Access Control

Joomla!’s access control mechanisms are not as clear cut as they could be; this is due to an ongoing development cycle that is moving away from a legacy access control system. In the future, Joomla! will use a complete GACL (Group Access Control Lists) access control mechanism.

The current access control mechanism uses an incomplete, abstracted implementation of phpGACL. There are eleven user groups; these groups are sometimes referred to as usertypes. Joomla! also maintains a set of three legacy access groups, Public, Registered, and Special.