The default Drupal installation comes with two standard roles: anonymous user and authenticated user. The anonymous user is used for any non-members visiting the site, and anonymous users generally have limited rights on a site used for a learning environment. All site members belong to the authenticated user role; consequently, any permission granted to the authenticated user role is given to every site member. In Chapter 2, we assigned privileges to the authenticated user role. As discussed in Chapter 4, the rights assigned to user roles are cumulative; therefore, if a single user is assigned to multiple roles, that user has the accumulated permissions of all roles.

On small sites, some site administrators use the authenticated user role to assign permissions to students. From a technical perspective, this will work, but creating a specific student role (as we did in Chapter 3) provides an additional level of security and flexibility. Later in this...