In order to add specific users to a site you will need to be an Owner of the site yourself or a higher level of permission such as Site Collection Administrator or SharePoint Administrator.
The first thing to understand is the level at which you grant permissions determines how much or how little a user can see. For instance, SharePoint allows several points at which permissions can be changed:
- Site
- List/Library
- Folder
- List Item/File/Page
In SharePoint permissions are normally inherited down throughout the structure, so the permissions set at the Site naturally flow down to lists/libraries, folders and finally to list items/documents. When you break inheritance (see inheritance) that flow is interrupted. So, in light of that, just because someone has been given full control at the Site level, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will also have full control over everything else: it depends on this inheritance and what things have been set up to have their own permissions applied.
The following process shows how to add a user to a site:
- Go to the site you wish to modify. Then go to Settings > Site Permissions.
- Now you invite people to site as members for them to contribute information.
- At this stage you can add them as a Member to the SharePoint site by clicking on "Share Site" and once a user or group has been selected, you can change the level of permission you want to give them. Click on the drop down and select "Edit" to add them as a member.
- A member of the site can add and delete content & create new pages. The difference between them and an owner is that an owner with "full control" and update/manage the site permissions. A read level of permission would add the user as a site visitor to give them read access to the site.
- User permissions are something typically managed by your IT team, a lot of the time the IT team will use groups to set the permission so it can be managed in a central location. If you do have the ability to add permissions we would recommend that you speak to your IT team first to check how these are being managed.