We are strong proponents of allowing content authors to perform all of their authoring tasks using nothing but the Page Editor. However, you have to be familiar with the permissions required to perform certain actions in the Page Editor. Here are some quick points on the permissions that some of Sitecore roles provide.
- Sitecore Client Authoring – Provides permissions to gain access to the Page Editor (as well as Content Editor and the Desktop). There is a “Sitecore Limited Page Editor” role which restricts users to just the Page Editor.
- Sitecore Client Publishing – Provides access to publish features, and therefore the publish buttons in the Page Editor.
- Sitecore Client Designing – Allows users to add/remove components in available placeholders. It also provides some ability to modify certain renderings with placeholders.
- Sitecore Client Developing – Allows users to modify rendering properties for renderings added to placeholders.
When working on a recent project, I was trying to allow users to modify rendering properties, but could not get those controls to appear in the Page Editor. It turns out that in previous Sitecore 6 versions, this was part of the “Sitecore Client Designing” role. However, in later versions of Sitecore 6, that ability was transferred to the “Sitecore Client Developing” role.
For more information about permissions, refer to the Sitecore Security Reference available on SDN (PDF).