Users are the people who view and optionally manage a website. There are several types of Joomla users and various permissions can be assigned to groups of users.

The most basic user is a website visitor and in Joomla, these are referred to as public users. They usually can only view content.

Specific user accounts can be created in Administrator on the User Manager page. Or if the appropriate settings and module have been created, public website visitors can apply to become a registered user. Additional user groups can also be created. Website administrators can then apply restrictions to limit who can view certain content articles or entire pages.

There are also certain actions that can be performed to content items and these actions can also be restricted to certain user groups. This provides a great amount of flexibility as to who can view content and who can do something to the content. For example, a site administrator might decide to:

• Allow the public to view most pages
• Create a category containing content that is only visible to registered users
• Create another category that is only visible to users in a group called website committee
• Create a group of authors who can write content for the site, but can't publish that content
• Create a single user who is allowed to view submitted content from authors, edit that content and publish it on the site.