So far as I know, there is no proper roles and permissions plugin for Elgg. Such a plugin would be extremely useful but would take quite a bit of time to develop. So someone would have to take that on or fund a developer to do it.

There's a quite old plugin which implements roles, karma points. Another one, karma rights, implements access rights.

I remember at least one more plugin which implements roles.

@Carina I think the plugin Premium Members by Webgalli does that, which let's only a user type to use certain plugins. 

Rodolfo Hernandez

Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

Please do not use the 1.8 beta for anything other than testing the beta to give feedback. While some 1.7 plugins should be functional with 1.8, they won't look right. It will be a few months before these plugins are updated for 1.8. Thanks.