Written by Nicolas

This article comes on the heels of an important update to the administrative interface: we have completely reworked the authentication system. So that you can take full advantage of the new features, here are a few explanations.

Before

Until now, the system was relatively simple: one start page to log in (via the administrative interface) by entering the email address provided during registration. Once connected, you had access to all of the things offered by this interface: management of your information, your bills, your accounts, and all of the technical aspects (domains, emails, FTP, etc.) for each of your accounts. It should be noted that it was also possible to log in by providing an account name instead of an email address; such access was limited to the technical part of the account in question.

This way of doing things has recently reached its limits. Today, we have many users and, as a result, very diverse user profiles, each with their own specific needs. So, we had to focus our efforts on improving the following two areas of the service:

• define user rights in a much more specific way (commercial, technical, by account)
• technical reworking of the system to allow access via other means (such as our API, which will be released as a beta very soon)

Now

Of course, the method of logging in to the administrative interface has not changed: you will still simply enter your email address and the password you chose during registration. What you will see that’s new, on the left, is the Permissions menu. From this menu, you will be able to control the permissions granted to each user (including yourself). The following permissions have been added:

Global Permissions

• Account management
• Billing
• Full technical access

Technical Permissions

These settings are only necessary if the user does not have full technical access.

• Consumption
• Statistics
• Domains
• Emails
• Databases
• FTP
• SSH
• WebDAV
• Environment
• Applications
• Processes

I won’t take the time to explain all of them individually, as they are rather self-explanatory: for example, if you have the FTP permission you can access and manage your FTP accounts, and the same goes for the other permissions.

Practical considerations

It’s possible that for many of you, the use of permissions is, frankly, not especially helpful. But it is certain that it will be for many specific cases that our users encounter.

• Commercial/technical distinction: by allowing one user only to manage accounts and billing, and another to have full technical acces, it is now possible and very easy to separate commercial responsibilities from technical ones, allowing you (among other things) to avoid accidents…
• “Developer” access: for those who have several accounts that they would like to assign to specific developers, the developers can be given technical access (full or partial) without having to be concerned with commercial management.
• Limited permissions: for those who are hosting numerous accounts for their clients on alwaysdata. You can, for example, give them full rein over emails so that they can create their own addresses without needing to systematically go through you…

Going forward

You’ve realized by now that this new system is far more flexible and refined in terms of the permissions. It was designed so that we can add new ones as soon as the need arises. Thanks to your continued use and certainly also with the introduction of our API, we will be able to continue to improve and refine our system rather quickly.

To make a long story short, we’ve added some permissions.