Joomla! Community Magazine™

How to set up a better user experience for your clients — while enhancing usability — by using ACL on the back end of Joomla

Because of the rise (and continuous improvement) of Content Management Systems like Joomla!, companies are more capable than ever of maintaining their own websites. However, deciding whether or not to actually maintain your own website (or pay a web design company to do it for you) is a more complicated decision than most people would think.

Background: December 2009, New York City

When the newly-formed Production Leadership Team (PLT) met in New York City in December 2009, we faced a challenge. Although Joomla! version 1.5 was popular and successful, it had been released almost two years earlier. The code for version 1.6 contained many incomplete and untested features, and no one could say how soon version 1.6 might be ready for release. (It turned out to be a little over a year, in January 2011.)

Give your clients a backend menu that is tailored for them. Here’s how.

Improve user experience by customizing login modules, menu items, and other content to provide a consistent, tailored experience for your users.

Now that you have a grasp on the terminology of ACL, let's implement a simple system where different users see different content on a website. To follow along with this example, you should be working with Joomla 1.7 or higher.

One of the most powerful new features in Joomla 1.6 and later versions is Access Control Lists (ACL). ACL stands for access control lists. It refers to who has permission to do what on the website, including read, create, edit, delete, or log in, among other permissions.

Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how-to: 1. Make entry in the JomSocial feed on new/edited article.2. Make entry in the JomSocial feed on new comment.3. Add user points for new article.4. Add user points for edited article.5. Add user points...

One of Joomla!'s best features is how easy it is to change the look and feel of a website simply by using a different template. But many users may not know that the look and feel of the backend administrator's area for a Joomla! website is also defined by a template, and backend templates can be changed just as easily as frontend templates. This article shows how to do that and also gives links to some different current free administrator templates.

As you all know – Joomla!'s page loading speed is not one of the main advantages of the system. Of course, there is some advice you could follow and there are two very important things that needs to be done: