Impersonate Member

The “Impersonate Member” feature allows site Administrators to log into and experience the frontend as another member.

In “impersonation mode”, the Administrator will only see the pages, images and assets that that member is allowed to view and/or download.

This is a particularly good tool to troubleshoot any issues the member may have accessing content. It’s also very useful for experiencing the site as a member of a particular member group would experience it. In this scenario, an Administrator can simply create several accounts under different member groups and view the frontend content that that member group would see — without needing to log in/out of their other membership.

Therefore, the tool allows the Administrator to bypass the password entry requirement without exposing passwords.

^^ Note: If the membership has expired or is disabled for any reason, then the Administrator will not be able to impersonate the membership and log in. Why? This process implicitly mirrors the experience that that member would, including any login issues. 

Impersonating a Member

To impersonate a frontend member, enter the “Members” section, select the “All Members” node and find and select the individual member.

At the top-right of screen, open the “Actions” menu and select “Impersonate Member”.

A dialog box will open asking to select the “redirect page”. This is simply the entry page that will first appear when the Administrator logs in as the impersonated member. Note that it’s best to select the “Home” node or a page within the Home node.

After selecting the redirect page, click the “Impersonate as [name]” button. 

The Administrator will now only see the pages and images/assets that that member is allowed to view and/or download.^^

Always remember to logout when finishing up with the impersonation.