What is a difference between primary and secondary user group?

[Sarthek]

What is a difference between primary and secondary user group anyway, and why user can not be selected in the same group in both? Which group is for advancing for members and can we disable secondary group by default?

[Reeve of Shinra]

Secondary usergriups are good for adding additional permissions above and beyond the primary group. The key benefit here is that if you decideto change something or if something goes wrong - you have less usergroups to look through

IE:

- regular user (primary)
-- bigger pm box (secondary)
-- access to hidden forum (secondary)

- moderator (primary)
-- access to hidden forum (seconday)

[feldon23]

A member can only have one Primary Usergroup, but can also be a member of multiple Secondary Usergroups. They're great for switching on certain features for certain users without creating a ton of Primary groups, or using Access Masks.

Note that Secondary Usergroups in vBulletin operate on the "most permissive" system. Any "YES" setting under any of the primary or secondary usergroups a person is a member of will override all the "NO" settings. This allows you to layer on additional benefits regardless of what other groups a person is a member of.

If you wish you can completely ignore Secondary Usergroups.

[Sarthek]

EDIT

So does it makes sence to make secondary usergroups like this:

1.000 PMs
10.000 PMs
500 Album photos
....


And question: Do users advance through primary or secondary group or both?

Example, user who has 1.000 posts advance to new usergroup (which).

[Zachery]

Not really, there is no need to disable secondary usergroups. If you dont add members via a secondary usergroup, you've disabled it.

[Sarthek]

But advancing to next usergroup is advancing thourgh primary, secondary or both?

[feldon23]

If you intend to have preset levels of access, with no overlap, then you can just do Primary Groups. Member, Silver Member, Elite Member, etc.

However let's say you have a forum related to software development.

Let's say you have an Alpha Test forum, a Beta Test forum, and a Development forum.

Different users would have different access to those different forums. With Primary Usergroups, if I wanted all possibilities, I would be forced to create 7 groups:

• Alpha
• Alpha + Beta
• Alpha + Beta + Development
• Alpha + Development
• Beta + Development
• Beta
• Development

With Secondary Usergroups, I would just leave all my users in Registered and then tack on Secondary Usergroups of Alpha, Beta, and Development on a user-by-user basis. And I can adjust avatar size, signature permissions, number of private messages, etc. that way too.