Roles settings

Location: Administration > Users > Permissions > User policies (in Moodle 1.7 onwards)

Role for visitors

Users who are not logged in to the site will be treated as if they have the role specified here, granted to them at the site context. The role of Guest is the default and the recommended setting for standard Moodle sites. The user will still be required to login to participate in an activity.

Role for guest

This option specifies the role that will automatically be assigned to the guest user. This role is also temporarily assigned to non enrolled users when they enter a course that allows guests without password.

Default role for all users

The default role for all users should normally be set to Authenticated user. If it is set to Student then the result is that all students are enrolled on all courses.

Note: The default role for all users should never be set to Guest, except in Moodle 1.7, as this version does not have an authenticated user role.

Don't return all default role users

If the default role for the site allows access to view all users, some deprecated database calls may return the list of all users from the site. If you are seeing an impact in performance, use this setting to prevent this from happening.

Default role for users in a course

Users who enrol in a course will be automatically assigned the role specified here.

Auto-login guest

If not set, then visitors must click the "Login as a guest" button before entering a course which allows guest access.

Note: If auto-login guest is set, the guest login button also needs to be set to show (via Administration > Users > Authentication), even though visitors won't necessarily use it.

Roles that are not synchronised to metacourses

Metacourses combine enrolments from multiple courses. You will probably want users to have the same role in the metacourse as in the normal courses. If not, select the roles which should not be synchronised.

Hide user fields

The following user fields appear on users' profile pages. Certain user fields are also listed on the course participants page. You can increase student privacy by hiding selected user fields.

Description, city/town, country, web page, ICQ number, Skype ID, Yahoo ID, AIM ID, MSN ID, last access, My courses (in Moodle 1.9.4 onwards) and first access and groups (in Moodle 1.9.5 onwards)

• User fields on users' profile pages are hidden from all users with the capability moodle/user:viewhiddendetails not set.
• User fields on the course participants page are hidden from all users with the capability moodle/course:viewhiddenuserfields not set.

Allow users without the assign roles capability to switch roles

The moodle/role:assign capability requirement for users to switch roles may be removed in Moodle 1.9.5 onwards.

See also

• Front Page settings for setting the default front page role in Moodle 1.9 onwards