User-selectible, and/or Grouping by user field

Okay, I’ve worked out a lot of this, but there is still an issue(s) I can’t figure out:

1. How to allow users to change their own Groups (which I understand is not currently a function), and/or

2. How to assign users to Groups in accordance with user parameters.

To be more specific with an example:

As part of the user profile, they can pick an affiliation (creature, such as toad, rabbit, bear, etc.).

The website has normal public pages to it, but it ALSO has pages and content that are specific to those creatures. So, for example, a page called “News for Rabbits”. If and only if a user has chosen “rabbit” as their affiliation, they will see that page (and obviously they will not see any other animal pages).

And to be specific, they shouldn’t even see the forbidden pages in the menu (because the menu would be otherwise flooded with animal pages and that’s crazymaking).

I’m obviously able to build Groups such as “Rabbit” and “agouti” and “tarsier” and so forth, and the page/menu restrictions work great, but the affiliation asignment has to be done by an Admin. (as far as I can tell). Is there a way for a User to pick a different animal/affiliation/Group and then they have concomitant different access? (I’ve subsequently learned this function does not yet exist)

Alternately…

I’m (currently) exploring a plug-in called User Meta that allows for extra fields on a user account. On the front end, users CAN select their animal/affiliation…

…but I can’t figure out how to get Press Permit Core to either use that attribute as the basis for a Group, or some other method of classifying Users.

If PPC can’t do this, is there a complementary plug-in that will achieve this? I would appreciate any advice toward achieving a good functional mix.

Thanks!

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/press-permit-core/