[defi]

I found the error,

- constants.php

// User levels
define('GUEST', 0);
define('USER_AWAITING', 3);
define('USER', 2);
define('ADMIN', 6);

For 'user' I was using another groupid of registered users which have 1+ posts as opposed to user's with 0 posts which made up the user groupid '2'...

Anyways, I sorted out the problem, thanks for leading me to the fix