What are Joomla Groups?
When referring to a Joomla!TM Group, in most cases you're referring to the ACL functionality in Joomla. Access Control Levels allow you to segment the way users interact with content on your website. Joomla 1.5 installs with three default access levels, Public, Registered, and Special.
The Public Group
The public Joomla Group allows for general viewing of your content. By default all new menu items, sections, categories, articles, modules, and plug-ins are set to Public. Anyone visiting your website can view content and information set to public. A little known fact is that if you have content in your database,
set to public, and not linked to a menu item, it will still display as a search result for any keywords in the article.
For example, let's say I'm writing our next Joomla Tutorial. Something comes up and I stop in the middle of the article, save it as public in order to return to it later. Along comes a site visitor who searches for Joomla. Among those results will be my half written article. A click on that article will most likely result in a visitor never to return to the site. To avoid this issue, simply change the access level to "Special" until your content is ready for public viewing.
The Registered Group
When your site visitors register with your website, they become, ummm, registered users. Upon log in these users are now able to view content in the (Registered) Joomla group. This access level applies to the front end of the site only. Per chance a registered user tries to access the admin with those credentials, their group id wouldn't be high enough, and access would be denied.
The Special Group
The highest level of restriction in the default installation of Joomla is the special Joomla group. These users can access both the front end content leveled special or below, as well as the admin area of the website.
Joomla 1.5 Menu ACL
These attributes are set in the administrator. Open a new article, the access control levels are under the parameters for that article.
Joomla also allows for the setting of Access Control Levels on "Menu" items also. Once in the menu manager, open or create a new item. Located on the left are the ACL's for the menu. ACL's set in this way are a bit different in that they set restrictions on the URL, regardless of the type of content it contains.
- Ensure your "public" articles are complete before publishing
- All content should be segmented and categorized before creating the article, for easy filing after creation
- Title your menus the same as the article, and use the alias' to customize your url
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