While working on a client site recently I was asked to hide the site actions menu and only allow certain users to view it. After a bit of digging around and searching I found the answer to be the
“SPSecurityTrimmedControl”. Now the great thing about this control is that it only renders the contents of the controls it contains if the user has a matching permission level. Therefore the only thing I needed to do was create myself a custom permission level called
“DisplaySiteActionsMenu” and assign that to the group or groups who should see the site actions menu. Once this was done all the standard users to the site didn't even know the site actions menu existed.
Below is an example of how I updated the master page for the site to make this work.
<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl
ID="stcHideMasterPageItems" PermissionsString="DisplaySiteActionsMenu">
<PublishingSiteAction:SiteActionMenu
runat="server"/>
</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>