Kentico CMS allows you to personalize the displayed content based on the current user.

 

 

Checking the permissions of the current user allows basic personalization, but the Content personalization module may be used to achieve much more advanced personalization scenarios according to completely custom conditions.

 

Example: Personalizing the Products menu

 

In this example, you will learn how to display the Products section only to members of the Customers and Partners roles and how to display the Smartphones category only to the members of the Partners role.

 

1. Sign in to CMS Desk as administrator.
 

2. Go to Administration -> Roles, select the Corporate Site from the Sites drop‑down list and create new roles Customers and Partners.
 

3. Go to Administration -> Users and create a new user Customer1 with the following values:

 

•User name: Customer1

•Full name: Testing Customer

•Enabled: true

•Is editor: no

 

Click OK. Go to the Sites tab and assign the user to the Corporate Site. Go to the Roles tab and add the user to the Customers role.
 

4. Create another user Partner1 with the following values:

 

•User name: Partner1

•Full name: Testing Partner

•Enabled: true

•Is editor: no

 
Click OK. Go to the Sites tab and assign the user to the Corporate Site. Go to the Roles tab and add the user to the Partners role.

 

5. Navigate to Site Manager -> Settings -> Security & Membership and set Check page permissions to All pages. This ensures that the security settings assigned in the following steps will be checked for all documents (pages) on the website.

 

6. Switch to CMS Desk -> Content and click the root of the content tree. Switch to Properties -> Security.

 

First, we need to grant the Read permission for the whole website to the Public anonymous user (public), Customers and Partners roles.

 

Click Add users, select these three users and click OK. When the users are added, grant the Read permissions to them using the check-box (), as you can see in the screenshot below. You need to click OK in order to save the settings.
 

 

7. Now we will hide the product categories from public users. In the content tree, click /Products/Smartphones and switch to the Properties -> Security tab. The permissions that you configured for the root of the content tree are inherited by this document. We need to break the inheritance. Click the Change permission inheritance link.

 

 

In the following dialog, choose Break inheritance and copy parent permissions.

 

8. Now select the Public Anonymous User (public) and deny the Read permission.

 

9. Repeat the last two steps for the Laptops and Tablets page. Also deny the Smartphones category for the Customers role.
 

10. The permissions are not checked by web parts by default, so we need to configure the web parts so that they check the Read permission of the current user.

 

Choose the root in the content tree and click the Design tab. Configure () the Top list menu (CSS list menu) web part and set its Check permissions property in the System settings category to true (). Click OK. Repeat the same for the CSS list menu and Featured products web parts on the /Products page.
 

11. Sign out. If you mouse-over the Products menu item as a public user, you will see that the sub-categories representing the restricted sections are no longer displayed.
 

12. Sign in as user Customer1 (use the logon mini‑form at the top right of the page) and navigate to Products via the main menu. You will see a page like the one below. As you can see, the Smartphones section and Smartphone products are not displayed to this user.
 

 

Now sign out and sign in again as user Partner1. You will see all all categories and products:
 

 

You have learned how to personalize the content displayed to users based on their permissions.