Viewing the Site

There are 3 levels of access when viewing a Joomla web site.

Public - what the public sees
Registered - what the logged in users will see... this would be for your normal members
Special - what those with special permissions will see....I'd envision a few committee members having access to this stuff

Virtually every item in the website has access control....menu items, articles, modules and user profile tabs are all assigned an access level of Public, Registered or Special.

Site Administration

Joomla offers seven levels of administrative access to the site.  The lower levels offer various capabilities to generate and manage content for the site in the form of articles.  The higher three levels offer access to a sophisticated Joomla backend which manages all the elements of the site.  As one moves through the access hierarchy, all capabilities of lower levels are inherited by higher levels.  Examples of soem of the key capabilities of each level are listed below.

Registered - allows viewing access to non-public material on the site

Author - generates articles, able to edit articles that they themselves generate

Editor - adds ability to edit others articles

Publisher - adds ability to Publish articles (Author and Editor generated new articles must be approved by a Publisher or higher before they are visible on the site.   Admins at this level and higher maintain the consistency of content style on the site)

Manager - access to the backend including Menu and Media management

Administrator - adds User Management capability

Super-Administrator - access to entire site including Template management