Beginner's Guide

Chapter 12
Users and Permissions
People simply try to use the Joomla website that you have created for them - in an active or passive
way. The better the experience, the better the website will be perceived. Joomla - as every CMS
differentiates between visitors and registered users with different permissions. Visitors usually arrive via
search engines or social media site recommandations and can become users by registrating. Already
registered users mostly know what they are looking for and come to your site with certain expectations.
The more users your site has, the more complex the topic users and permissions becomes. In versions
preceding Joomla 1.6, there was a static system consisting of user groups, permissions and access levels
that could not be changed. With Joomla 2.5, the old system is still alive as the default configuration of a
very powerful so-called access control list (ACL)
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Every site access will be evaluated by a Permission Group, even an access from a visitor. After
registering on your Joomla website, the user will automatically become a member of a Permission Group.
The group has predefined permissions and belongs to an access level. One Access Level can have any
number of Permission Groups. One group can have any number of users/visitors. Permissions can be
passed down and overwritten in several places.
Let's begin by having a look at the registration process.
REGISTRATION AND LOGIN
The first registration process in your website's life cycle was completed with the installation of
Joomla. In the last step you were prompted for a user name, an email address and a password. The
person who installed Joomla is now the super duper administrator, who has permission to do everything
on the site. This is why every Joomla website has at least one user account. It's up to this user only to
modify the behavior of the site in Users - User Manager - Options (Figure 1).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_control_list