V3 referred to all users of the system as "members". This created confusion in AMS systems, because some members were actual members of the organization, and others (for example guests, expired members, and staff) were not.
V4 resolves this confusion by adopting the following terminology:
This change allows for new configurations that were difficult to manage in V3. For example:
V3 had three main security levels:
V4 expands this to eight security levels. Levels 1-4 are regular users who can log in to the website front-end, with guests being level 1, and members in good standing being level 2. Levels 5-8 are executive users who can log in to the admin screens. System administrators are level 8, and website administrators are level 7.
Levels 3 & 4 are set aside for more privileged types of regular user (for example directors or committee chairs), and levels 5 & 6 are set aside for less privileged types of executive users (for example, moderators). How this works depends on your specific website set-up.
Note that members in good standing are now level 2. They get dropped back to level 1 automatically when their memberships expire, and promoted back to level 2 when their memberships are renewed. All you need to do to restrict a page or other website destination available to members in good standing is set the access level of that page to 2.
V4 allows you to define groups of users, and grant permissions to the group. That way you can simply add/remove users from the group, and not have to mess with individual permissions for each user separately. This is useful for creating pages or other resources for committees.
Use the Users & Groups module to manage your groups.