ok, that was totally helpful, thanx for all of the help. i have gotten far, using has_membership and requires_membership often and working perfectly, both in controllers and views.
having a bit of a problem with auth.has_permission(). i have a group/ role, auth_group id=2, called Guest and under auth_permission, id=2 also, with group_id=2 with name="News Restricted". table_name is Null and record_id=0. i also have an entry under auth_user with id=2, email 'f...@gmail.com' just for fun, and an entry under auth_membership, id=4, with user_id=2 and group_id=2. so all that means is that user f...@gmail.com should be a Guest with permission set to true for "News Restricted". ok? how come when f...@gmail.com is logged in, auth.has_permission('News Restricted') proves False. Shouldn't it be True? thanx in advance and have a good day. lucas