Planning For "roles"

I am planning to build a somewhat simple "CMS" for a site of mine. The site will be expanding, have several different areas, and several users with access to one, two, or more areas. I am trying to decide the best way to "mark" in the DB that a user has access to a specific area. (And then how to check if he/she does).

create a separate boolean field in the members list for each area of the site. then on each page check the db (or a session once they're logged in) for that boolean and give access if its good or create a single text field with a list separated by commas and do something similar. which one better?