Using Timber

Users & roles

Timber has accounts for the people who run the site — not for members or subscribers. The public site has no sign-up and no visitor accounts. Everyone signs in at /padmin with an email and password.

The three roles#

• Administrator can do everything.
• Editor can only manage posts (and upload the images those posts need). They can't touch pages, design, forms, settings or other people's accounts.
• Read-only can look around — dashboard, posts, pages, designs, form submissions, SEO and other settings screens — but every change is switched off, both in the screens and on the server. Perfect for a stakeholder, an auditor or a client who wants to see but not touch. They can't open screens that expose raw data or secrets (Emails, Integrations, Data, Files, Code editor).

Managing users#

Admin → Users (also under Admin Tools):

• Add user: name, email, role and a starting password. Use Generate a strong password, then share it with them securely. They can change it from Your profile.
• Edit: change name, email or role, set a new password, or disable the account to block sign-in without deleting it.
• Delete: removes the account.

Safeguards#

• There is always at least one active administrator: you can't demote, disable or delete the last one.
• You can't disable or delete yourself.
• Emails are unique.
• Changing someone's password (or yours) signs that account out everywhere else. Disabling an account ends its sessions immediately.

Signing in#

• Email + password at /padmin, with the same throttling as before: 5 wrong tries from an IP locks sign-in for 10 minutes.
• Sessions last up to 8 hours idle or 7 days total.
• Your profile (bottom of the sidebar) lets everyone change their name, email and password.

Upgrading from a single-passcode install#

If you had a site from before accounts existed, nothing breaks. The first time Timber runs it converts your old passcode into one Administrator account: the email is your admin/site email from the settings, and the password is your existing passcode. Sign in with that, then add colleagues.

Locked out?#

On the server:

php _dev/reset-password.php "new password"                       # first active administrator
php _dev/reset-password.php editor@example.com "new password"    # a specific account
php _dev/reset-password.php --add-admin you@example.com "password"   # create an administrator

What roles don't cover#

Roles are about the admin. They don't (yet) support per-page permissions, "authors can only edit their own posts", approval workflows or an audit log. See the roadmap.