Now that you know what kinds of groups can be assigned to a user, let’s create a user for your web site. To do this, you have to open the User Manager by opening a browser window and entering your Administrator interface address (http://localhost/joomlasite/administrator). From the menu bar, select Users ➤ User Manager. You’ll see a screen like that shown in Figure 5-1, which displays the list of all registered users of your web site. The user named Super User belongs to the Super Users group and is automatically created by Joomla.
The icons in the toolbar have the usual meanings that you’ve learned so far.
You don’t have to create a user account for everyone who visits your web site, but you do need to create accounts for users who want to maintain your web site. These users need extra privileges to contribute articles, edit existing articles, publish articles, and so on. Each user that the administrator creates for web site maintenance is assigned a group depending on his role in web site administration. Visitors of your web site can also create their own accounts from the front end by selecting the link Create an Account. These self-registered users are assigned the Registered User group by Joomla.
Now let’s create a new user. Click the New icon in the toolbar, and you’ll see a screen that lets you enter information for the new user. You’ll create a user named sanjay. Fill in the information for the new user as shown in Figure 5-2.
The Name field is for specifying the complete name of the user (unlike the Login Name field, it can include spaces). Enter sanjay for the name of the user. The Login Name field is for the user ID needed to log in to the web site. As mentioned, it cannot contain spaces and it must be unique for each user. Because you want the new user to log in by entering the name sanjay, type that name here. In the New Password and Confirm Password fields, enter a password for the user (make sure the passwords entered in both boxes are exactly the same).
In the E-mail field, enter the e-mail address of the user: sanjay@hotmail.com. The Registration Date field displays the date on which the user is registered. This date is displayed only when you are editing the information of an existing user. The Last Visit Date field is automatically populated by the date when the user visited the site last time. The date and time when the password was reset last time is automatically populated in the Last Reset Date field. The Password Reset Count field is populated by the count of the times the password has been reset since the last reset date.
Set the Receive System e-mails option to Yes if you want the user to receive system e-mails. This option is visible only to administrators and super administrators. An example of a system e-mail is the e-mail sent by Joomla to new users when they create an account. Set the Block this User option to No when you want the user to be able to log in to your web site. If you want to disable a user from logging in, set this option to Yes. Only members of the Administrator and Super Administrator groups can set this option.
Set the Require Password Reset field to Yes if you want to enable the user to reset the password assigned by the admin. When the user will be logged in for the first time, the Edit Your Profile page will open up with a notice at the top: You Are Required to Reset Your Password Before Proceeding (see Figure 5-3). The user is required to enter the new password and then click the Submit button to assign the new password. The ID field displays the system–generated ID number.
■ Note If the Login Module is not visible in the front end of the site, log in to the Administrator backend, open the Module Manager, search for the Login Form module in the list, and enable it.
On clicking the Assigned User Groups tab, you will see the list of available group options, as shown in Figure 5-4. Select the group to which the user will belong. The available choices are Public, Guest, Manager, Administrator, Registered, Author, Editor, Publisher, and Super Users. The default user group is Registered. Let the user group for sanjay be Registered because you want him to be able only to view the web site, not edit it or add anything to it.
1. Configuring Basic Settings of a New User
To implement other settings, such as language, editor, time zone, and so on, click the Basic Settings tab; you will see the fields shown in Figure 5-5.
From the Backend Template Style combo box, select the desired template. The impact of using the template does not appear on the front side of the site, just on the backend that is used to administer the site. Joomla allows you to administer the web site in one language and access the web site in another language.
From the Backend Language field, select the language to be used at the back end (i.e., for administering the web site). For this exercise, let the Backend Language be Use Default (i.e., the language specified in the Global Configuration Manager). Remember that you can see the language options in this combo box only when the Language packs are installed through Language Manager. The Frontend Language field allows you to specify the language to be used while accessing the Joomla web site. Select the same language that you chose for the back end. Again, the default is the language set in the Language Manager. With the new
Joomla Language Tool (available since Joomla 3.x), you can install new languages without having to find and manually download them from other sites on the web. In Chapter 10, you will learn how.
Note If you want to use some other language than the default, you need to install languages of your The procedure to install and use languages of your choice is taught in Chapter 10
In the Editor field, select the front-end and back-end editors for the user. Joomla includes two editors: TinyMCE and CodeMirror. TinyMCE is the default editor; it allows you to edit rich text. It also supports various styles for formatting the text, and enables the content to be displayed on the front end, just as it does in the editor.
The Help Site field is for specifying the location of the help server, which is meant to display the help screens when a user clicks the Help icon on the toolbar. These help screens are displayed by default from a remote server: http:// help.joomla.org. However, you can also set the help server to display help screens from a local server. The local Joomla help server displays help screens that are similar to the remote server, but with the advantage that you can customize them, add extra information to them, and even translate them into the language of your choice.
You can easily set up your local help server by downloading the help screens from the Joomla web site.
Set the value of the Help Site field to English (GB)—help.joomla.org to access the remote help server. In the Time Zone field, you can set the time zone for the user. The default is the time zone set in the Global Configuration section. The Contact Information section is for displaying the contact information if the user is linked to a contact (which you’ll learn about next); otherwise, this field displays the message No Contact Details Linked to this User.
After entering the information for the user sanjay, click the Save & Close icon to save it. The user sanjay will appear in the User Manager list, as shown in Figure 5-6.
2. Understanding User Manager Columns
The User Manager displays user information, including the complete name and the username used to log in to the web site. The check box in the first column can be used to select user(s) to apply actions using the tools shown in the toolbar above. The Name field shows the full name of the user. On clicking the name, the user’s information is displayed in edit mode. As discussed earlier, the Username column displays the name that is used to login to the site. The Enabled column indicates whether the user is enabled or in disabled mode. A green check mark in this column indicates that the user is enabled, whereas a red X indicates that the user is disabled. The Activated column indicates whether the user has activated the account after registration. A green check mark in this column confirms that the user’s account is activated.
You can click either of the check boxes to toggle between the two states. When a user registers at your web site, Joomla sends him a system e-mail carrying an activation link that has to be selected by the user in order to activate his account. But a disabled user cannot activate his account even by clicking at the activation link sent to him by e-mail. If the administrator or super administrator blocks a user, that user
is disabled. The User Manager also displays the group to which user belongs in the User Groups column. Additionally, the users’ e-mail addresses, the date that each was last logged into the web site and the registration dates are also displayed through the Email, Last Visit Date, and Registration Date columns, respectively. The last column of the User Manager table displays the ID number of the user, which is a unique number automatically assigned by Joomla to each user (used for internal maintenance tasks).
3. Let’s Login
To verify that your user sanjay has been created, refresh your Joomla web site. A login form appears on the web site (its location will depend on the template you’ve chosen). In the login form, enter the username and password for sanjay, as shown in Figure 5-7.
If the username and password are correct, the login form will change to display a welcome message, as shown in Figure 5-8.
Because the user sanjay is in the Registered User group, he can see his details but cannot submit an article (although he can view all the articles that are meant for registered users). The menu that the user sanjay will see is shown in Figure 5-9.
Now log out as user sanjay and try changing this user’s group from the Administrator interface. Open the User Manager by selecting Site User Manager, select the check box for user sanjay, and click the Edit icon in the toolbar. You’ll get a screen in which you can edit user sanjay’s settings (refer to Figure 5-2).
Click the Assigned User Groups tab, change the group of this user to Manager, and save it. To see the effect, refresh your Joomla web site. This time, when you log in as sanjay, you will see the screen shown in Figure 5-10.
Notice that as a member of the Manager group, sanjay can now submit articles and web links.
Now that you’ve seen the impact of groups on a user, restore sanjay’s user group to Registered because you’ll be using it later when dealing with contacts.
Source: Harwani B M (2015), Foundations of Joomla!, Apress; 2nd ed edition