and Group B within KB B
- Assign WordPress users to Group A and WordPress users to Group B
- Assign KB A categories to Group A and KB B categories to Group B
I want my users to have access the Knowledge Base and be able to edit articles but not have access to the rest of the website admin.
I need some users to view and edit articles but nothing else on WordPress admin screens.
Required plugins: Access Control bundle or Access Manager and Custom Roles add-on
How to set it up:
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- Give users Contributor or Subscriber WordPress roles.
- Map the WP role to KB Subscriber, KB Author or KB Editor role.
