But if I remove the save button, would not it be leaving all users as read-only?

There are two options. (1) You can copy the "staff" folder and put it in side by side. ( You need to rename the new folder to something like "guest" ) Modify the "guest" folder so that the users can't edit records and use the "staff" folder to edit them. (2) Use $this->sys->isAdmin() to conditionally execute the code that edits records.