Who sees the Site Actions menu? Well, your administrators and designers, of course. But also, contributors! Why do contributors see the menu? Well, technically I know why but I am struggling from a user experience perspective. I know, I know. SharePoint isn’t fantastic out of the box in relation to user experience, but this seems a bit crazy.
So, normally, Contributors are fine, they can add, edit, delete, read items and documents and so forth. But, start creating web part pages or publishing sites and you have a different story.
The technical answer – contributors have the ability to edit items (go figure) the kicker is the “customize Web Part Pages in document libraries.
Designers have the “Edit Items” described above as well as the additional permission of “Add and Customize Pages.”
I have yet to figure out an easy solution for this. We need our users to contribute, thus they need “edit items.” Since we have such a mix of team sites, publishing sites, and many web part pages, users are not receiving a consistent experience. However, I don’t know how to easily create a combination of Contributor permissions that omits that one line allowing them to customize pages.
There are a couple of options, but I’m trying to avoid using them:
1. Custom permissions for each library storing the web part pages – restricting access to “read only.” EWWWW – not a fan.
2. Security trimming is an option, modifying the master page, but I was thinking there had to be something simpler.
Feedback is welcome :)