Default Input Format per user role
What are Input Formats
Input Format in Drupal are filters which modify the content of a page before it is displayed to a visitor. Out of the box Drupal provides 2 input formats:
- Full HTML: allows all HTML tags
- Filtered HTML: subset of HTML tags allowed only
Recommended Default
Because of its potential dangerousness the Full HTML filter is not recommended for use by anonymous users. So you want to set the Filtered HTML filter as default Input Format and do not allow other Input Formats for anonymous users. Your autenticated users may get the permission to use other Input Formats like Full HTML to be able to include images etc.:
The Problem
Your authenticated user does not know/forgot about choosing the Input Format and is hammering your hot support line about content not displayed correctly. He wrote HTML featuring much more HTML tags than allowed by the default Filtered HTML Input Format:
Solution
Use the module Better Formats (Drupal 6) or Filter Default (Drupal 5) to create a default Input Formats for every user Role. Better Format even allows setting defaults per content type
The screenshot below shows the default setting for authenticated users using Better Formats. Note that if an user has more than one role she gets the default of the top role she is in. All logged in users are automatically in the "authenticated user" role in addition to their other roles. I.e. Redakteur gets the Full HTML default only if it is above the authenticated user row.