### Authentication method

All users have one primary method of authenticating to the site. In certain special cases, they can also have a secondary way of authenticating, but in most cases they have just one way.

Here, you can choose what mechanism this user can use to authenticate to the site. Most of the time, you will not need to touch this as it will be set correctly for you.

In some circumstances, you might need a user to authenticate using a different method to what they have previously used. For example, if they used to use LDAP but the LDAP server does not know about them any more, and they wish to continue to get access to their account, you could set this to a different method such as 'No Institution: Internal'. The user will then be able to log in directly to the site without using the LDAP server - although you should use the 'reset password' field above to choose an initial password for them.