User's Manual
Version 0.01 5/15/2006
Chapter 3 - Joomla! Users
Types of Users and access permissions
Users of Joomla web sites can be broken down into two broad categories;
• Guests
• Registered Users
Guests are simply users of your Joomla web site who managed to navigate their way to your
site. Depending on how the site administrator has configured the site, users may be free to
browse all the content or restricted to a subset of the content available with some content
been reserved for registered users.
Registered users have registered with your site to obtain a username and password. This
username and password allows registered users to log into your site, receiving special privileges
not available to guests. Registered users are broken down into groups;
• Frontend users
• Backend Users.
Note: The admin panel refers to these two groups of users as Public Frontend and Public
Backend. The work public makes sense for Frontend users but can be a bit confusing when
applied to backend users (administrators).
Frontend users are granted certain additional rights over guests, which may include the ability
to create and publish content on the web site. We will generally refer to these uses as content
providers since their primary goal is to provide content on the web site, not to administer the
site or alter its design.
Content providers may provide new content right through the web interface using an
embedded WYSIWG editor without any knowledge of HTML coding.
Within this broad classification of content providers are four specific roles, which can be
assigned by the site administrator. Those roles are;
Registered A registered user has no ability to create edit or publish content in a Joomla
web site. They may submit new links for publication and they may have
access to restricted content that is not available to guests.
Author Authors, can create content, signify certain aspects of how the content is to
be displayed and specify the date for when the material should be
published.
Editor An editor has all the abilities of an author plus the ability to edit content of
their own articles as well as that of any other author.
Publisher Publishers can perform all the duties of authors and editors plus have the
ability to actually publish an article.
The default user role is registered user. For Fronted users to receive any other role requires
the system administrator to change their profile through the backed administrator’s panel.
Backend Users are typically thought of as the site administrators. Just as with the Frontend
users, Backed users may have different privileges;