How to manage your site's users and roles

In TeleportHQ, the people who sign up on your web app are listed in the editor under the padlock button → Manage Settings & Users. The window opens on its Users tab, a list of every account with its Name, Email and Role, a Search users box, a Create New User button, and an Edit and a Remove button on each row. Edit opens the Edit User window, where you change the person's name and pick their Role from the roles your project knows, such as admin, user or a custom role like editor. Roles decide who can open members-only pages, and the admin role opens the admin panel.

Before you start#

• Authentication must be turned on. See How to add sign-up and login to your site.
• Changing cells directly in the users table (the Table view) needs the Owner or Admin role in your TeleportHQ workspace. The Simple view's Edit and Remove buttons don't.

Steps#

See your users#

1. In the TeleportHQ editor, click the padlock button at the top left of the canvas.
2. Click Manage Settings & Users. The window opens on its Users tab, the first of its two tabs (Settings, beside it, holds the sign-in methods).
3. You see a list of every account, sorted by name, with its Name, Email and Role. Above the list, at the left, is a Simple / Table switch with Simple selected, then a Search users box and the number of accounts; at the end of each row are an Edit button and a Remove button. If nobody has an account yet, the list says "Your site has no users yet."

You can also open the list from the Plugins panel: in the left sidebar, click Plugins, click the Authentication row, then click Manage users next to Users of your site. The window opens straight on its Users tab.

The list shows up to 100 accounts. If your site has more, a line under the list says "Showing the first 100 users. Search to find a specific one, or switch to Table to see everyone."

Create a user#

1. In the Users tab, click Create New User at the top right of the window. The Create New User window opens: "Create a new user account for your application. The user will be added to your authentication database."
2. In Name, type the person's name, for example Maria Lopez.
3. In Email, type their email, for example maria@mybakery.com.
4. In Password and Confirm Password, type a password of at least 8 characters.
5. In Role, pick the role from the list. It offers the roles your project knows, such as admin and user, and starts on user. For someone who should open the admin panel, pick admin. For a role your project doesn't have yet, click Create a new role at the bottom of the list: the list becomes a box where you type the name, for example editor, with Cancel and Create under it. Create adds the role to your project at once, so pages can be restricted to it, and selects it for this user. Cancel brings the list back.
6. Click Create User. A message says "User created successfully with email: maria@mybakery.com", and the window returns to the Users tab with the new account in the list.

You can also click Create New User at the bottom of the padlock button's Act as User list.

Change a user's name or role#

1. In the Users tab, find the user. Type part of their name, email or role in Search users if the list is long.
2. In the user's row, click Edit. The Edit User window opens: "Update the name and role of this user. The email and password cannot be changed here."
3. Change Name, or pick another Role. The Role list offers the roles your project knows, for example admin, user and editor, with the user's current role selected, and Create a new role at its bottom for a role your project doesn't have yet. Under it: "The role determines the user's permissions in your application."
4. Click Save Changes. It stays greyed out until you change something. A message says "User maria@mybakery.com updated successfully", and the window returns to the Users tab.

The same Edit User window also opens from the canvas: click the padlock button at the top left of the canvas, click Act as User, find the user in the Select User list (type in Search users... if it is long) and click the pencil next to them (tooltip "Edit user"). Clicking the name instead previews the site as that user.

Remove a user#

1. In the Users tab, find the user's row.
2. Click Remove at the end of the row. A message above the list asks "Remove maria@mybakery.com?" and says "Their account and everything they added are deleted for good. Orders, invoices and bookings stay in your records." It shows Cancel and Remove.
3. Click Remove. The row disappears and a message says "User maria@mybakery.com and their data removed".

What goes and what stays:

• Deleted: the account and everything the person added on your site: their reviews, favourites, cart and chats, and their rows in your site's own tables (for example the items on their "My …" pages).
• Cleared: their email address on gift cards they bought or were sent (the cards keep working with their code), the account and IP address on their download records, their email address on your site's activity log, and the copies of the emails your site sent them. The admin panel still lists that those emails went out, without the address or what they said.
• Kept: their orders, subscriptions, invoices and bookings, because they're your business records. They're no longer linked to the account. Orders, subscriptions and bookings get a stand-in email address in place of theirs, and bookings drop the customer's name and phone. Orders keep the billing and shipping details you need to deliver and to account for the sale.
• Invoices already issued keep the buyer's name and address. An invoice has to name its buyer by law, and privacy rules such as the GDPR let you keep what a legal duty requires.

Check that it worked#

• The new or changed user shows in the Users tab and in the padlock button's Act as User list. A removed user is gone from both.
• Preview your site as that user to see what they see. See How to preview your site as a signed-in user.

Troubleshooting#

"No users match your search." No account's name, email or role contains what you typed. Clear the Search users box to see every account again.

"Connect authentication to a database to see its users." or "No authentication data source found" The database that stores your users is missing or was changed. Check it in the Data Sources panel. See How to refresh, edit or remove a data source.

"This email already exists in the database. Please use a different email." An account with that email exists. Find it with Search users and change its name or role instead.

"Passwords do not match or are too short (minimum 8 characters)" Type the same password in both fields, with at least 8 characters.

Save Changes stays greyed out Nothing has changed yet. Type a different name or pick another role.

"This user no longer exists in the database." Someone removed the account after you opened the list. Click Cancel and open the list again.

"User maria@mybakery.com was not removed: …" The account is still there. The text after the colon says why. Try again, and if it says you don't have enough permissions, ask the workspace owner. When a rule of your site's own data blocks the removal, the text names it, for example "This visitor was not removed: the "owner id" column of the "wishlist items" table still links rows to this visitor and is set to block their removal. Nothing was changed."

I can't change cells in the users table Only the workspace owner or an admin can change cells in the Table view. Switch to Simple and use Edit and Remove instead.

Good to know#

• Roles are words you choose. The Role list offers the roles your project knows: admin, user, every custom role you added, and any role a page, folder or component is restricted to. To add a new role, click Create a new role at the bottom of the Role list in the Create New User or Edit User window, type its name and click Create; or open a page's Role Protection menu and click Add custom role. See How to make a page visible only to signed-in users. An account whose role isn't in that list (for example one typed into the users table) still shows its role selected in Edit User.
• Role names are lowercase. The editor lowercases what you type, so Editor and editor can't become two roles. Use one word for each role, so page protection and users stay in step.
• The admin role opens the admin panel on your live site. See How to open the admin panel on your live site.
• Email and password can't be changed in the editor. Members change their own name and photo on your site's my-profile page, and set a new password with Forgot password? on the sign-in page. A new password signs them out of their other browsers and devices within about a minute. An account's email address can't be changed anywhere: to use another address, create a new account and remove the old one.
• The Table view is for bulk edits. Click Table in the switch above the list to see every account with every column, 20 rows per page, in the same table as the Data Sources panel shows: double-click a cell to change it, and the Search users box now searches that table. Click Simple to return to the list. Create accounts with Create New User, not the table's Create Record: the table writes the password as you type it, and that account can't sign in.
• An account without a name shows "No name" in the Name column. Open Edit to give it one.
• If you remove the user you're previewing the site as, the preview goes back to logged out.
• "User … was already removed" means the account was gone before you clicked, for example because the person deleted it on your site. The list refreshes without it.
• "The removal did not go through. Try again." Nothing was removed. Click Remove again. If it keeps failing, contact TeleportHQ support. See How to get help.
• In an online store, the Table view also shows one row for each guest shopper, with an email address ending in @anonymous.local. They keep a guest's cart and orders and aren't accounts: they don't appear in the Simple view or in Act as User.