Contribute file and folder permissions on the server

Contribute provides a way to manage file and folder permissions for each user role you define. For more information, see Administering Contribute. Dreamweaver users are not affected by these permissions, but Contribute enforces these permissions for Contribute users.

However, Contribute doesn’t provide a way to manage the underlying read and write permissions assigned to files and folders by the server. You can manage those permissions directly on the server.

You can think of Contribute user roles as an overlay on the server’s read and write permissions; for example, if a user doesn’t have write permission to a folder on the server, then they can’t save to that folder even if they’re a member of a role that’s allowed (according to Contribute permissions) to write to that folder.

If a Contribute user doesn’t have read access on the server to a dependent file, such as an image displayed in a page, the contents of the dependent file don’t appear in the Contribute window. For example, if a user doesn’t have read access to an images folder, the images in that folder appear as broken image icons in Contribute. Similarly, Dreamweaver templates are stored in a subfolder of the site’s root folder, so if a Contribute user doesn’t have read access to the root folder, they can’t use templates in that site unless you copy the templates to an appropriate folder.

When you set up a site, you must give users read access on the server to the /_mm folder (the _mm subfolder of the root folder), the /Templates folder, and all of the folders containing assets that they will need to use.

If for some reason you can’t give users read access to the /Templates folder, see Enabling Contribute users to access templates without root folder access to supply users with templates.