Community Central Permissions Needed

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Add users to these groups to give them permission to the site.

Community Central uses the built-in SharePoint permissions to determine what actions a user can perform in community site pages. When Community Central is installed, the following SharePoint groups are added to the Community Central Home site, or to the parent site if the Community Central Home site inherits permissions:

Community Central Group	SharePoint Permission Level
{Site Title} Administrators	Full Control
{Site Title} Moderators	Design
{Site Title} Members	Contribute
{Site Title} Visitors	Read

When you create new forum and blog sites, the new sites can automatically inherit the permissions of the Community Central Home site or they can use unique permissions; you select which permission level to use when you create a site. If the forum or blog site uses unique permissions, the groups listed above will be added to the site when it is created. The Community Central Home site’s Administrators group will also be added to the new site, with the Full Control permission level, to allow community Administrators to manage all forum and blog sites.

You can customize permissions for Community Central sites just as you can any SharePoint site. To set up your own SharePoint permission levels to use with Community Central, refer to the following information:

Edit, create, and delete permission levels (From office.microsoft.com)

To set up anonymous access to Community Central content, see Configuring Anonymous Access.

Permissions for Administrative Actions

The table below describes the Community Central groups allowed to perform certain administrative actions:

Community Central Action	Administrators	Moderators	Members	Visitors
Customize Site Pages	Yes	Yes	No	No
Customize the Top Navigation	Yes	Yes	No	No
Access the Control Panel	Yes	Yes *	No	No
Edit Forum/Blog Links	Yes	Yes	No	No
Edit Scoring Rules	Yes	No	No	No
Customize Forum/Blog Links	Yes	Yes	No	No

* Moderators may not be able to perform all Control Panel actions.

Permissions for Forum Actions

Since the forums are built on Discussion Board Plus, the Community Central Forums use the default Discussion Board Plus Permissions. And in addition to the default permissions provided by Discussion Board Plus, please note the following for Community Central forums:

Administrators and Moderators can add, update or delete any forum topic or post.
Members can add topics and posts, but can only edit or delete their own topics/posts.
If a read-only account is configured in the Forum Control Panel, anonymous users can read topics and posts but cannot add new topics or posts.

Permissions for Blog Actions

Community Central uses the default SharePoint settings to determine who can perform actions in a blog site. For a list of default permissions for basic blog actions, see the table below. For information about customizing blog site permissions, see the following article:

Configure permissions and settings for a blog (From office.microsoft.com)

Blog Action	Administrators	Moderators	Members	Visitors	Anonymous Users
Read Blog Posts and Comments	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create Blog Posts	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Edit Blog Posts	Yes	Yes	Yes*	No	No
Add Comments	Yes	Yes	Yes	No^1.	No^1.
Edit Comments	Yes	No	Yes *	No	No
Approve Blog Posts and Comments	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
View Draft Posts and Pending Comments	Yes	Yes	**	No	No
Manage Blog Categories	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No

* Members can edit any blog post or comment by default (not just their own post/comment).

^1. Allow visitors and anonymous users to add comments by modifying list permissions.

** Members can view their own draft posts and comments pending approval, but not posts/comments created by other Members.

Configuring Anonymous Access

By default, anonymous access is not enabled in SharePoint 2013. SharePoint administrators may want to enable anonymous users to have access to Community Central content without having to provide authentication credentials. Anonymous access is permitted or denied based on the permissions for the site. Additional configuration is needed for anonymous users to access Community Central content.

For example:

Viewing locked topics – In order for anonymous users to view locked topics in forums, you must configure a read-only forum access account in each forum site’s Forum Control Panel. All other forum content is visible if the site is configured to allow anonymous access.
Viewing avatars – In order for anonymous users to be able to see avatars (the SharePoint user profile picture), additional configuration steps are needed. For instructions, see this blog.
Adding blog comments – In order for anonymous users to add blog comments, the administrator must modify the list permissions for the Comments list in each blog site. For instructions, see this blog.

For more information about configuring SharePoint for anonymous access, see:

Using ideas from this article from Microsoft, decide whether to allow access for anonymous users.
This article from Microsoft covers configuring anonymous access.
For SharePoint 2010-specific configuration, see this topic.

Alternatively, you can configure SharePoint for anonymous access for forms-based authentication where the accounts can be created from the database. For more information on configuring anonymous users for forms-based authentication, see: