I understand every user on a site has to be anything from consumer through manager. Can I restrict a user to only see contents of one folder only and still be part of the same site?
I think yes. I am not an expert but I think if you know the coding practice well then it's not a big deal to put restriction on net. You can do it by setting users access permission to read (only). It's logic for what you are searching for.
Is anyone willing to bid on this project for me? No one seems to be willing to help out so I am ready to pay someone to do it for me, just to create access levels for different users instead of having tons of admins on the site with full control which is pretty much the default setting on sites.